PHP Selector breaks during EasyApache

[Tom Risager]

We had an incident some weeks ago where running EasyApache to pick up updates broke the PHP Selector on both our Cloudlinux servers, leaving all accounts running with the native PHP version regardless of PHP selector settings. This in turn completely broke a couple of websites that relied on running PHP version 5.3 (native is 5.4 on both servers), and a couple other websites were running with suboptimal PHP settings. It took around 8 hours to get this resolved with assistance from various members of the cPanel support team.

I ran EasyApache on both servers again today, while keeping a (somewhat nervous) eye on the websites that were affected the last time. Partway through the update process all websites again reverted to the native PHP version 5.4, however this time they recovered at the end of the EasyApache update process so the downtime on the affected websites was relatively short, maybe 5-10 minutes.

I'm curious if others have experienced similar problems with the PHP Selector and EasyApache. For us the current situation is unfortunate because we cannot realistically coordinate with several different customers each time we run EasyApache. If the situation persists we may have to revert to a setup where we run different PHP versions on different servers, negating much of the benefit we get from using Cloudlinux (we like the added security, too, but our main reason for installing Cloudlinux was the ability to use different PHP versions).

 

[vanessa]

I personally have not seen this issue, but it's not terribly difficult to write your own PHP switcher. I'm currently working on an open source one to negate the need to use CloudLinux for this. Which will essentially render it even more useless than it already is. </opinion>

You may want to consider opening a ticket with cPanel on this as a posisble bug. It sounds like the problem is more on Cloudlinux's end though in how they determine which PHP version a user has selected.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

I recommend opening a support ticket directly with Cloud Linux to report this issue:

Cloud Linux - Contacting Support

Thank you.

 

[dcdigital]

suPHP/suexec need to be patched.

run the following commands one after the other:
# /usr/sbin/cpanel-compile-suphp.sh
# cagefsctl –force-update

You can see a post about it with more detail at:
cloudlinux: PHP selector NOT working or BROKEN | Penguinbliss

 

[Tom Risager]

Thanks. We did get PHP Selector working again with assistance from support.

We continue to have the other issue - PHP Selector will reliably stop working for a few minutes every time we run EasyApache and all websites will temporarily be running with the native PHP and without any custom settings. Once EasyApache completes, everything reverts to normal. Websites that are relying on older PHP versions will be unavailable while EasyApache is running.

 

[cPanelMichael]

We continue to have the other issue - PHP Selector will reliably stop working for a few minutes every time we run EasyApache and all websites will temporarily be running with the native PHP and without any custom settings. Once EasyApache completes, everything reverts to normal. Websites that are relying on older PHP versions will be unavailable while EasyApache is running.

Have you submitted a ticket to Cloud Linux to report this issue?

Thank you.

 

[someB0dy]

Tom, this sounds like cagefs become unmounted during easyapache run. This should not work this way, and I never saw such actions but next time you run easyapache check if cagefs is enabled/mounted with:

cagefsctl --list-enabled | wc -l
cagefsctl --list
cat /proc/mounts

And check the message that will be shown with getting php version:

selectorctl --user-current --user USERNAME

 

[Tom Risager]

Excellent advice, that should give us something specific we can use to contact Cloudlinux support. Much appreciated.