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Why should I change from CentOS to Debian? (if any reason)
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Why should I change from CentOS to Debian? (if any reason)

myhkenmyhken Member
edited January 2014 in General

I have used CentOS for the past two years, on all my unmanaged servers. I have learned allot around managing CentOS the past years, and are quite happy.
But right before Christmas I got an e-mail from a Norwegian hosting provider saying that they had seen more and more attacks on servers using anything less then PHP ver 5.4.2. I can see that all my CentOS 6.5 servers is using PHP v 5.3.3. But Debian 7 is using PHP 5.4.4

I have now started to test out Debian on a couple of VPS servers. I can see that I have to learn allot more how to do things in Debian. But I have no problems finding good howto guides on the net.

Is it worth it changing from CentOS to Debian? Do any website working on CentOS work on Debian without any change?
I'm using Virtualmin and my first test is showing me that all sites is working great, but I have not tested any longer then a few hours.

Any input is important to me.

«13

Comments

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Pretty sure PHP 5.4 is available in the EPEL repo if you don't want to compile it. I wouldn't exactly make the RHEL to Debian swap just because of a single package version in the default repo. Just my opinion.

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • RalliasRallias Member
    edited January 2014

    Why should you switch?

    • Avoid RedHat
    • Better packages
    • More stability

    Why not?

    • Supermicro E12**v3 mobo's need an additional driver on Debian.
    Thanked by 1myhken
  • Ermm , i am running centos 6.5 and here is the php version:

    php -v
    PHP 5.5.7 (cli) (built: Dec 11 2013 07:13:20)
    Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • SpeedBusSpeedBus Member, Host Rep

    You can get the latest PHP on CentOS with the remi repository :) http://blog.famillecollet.com/pages/Config-en see the "Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS) :" part

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • It's all just a preference. Personally, I matured my Linux skills using Debian/Ubuntu so I'll always stick there. A thing to note is that Ubuntu is based on Debian so most things remained the same. If your still learning Linux sysadmin then I'd start somewhere around where I did.

    Thanked by 2myhken tux
  • I prefer CentOS because everything just seems to work more smoothly than Debian. Additionally, the support cycle for RHEL, CentOS, and other RHEL derivatives is 10 years, much longer than what Debian is supported for.

    Also note that while Debian may have more packages in its base repository, good luck finding a package repository for something. It's generally easier to find third-party software in RPM form, and most of the time even in a repository for easy installing.

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • If you're trying to decide to switch or not though, if there's specific software I need to install by hand, such as GitLab or Observium, then I'll use the distribution that's better supported. In those two specific instances, Debian is better supported and therefore I installed them on Debian. In all other cases though, CentOS has been the primary supported platform.

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • @SpeedBus said:
    You can get the latest PHP on CentOS with the remi repository :) http://blog.famillecollet.com/pages/Config-en see the "Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS) :" part

    I tried upgrading my PHP with remi respository a year ago or so, and broke everything PHP/MySQL related on my server, and could not fix it again, so had to reinstall the complete server. Don't know what I did wrong, but I have stayed away trying to change PHP/MySQL ever since.

    Maybe try again?

  • SpeedBusSpeedBus Member, Host Rep

    myhken said: I tried upgrading my PHP with remi respository a year ago or so, and broke everything PHP/MySQL related on my server, and could not fix it again, so had to reinstall the complete server. Don't know what I did wrong, but I have stayed away trying to change PHP/MySQL ever since.

    Maybe try again?

    As far as I know, you'll need to do a yum --enablerepo=remi update to make sure all packages are on the same version as which remi has which should update off PHP and mySQL at the same time as well.

  • @SpeedBus said:
    As far as I know, you'll need to do a yum --enablerepo=remi update to make sure all packages are on the same version as which remi has which should update off PHP and mySQL at the same time as well.

    Done that, but still yum update php or yum upgrade php only comes up with No Packages marked for Update.
    How to upgrade php to a version higher then 5.3.3?

  • SpeedBusSpeedBus Member, Host Rep

    Do a yum --enablerepo=remi update, that should upgrade off all packages which remi has to the latest

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • ahmiqahmiq Member
    edited January 2014

    @myhken said:

    I tried it with this command , and it didnt break mine. I am not sure about yours:
    1) Enable remi
    ..

    2) yum --enablerepo=remi,remi-php55 update

    my version was 5.5.7 and it just got updated to 5.5.8. Everything seems to be working just fine.
    php -v PHP 5.5.8 (cli) (built: Jan 9 2014 08:14:44) Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • @SpeedBus said:
    Do a yum --enablerepo=remi update, that should upgrade off all packages which remi has to the latest

    forgot the update part. Now it worked, and I have PHP 5.4.24
    Has to test it out, but if it was so easy, I will update PHP on all my servers.
    Don't know how I screwed things up last time I tried.

  • @ahmiq said:

    yes, that worked also. 5.5.8 installed. Maybe time to upgrade all my servers.

