many questions

A

Azzazello

Verified User
Joined
May 20, 2017
Messages
6
Greetings,

I am totally new to DA.
Been using it for a week now, and I have to say its fantastic, the load on server is nice and low.
I say this because I am coming from Plesk, that literally been raping my machines HDD every day for hours and hours and hours with its statistics_calculation process. I had no choice but to leave that server and move to a completely new one with new OS and new panel.

My hosting company installed DA for me and also compiled it. Unfortunately they totally disregarded my preferences the morons, so now that my server move is complete, I want to upgrade stuff. Most specifically I need nginx as reverse proxy to Apache. I dont need any other stuff changed or upgraded. Although it would be good to have 2 php versions installed so I can select for domains. Now only 5.3 is installed.

In the meantime its critical I do not broke things because its a production server. So I need to know if there can be compatibility problems?

I give you all version info.

CentOS: 6.9 (final) 64bit
PHP version: 5.3
MYSQL version: 5.5.3
Apache version: 2.2.31 using mod_php5 as PHP processor "prefork"
DirectAdmin version: 1.51.3
custom build current = 1.2
(I also have IonCubeLoader for php 5.3 manually installed) <--- my sites don't run without IonCubeLoader


I understand I need to upgrade custom build to version 2.0 first, then I can go ahead and install nginx_apache.
However if I upgrade to custom build 2.0 , will I break any scripts/programs running now?

Sorry 4 many questions :-)


- will it overwrite my php.ini? (I had to change many settings there too). <-- mod_php5

So essentially I need nginx (latest) as revers proxy to Apache 2.2. prefork And I think that php-fpm is needed for this?
Or its also possible to have nginx + Apache prefork with mod_php?

- and I will definitely need to customize both nginx and Apache too.


Sorry for many questions :-)
 
You've got quite a bad start to be honest with this. You moved to a new server, your hosting provider installed DirectAdmin but they installed a version of custombuild that has been EOL for years? It seems pretty bad to be honest.

But yes, you will have to upgrade to custombuild 2 first. However it cannot be guaranteed nothing will break. Usually things go fine but it's a pretty significant change and when we upgraded our servers a while back there were sometimes definitely issues. I personally would suggest starting fresh and reinstall the OS and then install DA properly with the latest version from the start. If possible, run PHP 7 or at least 5.6 since older versions are EOL, and I suggest switching to MariaDB 10.1 as well. With custombuild 2 I would also suggest using PHP-FPM instead of mod_php and use the event worker instead (which I believe is default nowadays). All this will be great for getting your system more up to the current standards and will also be more secure / faster / more stable as you'll no longer be running software that is EOL.

As for the php.ini, see: https://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=44743
You can set php_ini=no, that way it won't be changed. Or at least, mostly. Custombuild is a bit silly like that and a few variables will be changed regardless of the setting which cannot be disabled.

Best course of action is probably getting a standalone server, prepare it with the latest versions and make sure it's stable. Test a migration of your website and then perform it for real once everything is confirmed to be working properly. That way downtime is minimal and you can safely test / prepare the environment without risk of breaking production stuff. This is generally easy with VMs but if you're running bare metal it might be trickier getting a separate server to do this on. I do think it's the best option though considering the old software you're running now and the significant changes that are required and its associated risks.
 
hello, thank you for your reply and suggestions

you are definitely right, its old software that got installed there, these guys are morons, I told them my preferences and then they install something completely different.

Its amazing. If you want to do something right you must do it yourself :-)

You are right that probably I should install OS and do fresh install of DA with my preferences but I just finished migration today, took me a week. Cannot risk anything with this server.

Thanks for the suggestions though, like set php_ini=no.

I think I will replicate exact environment on my laptop and see if I can safely upgrade from there. If so, I can upgrade on my server too.
 
still I would like to hear official supports idea about this , is it safe to run upgrade
 
also I forgot, if nginx is installed and used as reverse proxy, will Apache expiry headers be still respected? I dont want to loose client side caching for images and other static files.

Plesk used to run in a mode with nginx+Apache that Apache mod_expires directives were still preserved. :cool:

..that was about the only cool thing about plesk thou....
 
Nielsh said:
but they installed a version of custombuild that has been EOL for years?
Click to expand...
Weren't you confused with custombuild 1.1? Because 1.2 is not EOL for years and it's still a choice on a new install as far as I know.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top