Running on PHP 5.4

bobdore · Post by **bobdore** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:56 am

I think I'm going to need some help here, any advice would be appreciated.

My current board is version 3.0.5 and has been running perfectly on PHP 4.4.9 since it was installed 3 years ago.

It has been customised in various ways to suit its members, changes to certain button positions, installation of the gallery and changing some links from text to images are ones I can remember doing. I have resisted upgrading for fear of losing one or more of those customisations. I am not that good with PHP but have a stable and popular board which I'd like to keep.

The board is hosted by 1&1 internet who propose forcing PHP version 5.4 on me at the end of March. I am worried that the board is going to stop working so am looking at doing whatever's necessary to sort this problem out. I can change the PHP version to 5.4 at any time so am currently doing a full backup of the board before doing so in order that I can see what happens. If I can't work out how to fix any problems I think I'm going to need help which is why I've started this thread.

The site url is http://www.shadowmusic.co.uk

Hopefully I'll have nothing more to say except to post a message saying that all is well.

Many thanks,

Bob

bobdore · Post by **bobdore** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:28 pm

After trying to make phpBB 3.0.5 work with PHP 5.4 I came to the inevitable conclusion that this was a task way beyond my capabilities. I have therefore decided that I shall have to upgrade phpBB to 3.0.11.

This then gives me another problem which is beyond me. Any help would be appreciated:

Trying to upgrade using the automatic upgrade fails while checking files. If I have PHP 4.4.9 running it fails after checking 61 of 366 files. If I have PHP 5.4 running it fails after 119 of 366 files.

The error message I get is:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Please help.

Thanks,

Bob.

Post by **stevemaury** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:45 pm

What makes you think there is an issue running phpBB 3.0.5 on php 5.4?

bobdore · Post by **bobdore** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 6:02 pm

Initially I was expecting a problem regarding Register_Globals based on the advice of 1and1.

Today I changed my global PHP version to php 5.4 and recieved the following error leading me to believe I had no option. Unless there's a way of solving this one:

Strict Standards: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Europe/Berlin' for 'CET/1.0/no DST' instead in /homepages/46/d123010467/htdocs/shadowmusic/index.php on line 94

Strict Standards: getdate(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Europe/Berlin' for 'CET/1.0/no DST' instead in /homepages/46/d123010467/htdocs/shadowmusic/index.php on line 94
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3847: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /index.php:94)
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3849: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /index.php:94)
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3850: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /index.php:94)
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3851: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /index.php:94)

Bob.

Post by **Noxwizard** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:34 pm

As per the error, PHP's configuration is incomplete. A timezone must be specified in php.ini. In 3.0.11, we've added a workaround to silence that error when hosts don't have proper configurations. As for the internal server error, you need to check the server error logs to see what it says is causing that.

bobdore · Post by **bobdore** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:07 pm

By calling date_default_timezone_set() in the index.php file I have managed to eliminate the date errors. However there are more errors now which don't stay for long as the screen is redrawn. I see that they are related to includes/utf but I can't read them quickly enough.

I have a feeling the upgrade problem is due to my having customised files and the automatic updater is failing because my files are not what it expects. This is a pure guess as I can't find the logs.

As a general question, should phpBB 3.0.5 run on php 5.4?

Thanks,

Bob.

Oyabun1 · Post by **Oyabun1** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:00 pm

Yes, to an extent, but there will be some problems because changes were made to the PHP code after phpBB 3.0.5 was done, so it isn't aware of those changes.

There have been numerous features added since 3.0.5 as well as bug fixes. such as handling for PHP 5.4, so you really should update your board. The phpBB automatic update package is designed to work with boards that have modifications.

bobdore · Post by **bobdore** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 7:12 am

Thanks,

It looks like the way forward is to update to 3.0.11

I have 1and1 looking into the update problem and if they can't sort it I'll have to modify the install process to create a log file so I can find out where and why it fails. It doesn't appear to create one. If there's a description of the update process, i.e. what it does and where, that would be really useful.

Thanks,

Bob.

Oyabun1 · Post by **Oyabun1** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 7:29 am

The update from 3.0.5 would involve many hundreds of changes and well over a hundred files. You can see the changes here, 3.0.5 to 3.0.11.

Oleg · Post by **Oleg** » Sun Mar 03, 2013 10:12 am

While you could probably make your 3.0.5 board compatible with php 5.4, this is going to be non-trivial. Your efforts are likely better spent on upgrading to 3.0.11.