(11.78.0.46) will reach End of Life in 29 days

[GoWilkes]

WHM / cPanel is putting me in a bind :-(

My sites were all written in MySQL. Literally hundreds of sites.

Now, to update cPanel, it appears that I need to update MySQL and PHP. But PHP 7 doesn't recognize MySQL, it has to be MySQLi or POD... so I have to modify (and in some cases completely rebuild) all of my sites.

Yesterday I started getting a warning that v. 11.78.0.46 will reach End of Life in 29 days, but there's no real explanation of what that means. Is it just a warning that I won't get more security updates? Or is it actually going to stop working entirely? Do I have 29 days to finish my rebuilds OR ELSE?

 

[ffeingol]

In a nutshell, cPanel will drop support. You won't get updates, security updates or (potentially) support from cPanel. As far as your actual server goes, nothing will happen. It will all continue to run just as it has.

You may want to look at CloudLinux and Alt-PHP. They offer hardened versions of older versions of PHP.

 

[cPanelLauren]

What's been dropped by PHP 7 is support for the MySQL PHP API used to access a MySQL Database, this used mysql_connect. Instead, you need to use the PDO_MySQL extension to connect to your databases, this was deprecated some time ago by PHP (v5.5) and is fairly easily converted by changing the query line to use mysqli or PDO_MYSQL.

PHP's documentation here may be helpful: PHP: Choosing an API - Manual


cPanel DID NOT drop support for MySQL. This was a deprecation and subsequent removal of a PHP extension by PHP. We have now and will continue to adhere to PHP's deprecation plan for these types of items. This is noted in our documentation here: PHP Options | cPanel & WHM Documentation

We also specifically note the following:

RPMs for unsupported versions of PHP will remain on the cPanel L.L.C. mirrors and servers, but we will not provide any further updates.

This means we don't remove them from your existing profile, but we don't install them automatically on new servers. Even knowing that though, I wouldn't run a deprecated PHP version outside of CloudLinux's Alt-PHP

The version of cPanel you are on is the LTS version (Long term stable) when a new LTS version is implemented the current one becomes End of Life. cPanel will automatically attempt to move you to the most current LTS version to ensure you do not remain on a End Of Life server.