I notice the arrival of new users and the increase in demand for your apps. It would be very interesting to insert in the system the availability of the functional versions of PHP.
There are new users of various types and I believe they could feel at home with this functionality that is already offered in other Panels. @Joe , @Jamie , @Ilia
Do you mean allowing the admin to limit which of the PHP versions installed can be used by domain owners?
There are apps that require updated versions of PHP or newer versions, as well as the most common versions such as 8.0; 8.1; 8.2 and 8.3 were already available could facilitate installation and would not need to use : Configuring Multiple PHP Versions | Virtualmin â Open Source Web Hosting Control Panel
Imagine a new user with a VPS and some websites, for example, having to worry about installing recent versions of PHP.
@li9-hst_web-services
Are you referring to the list of installable webapps?
Hard to understand what you are asking.
I think the suggestion is for Vmin to find out and display what 3rd party versions of PHP are available, then create repos etc to install them.
Personally I feel itâs safe to draw the line at versions offered by the OS and then DIY if you want 3rd party versions.
It shouldnât be above the skill set of anyone running a server to be able to follow the simple instructions to add additional versions.
Agree completely - take responsibility for off-roading - (some may not need PHP and use more modern languages and take responsibility for those) - I am quite happy to trust the OS provision
I am not exactly sure what the OP is asking, but maybe he means a GUI for adding and removing PHP versions. I would be in favour of this along with a php module selection page.
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It is not for system administrators. The goal is for people with little knowledge in the system who begin to migrate from other Panels to feel comfortable adapting.
I see from the questions and answers in general that new users have preferred our system.
do you mean ânew usersâ or ânew system administratorsâ?
I would argue that âusersâ have no place using a system designed for âsystem administrationâ and new system administrator should learn what the job entails.
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Yes it is for system administrators, I for one would not allow a novice user installing stuff, whether its via the command line or a gui. The user can be given the ability to use which ever versions of php that the system administrator is happy installing
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No that is not the way forward, the system administrator needs to allow the domain owner to choose the version of php they want, as you know the default version of php can be set or maybe uses the newest version, I cannot remember, but editing the domain will allow the domain owner the ability to choose from the versions & modes of php installed. Why would you elevate privs on your server (to install some version) this is a security issue
Do not install and uninstall PHP versions, but have the working versions available to choose from.
When a version no longer supports Webmin/Virtualmin/Cloudmin, it would be deleted in updates.
cPanel or Plesk has this possibility in place and no one complains.
If think if you look from a domain owners point of view, this ability is already there if the domain owner cares to look and the system administrator has given them the ability to choose php versions
I âthinkâ what the OP is saying is the repos should be included in the install script. Kinda download all available. Iâm not sure how viable that is. You can still get 5 and 7 even though you shouldnât. Do point releases really break PHP or is the âlatest & greatestâ the best option.
Some times it can break your code example 7.x to 8.x did major changes so code developed in 7.x may not work with 8.x, it still seems very odd to allow a domain owner to install php, perhaps the OP has not yet found the ability for a domain owner to use 1 of the versions of php that the system administrator has installed. But to be fair Iâm not 100% what the OP wants adding to the webmin/virtualmin gui
By point release I meant 8.whatever. I would only expect bug fixes and no new features. I really mean is do you really need a lot of 8.x versions installed?
No you donât need loads of point releases installed in the normal world, this may change if you are a php coder and are making sure your code is resilient across all point releases across a major version, but from the point of a domain owner uploading/installing a php app as long as the app is 8.x complient use any version of 8 or if itâs old code use 7.x, but to be fair no one should be using version 7 anymore itâs too old
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In WHM you can decide via the GUI which PHP versions are installed and what PHP modules are installed permissions as to whether the user can change their PHP version, and of course in cpanel the user can change their PHP version of allowed.
I like this setup, no command line needed.
PHP has nothing to do with Webmin/Virtualmin/Cloudmin (nothing of ours is written in PHP).
The concern with old versions is when they reach end of life. That varies depending on where the package comes from. Packages from the OS repos are maintained by the OS vendor even after upstream stops maintaining them. Packages from third parties are not.
And, deleting them (uninstalling the packages) would be extremely disruptive for users, breaking any applications that depend on those older versions.
My concern is about making it easier to do risky things. Running old PHP versions is risky, I would hope people would stop and think before doing it. But, we could probably do something about that in the UI, maybe even adding a warning about EOL versions (but the logic for that is trickyâŠif itâs from the OS, itâs only EOL after the OS reaches EOL, but if itâs from a third-party repo it reaches EOL when the PHP maintainers stop maintaining it.
Also, some folks seem to think more is better. I have often seen users talking about having six or more versions of PHP installed, which is absolutely crazy (itâs inefficient, and itâs additional risk and maintenance burden). We are definitely not going to preinstall a bunch of PHP versions, but I could be convinced that making it do-able in the GUI would be OK, as long as thereâs some clarity about the risks.
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