PHP8 will be the minimum version from November 2022

[teraßyte]

23 minutes ago, Clover13 said:

Mine at /applications/core/interface/task/task.php is 744

777 is what IPS suggests, but depending on your server's setup the required permissions might be different. As long as your tasks are running properly you're good.

[Clover13]

2 minutes ago, teraßyte said:

777 is what IPS suggests, but depending on your server's setup the required permissions might be different. As long as your tasks are running properly you're good.

Got ya, yeah they're all running ok as far as I can tell and per the task logs and IPS dashboard status.

[Washerhelp]

22 minutes ago, Dexter_X said:

when you check "cron task" in the community settings it tells you what you need to type, including the path, you only need to make a "copy paste" and job's done

Thanks Dexter, However, I did that and Cron started producing multiple emails saying -

Quote

 

Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
Expires: 0
Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Not at command line

 

 

I assumed these were errors?  My Cron script instructions said -

Quote

You should set the cron to run the following command every minute:
/usr/local/php81/bin/php -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/core/interface/task/task.php cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132

 

Assuming the new emails every minute were errors, I presumed the first bit "/usr/local/php81/bin/php " was incorrect. So I changed the first bit to -

php81 -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/core/interface/task/task.php cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132

Hopefully everything is OK now and I haven't assumed and presumed erroneously 🙂

 

 

[Dexter_X]

Maybe it is a normal output/log, you may need to remove options from your PHP setup like the "display errors" ?

[Washerhelp]

Just now, Dexter_X said:

Maybe it is a normal output/log, you may need to remove options from your PHP setup like the "display errors" ?

I did consider that, but it's now stopped those emails, and I've never had them before. I have to assume (again) that if the Cron job was not working, I would get notifications from Invision board about them, which I've had before. However, I don't know how long overdue they would need to be before triggering notifications. The Cron is set to run every minute.

[Mark H]

Note that when you setup a CRON job, our software does not (actually cannot) check to see if it's running. That's beyond the software's capability. (And a server that's setup properly would not allow it anyway.)

[LiveG]

What are the risks of upgrading to PHP 8?
Will some apps stop working? Total crash?
 Is there a pre-check script or something else that will check compatibility? 
I am not feeling secure with this upgrade at all.

Edited September 22, 2022 by LiveG

[Hisashi]

2 hours ago, Washerhelp said:

This seems crazy, but if it is the case, it would be great if Invision told us this when advising us to change to PHP 8? If this information is  made clear, then my bad - and please accept apologies 🙂

Here the system informs, see in my case:

Edited: This also varies from server to server.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Hisashi

[Washerhelp]

1 minute ago, Hisashi said:

Here the system informs, see in my case:

Hi. That's not what I meant. I meant when you get a message on dashboard or by email saying you should change to PHP8, there's no mention that if you do, you need to also manually update the Cron syntax on your server. 

[Washerhelp]

29 minutes ago, Mark H said:

Note that when you setup a CRON job, our software does not (actually cannot) check to see if it's running. That's beyond the software's capability. (And a server that's setup properly would not allow it anyway.)

Thanks for the information. I have a memory of being notified of a load of Cron tasks that hadn't been carried out although I could be getting mixed up with WordPress. 

I definitely remember Invision telling me my forum was in danger because it was not being visited enough to trigger all the regular tasks. That's when I originally set up the Cron task. 

So if the Cron job doesn't work. What happens?

[Mark H]

The notifications you mention may have been sent by cPanel/WHM (if you use that). The cPanel GUI cron editor has an option to email you all errors. I've used it once or twice for diagnostics.

And that red warning you saw in the ACP happens if the tasks aren't running often enough. The software checks that via a system task, it just can't check that the cron job itself is running on the server level.

[Washerhelp]

1 minute ago, Mark H said:

The notifications you mention may have been sent by cPanel/WHM (if you use that). The cPanel GUI cron editor has an option to email you all errors. I've used it once or twice for diagnostics.

And that red warning you saw in the ACP happens if the tasks aren't running often enough. The software checks that via a system task, it just can't check that the cron job itself is running on the server level.

So could the emails I got every minutewhuxh I quoted a few replied back actually be a result if the Cron jobs actually working and they were never working before?

Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0, s-maxage=0
Expires: 0
Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

 

[Mark H]

What you quoted for an error... doesn't look familiar, actually. Or doesn't look like the output which cPanel sent me in the past when I was diagnosing a problem on my site.

You may need to ask your Host about that, and have them check whether the cron is actually working.