  • @myhken said:

    may be check it out first on this one , and if eeverything is in order , do it on others. make sure nothing is broken :)

  • myhkenmyhken Member
    edited January 2014

    @ahmiq said:

    Of course. I will create a new VPS now, setup Virtualmin, upload my backup files, change my local hosts file with the IP of my test VPS, see if everything works out.
    Then I will update one of my production servers (with only my personal sites on it), test it out a week or so, first then will I update my servers with my customers sites on it.

  • SpeedBusSpeedBus Member, Host Rep

    myhken said: forgot the update part. Now it worked, and I have PHP 5.4.24 Has to test it out, but if it was so easy, I will update PHP on all my servers. Don't know how I screwed things up last time I tried.

    I messed up the first time as well, when I tried to install just php with the latest version and had issues with installing php-mysql later on, the moment you run a global update with yum --enablerepo=remi update it brings all components to a version in which they're compatible with each other which makes sure it wont break :)

  • Worked on my test VPS, failed completely at my production server. Used the same commands, and PHP was updated to 5.5.8, but all my sites was "blank" when I tried to access them.
    Had to reinstall the server...(good thing that I have DNS fail over) so the sites is running on one of my backup servers now.

    Maybe it's my sites that don't like a higher PHP version? All are running Wordpress 3.8

  • ChumbiChumbi Member
    edited January 2014

    @myhken, your hosting provider is ill-informed.

    From http://wiki.centos.org/Download:

    In general every release receives bugfixes, feature enhancements and new hardware support until 4 years after general availability. And security fixes until 7 years after general availability (beginning with CentOS-5, this period has been extended from 4 to approx. 7 and from 7 to 10 years {assuming the upstream sources remain available for ten years}

    CentOS 6.5 will receive security fixes until November 2020. PHP in the official CentOS repository may be old - but all security fixes are backported (https://access.redhat.com/site/security/updates/backporting/?sc_cid=3093) from newer PHP releases as long as CentOS is supported.

    That said, there are many good reasons to upgrade PHP. PHP 5.5 not only has many new features (and a much better OO design), but it's also noticeably more efficient. While some older apps are not compatible with 5.5, Wordpress 3.8 should work just fine.

  • Have tested some more, and all my sites (both customers and my own) goes blank when using remi respository.
    It's strange for they do work on Debin 7 with PHP 5.4.4

    Don't know why all my sites goes blank updating PHP on CentOS. It's the same as last time I tried.

  • Sometime obselete php code will not work on latest php version.

  • @myhken said:
    Have tested some more, and all my sites (both customers and my own) goes blank when using remi respository.
    It's strange for they do work on Debin 7 with PHP 5.4.4

    Don't know why all my sites goes blank updating PHP on CentOS. It's the same as last time I tried.

    did you try on the 5.4.4 with only yum update on it? , i used vestaCP , there are some templates there , on one of them it was blank , there was one default one , that worked only. i guesss use the one from 5.4.4.

  • myhken said: Have tested some more, and all my sites (both customers and my own) goes blank when using remi respository. It's strange for they do work on Debin 7 with PHP 5.4.4

    If it's exactly the same site code on CentOS & Debian, then this suggests that the Apache/Nginx/PHP configuration is somehow different. The webserver error log should tell you more.

  • @myhken said:
    Don't know why all my sites goes blank updating PHP on CentOS. It's the same as last time I tried.

    Have u tried using a simple phpinfo code? It's useful to know if PHP is working correctly and its current configuration.

  • will do some more testing today...etc what happens when I create a new website on a updated server, and install a Wordpress 3.8 site from scratch on it.
    Will also test if there is any difference between updating my server WITH my sites on it before the update, and if something else happens when I upload my Virtualmin backups after the PHP update.

    The sites workes 100% on Debian with 5.4.4, so they should work on 5.4.24.

  • Rallias said: Avoid RedHat

    Are you being a fanboy or is there any issues with redhat?
    AFAIK rhel is really good.

  • I have now tested this issue the last hours. And the conclusion is that I can't get PHP 5.4.x or PHP 5.5.x to work in any way on my CentOS 6.5 server(s) when I use the Remi respository. No problem using Remi, and upgrading PHP/MySQL. All is looking great there. But no way that I can get any of my sites running on it. They all get "blank" and if I try to use wp-admin I only get this page...

    I have tried uploading my backup files before updating PHP, and I have updated PHP and then uploaded my backup files. The result is the same.
    I have also tried to create a new domain, upload Wordpress 3.8 just downloaded from server, and the result is the same as with my sites, it's only blank (see here)

    As I told you the sites workes just fine on Debian 7 with PHP 5.4.4

  • OliverOliver Member, Host Rep

    Maybe try another repo like IUS Community? They are also used by RackSpace I think and there are MySQL 5.5 server rpms as well:

    http://www.iuscommunity.org/

    They have always worked for me. :)

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • @Zen said:
    Did you bother at all to check the logs?

    Don't know what I should look at, or what log to look at. I'm not an expert (thats obvious)
    Can you point me in the right direction?

    But, why would not a fresh installation of Wordpress 3.8 on a new domain work "out of the box?)

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