Two weeks ago, I noted that I was preparing to switch from PHP 7.0 to 7.1. It took me a bit more time than expected, thanks to a segmentation fault that appeared in 7.1 when using OPcache.
Tag: PHP
Preparing for PHP 7.1
I’ve been using PHP 7.0 for just over a year, and the 7.1 branch reached its first stable release last month, so I’ve begun thinking about what the switch will entail. Fortunately, my needs are fairly simple, so I only require two additional modules: Redis and GeoIP. I’ve made one hasty attempt to build 7.1 with support for these features, which failed spectacularly; fortunately, the chance that it was an error on my part is quite good, so things may just work when I try it again.
Sadly, I’m not yet able to drop PHP 5.6 support from my VPS as a few necessary applications still don’t work as expected under newer releases.
Notes from three PHP 7 upgrades
As I described late last year, this site runs on PHP 7 built from source. As a result, with each point release, I’ve had to recompile and relink.
Building My Network
Over the past three years, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit on a single project. It started off innocently. Since then it’s grown to occupy a significant place in my daily thoughts.
As you read this, you’re experiencing the product of these efforts. Perhaps you clicked on an eth.pw short URL to get here. If not, your browser still had to figure out how to get to ethitter.com. Now that you’re here, maybe you need to contact me via email. To make any of these endeavors possible, I’ve built a personal “network” of servers and had endless fun doing so.
Continue reading Building My Network
Hello PHP 7!
With relatively little difficulty, I’m now running PHP 7 alongside PHP 5.6. PHP 7 was released at the beginning of the month, and WordPress was one of the platforms tested against. Given that I can’t stop tinkering with this server’s configuration, I really had no excuse not to set up PHP 7.
Given the myriad services I’m running, I couldn’t switch to PHP 7 outright. While WordPress and YOURLS (powering my url shortener, eth.pw) both support PHP 7, the compatibility list basically ended there.
As I went into this with a fair bit of trepidation (and many backups), what follows is a bit about my experience.
Redis Object Cache for WordPress, the Accidental Effect of PHP 5.5
Last week, I went a little upgrade-crazy with the VPS that hosts this site. With SPDY 3.1 support in nginx 1.5, I upgraded. I also bumped PHP from 5.4 to 5.5.
The latter change is significant because PHP 5.5 drops support for APC, and I was using APC for both opcode caching at the PHP level and object caching at the WordPress level (thanks to Jaquith’s plugin). Since I’d lost my object cache, I’d also lost my page cache because I was using Batcache. Nice job, Erick.
Almost a year ago, I contributed two small changes to Eric Mann’s WordPress Redis Backend plugin. With Redis already running on my VPS for reasons unrelated to WordPress, it seemed an obvious choice over competing persistent caching options.
I spent some time updating Eric’s plugin (see https://github.com/ethitter/wordpress-redis-backend/commits/master for the fun I’ve had) and sent a massive pull request back with my changes. I’ve been using the plugin for a few days now without incident, though I wouldn’t rush to switch over just yet unless you’re adventurous. I’d watch Eric’s repo if you’re interested in what comes of my efforts.