You should be able to run the job from command-line (SSH), as shown in the ACP. If no output is produced, that normally means the command worked.

[Washerhelp]

Many thanks Mark, can you or anyone confirm what would happen if the Cron jobs didn't work? The implications of what's been said is that you wouldnt get any notification. 

I would say mine should be working because when I pasted I. The exact syntax that Invision quoted it generated those strange Cron emails and stopped when I edited it. I also accidentally made an error and got a Cron email saying it couldn't find the file. 

[Mark H]

If the cron jobs aren't working, the software will notice that after a period of time, and trigger that red warning in the ACP that the tasks aren't running.

[Washerhelp]

Just now, Mark H said:

If the cron jobs aren't working, the software will notice that after a period of time, and trigger that red warning in the ACP that the tasks aren't running.

I thought do, it's just someone earlier said it wouldn't. Maybe I misunderstood. Anyway many thanks. 

[Randy Calvert]

2 hours ago, Hisashi said:

Here the system informs, see in my case:

Edited: This also varies from server to server.

The IPB software is reporting the path it is using to PHP.  It does not know and is not told by PHP what path to use for the CLI.  Unfortunately this is caused by the way your hosting provider is setting up PHP on their servers.  

[DaffyDuck]

On 9/21/2022 at 8:29 AM, Matt said:

From the November 2022 release, we will require PHP8.0 as the minimum version.

This is all nice and good, and while I'm totally in favor of forcing such tech updates - I just ran into nightmares when updating my site's backend to PHP 8.0 (same with PHP 8.1), and had to revert back to PHP 7.4 for the time being.

The PHP 8 compatibility scanner flagged ONE plugin, which I had subsequently removed, and yet my site was still badly broken, requiring me to revert back to PHP 7.4. So, the compatibility scanner, right now, doesn't appear to catch things like Themes (IPSFocus themes were broken) or other issues even within IPS 4.7.2.

While we are heading into November, I hope these issues will be addressed.

[Randy Calvert]

When you switch to PHP8, make sure you run the compatibility checking script to make sure you have all of the required PHP modules installed. If you’re not running any plugins and running into issues, in many situations the new version of PHP is missing a required module. 

[Marc]

5 hours ago, DaffyDuck said:

The PHP 8 compatibility scanner flagged ONE plugin, which I had subsequently removed, and yet my site was still badly broken, requiring me to revert back to PHP 7.4. So, the compatibility scanner, right now, doesn't appear to catch things like Themes (IPSFocus themes were broken) or other issues even within IPS 4.7.2.

While we are heading into November, I hope these issues will be addressed.

There does seem to be an immediate assumption the issue is with the software there. I would suggest first of all switching to php 8, and then running the requirement checker, as mentioned above. You can find this in the following location

https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/7046-invision-community-requirements-checker/

[My Sharona]

Noobish question here...

For those of us on the CiC, does this mean we will automatically be upgraded to PHP8.0? What about the software version, will we be required to upgrade to a minimum of 4.7.2.1?

[Dll]

On 9/21/2022 at 4:29 PM, Matt said:

If you are an Invision Community Cloud client, then you do not need to worry about any of this, and can happily click out of this topic.

 

[Jim M]

37 minutes ago, My Sharona said:

Noobish question here...

For those of us on the CiC, does this mean we will automatically be upgraded to PHP8.0? What about the software version, will we be required to upgrade to a minimum of 4.7.2.1?

Yes, as Matt mentioned, no need to worry, we will take care of PHP for you. 4.7.0 has support of PHP 8.1 so there is no immediate requirement to force to 4.7.2.1 but that, of course, could change. We, of course, highly recommend being on the latest release.

[My Sharona]

17 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Yes, as Matt mentioned, no need to worry, we will take care of PHP for you. 4.7.0 has support of PHP 8.1 so there is no immediate requirement to force to 4.7.2.1 but that, of course, could change. We, of course, highly recommend being on the latest release.

Thank you. I know Matt said not to worry but I didn't see the specific query addressed. My concern are mods that don't seem to be working well with PHP8.x and/or the newer 4.7.2.x.

[Jim M]

33 minutes ago, My Sharona said:

Thank you. I know Matt said not to worry but I didn't see the specific query addressed. My concern are mods that don't seem to be working well with PHP8.x and/or the newer 4.7.2.x.

My advice would be to start working with these authors or if they are older add-ons that don’t work on PHP 8 and the author abandoned them, start working on an alternative plan, if they are crucial to your community. As the time will come when a PHP 8 upgrade will come very soon.