PHP5 upgrade/osCommerce problems

andrew71 · 3rd May 2008, 11:07 PM

Hi,

I've just today received the email about the PHP4>5 upgrade, although it appears it was announced on these forums around the end of March.

This is going to cause me major problems for my two osCommerce sites. Both of which I've heavily modified using osCommerce contributions.

I've spent this evening testing with one of my sites and have some serious problems with it - in fact it is now rendered completely unusable. Does anyone here have any in-depth knowledge of rendering an osCommerce site usable with PHP5? I know about the osCommerce support forums, but that is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I've test-installed a contribution to try and work around the php register_globals problem, but that just ended up with the main area of my admin pages being rendered blank.

Any ideas or offers of assistance would be greatly appreciated!

UH-Matt · 4th May 2008, 02:41 AM

It will be a case of going through each hack or mod you have installed and seeing why it will not work with PHP5 or checking if there is a new version of the hack available.

Stock oscommerce itself will work fine with PHP5.

pursuit · 4th May 2008, 08:45 AM

osc will work fine with php5 ONLY if register_globales is on. unfortunately, by default (as on UH servers) php5 has it OFF, which is the problem.
The only version(s) of stock osc that would work fine with php5 regardless register_globales is ON or OFF are the so-called RC (release candidate) 1, or 2 or 2a.
the key issue here is not the version of php but whether register_globals ON or OFF. if set by default to ON then the switch over wont cause problems, otherwise like you have seen it will stop working from day one. Note that you may well be unable to change settings of the php.ini yourself and must ask support to do it for you, which is another problem (god knows how many old osc shops out there).
for a heavily modified osc shop as would be the case for many, upgrading osc or the contributions/addons is almost impossible due to the way these addons were added to the osc core files.

andrew71 · 4th May 2008, 09:30 AM

Thanks for your reply Pursuit.

I found another thread which had similar information and this morning, Support have enabled register_globals (and register_long_arrays too, which seems to have fixed imagemagic).

I'm going through the site slowly. The current problem I'm working on is with Discount Coupons. They can be entered but don't appear in the order subtotal.

UH-Matt · 4th May 2008, 07:48 PM

Pursuit,

With the upgrades in June I can confirm that all sites will have full access to php.ini no trouble at all. Currently I do understand that some sites dont have access and others do, which is an inconsistancy that will be fixed with the June updates.

andrew71 · 4th May 2008, 08:50 PM

I've spent a lot of today going through my sites and whilst there are still a few problems, the majority of functionality is working now.

Hetha's post in this thread was extremely useful.

In addition, I've asked support to enable register_long_arrays in the new php.ini - this seemed to fix the problems I was having with the Oscommerce Imagemagic contribution. The only other problem I'm having now is to do with a few memory settings (for file uploads, etc.). Hopefully, once I've asked Support to fix them, both my sites will be up and running fully again.

Thanks very much to Support's assistance today.

pursuit · 5th May 2008, 11:18 PM

Thanks UH Matt. Thats good news, which means I could download and edit one php.ini then upload it to all sites that need it. this way, it could be done in a very short time, and hopefully the switch over would be done after midnight or during the small hrs of the morning on UK servers

UH-Matt · 6th May 2008, 02:53 AM

Yes the switch over begins at 10PM on the night of the upgrade for each server and will be completed by around 6AM the next morning, so it is a night time change.

We are also happy to assist with php.ini changes if required, we can easily make bulk edits and such for customers. Tickets should be opened on the night of the upgrade with such requests.

stevenutty · 31st May 2008, 01:30 PM

Hi Andrew.

I use a firm in India to do all my SEO work and web changes.

They completed my PHP5 upgrades in no time at all at a reasonable cost. I can put you in touch with them if you are interested.

pursuit · 1st June 2008, 09:28 AM

osCommerce php Upgrade? Rubbish! theres no such things as php upgrade as far osCommerce is concerned. the's why it can be done "in no time at all". any such claim is either to try to con someone else or has been conned by someone else.

stevenutty · 1st June 2008, 01:34 PM

calm down dear....

I'm not saying that there's a magic fix. All I'm saying is that I used a firm in India to make all the required code changes. I was happy with the results and it cost next to nothing.

You really need to relax a little.

Terra · 1st June 2008, 03:22 PM

We're running osCommerce on PHP5 and have not not noticed any major problems. The version we use is MS2.2 (NOT Release Candidates RC1 or RC2).

As long as register_globals is ON and long_arrays are ON in php.ini, you should be fine.

If you installed additional contributions then these may need extra TLC, but the only issue I found so far was a small bug in "C dynamic Metatags" which only affected the admin in a very specific set of circumstances and did not impact the live shop at all.

So just make sure that your php.ini settings are osCom friendly, and the switch-over should be okay.

PS: the one to watch out of is MySQL5 when it comes, as this will require code changes.

All the best - Terra

EDIT: We're using CCGV(trad) for discount coupons and I can confirm that this works fine on PHP5 - just tested on a server with PHP5 & e.g. "10% off" coupon appears correctly in checkout. With osCom there are 2 versions of CCGV, the one to trust is the "trad" (which used to be looked after by Vger) as it's reliable & we use on all our shopping cart installs.

pursuit · 1st June 2008, 04:17 PM

I am neither interested in nor commenting on whether the 'firm' is in india or nigeria or wherever it may be, nor how little it may cost. what I was commenting on was the notion of "They completed my PHP5 upgrades" - if the 'firm' concerned told you they'd 'upgrade' your osc shop to php5 then you'd been conned. simple as that.

I can add to Terra's comment that neither RC1 nor RC2 has any php version issues as long as you use php4 or higher, with RC2 having the benefit of being able to run regardless register_globals ON or OFF. I recently did a new shop using RC2 which runs happily on UH server using the php5 switch in .htaccess with register_globals OFF, and it is even W3C XHTML1.0 compliant (not a built-in feature of RC2 though).