Web Server Upgrade - Major Changes / Reported Issues
Major Changes
- Upgrading from PHP4 to PHP5. Please review the list of changes fromPHP4 to PHP5. One change that is likely to affect several users will be that "register_globals" will be set to "off". One aspect of your code that will be affected by this is the $HTTP_POST_VARS and $HTTP_GET_VARS variables will no longer work. You will need to use the $_POST and $_GET variables instead. Please review this link for more information about register_globals.
- Upgrading from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5. The only change that is likely to affect you is that integer values do not default to zero unless they are explicitly set.
- DocumentRoot. The root path of the web server will change from /export/htdocs/ to /var/www/html. For example, if your path was /export/htdocs/Dept/Academic/gfcb, it would now be /var/www/html/Dept/Academic/gfcb.
- FTP client changes. We are no longer using the FTP protocol to transfer files. We will now be using the SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). You will need a client that supports SFTP to upload files to the server. The WS_FTP client does NOT support SFTP. Supported clients include:
- NetID Logins. We are now using NetID logins instead of the old first.last usernames. If you do not know your NetID, please go to the NetID Lookup pageand find out what it is.
- Logins are currently only permitted from on campus. Please note that for purposes of logging in to the web server, RESIDENCES HALLS are considered OFF-CAMPUS. We are working on a solution to allow temporary access to off-campus IP addresses when you need to work from home or while traveling.
- PHP error handling is turned OFF by default. This is done as a security precaution to avoid unnecessary disclosure of detailed server information that could be exploited. This capability can be temporarily activated for specific locations or files if needed. To enable error handling for a particular file, please include the following line of code in your PHP file:
<?php ini_set('display_errors',1); ?>
You should only leave this setting in place when you are testing. When you are through testing a php page, you should remove this setting.
These applications are not officially supported by IT, but are applications and issues that we have already encountered during preliminary testing
- Joomla - No reported issues
- Wordpress - No reported issues
- CMS Made Simple
- Changes must be made to the config.php file to reflect the DocumentRoot change from /export/htdocs to /var/www/html
- The compiled template files in your tmp/templates_c folder will need to be deleted so that CMS Made Simple may regenerate them.
Other Things to Consider
Files and directories with global read/write permissions (777 directories or 666 files) are no longer permitted due to the security risks such permissions can create. If a third party application required you to set folders to 777 for installation purposes, please reset them back to their original permissions once the installation has completed. If you do not understand the previous two sentences, don't worry as this likely does not apply to you.