Yum Repository

Latest Updates, new Webtatic EL5.1 repository for CentOS 5 with PHP 5.4 and more

Here are updated packages in the Yum repository:

When the Webtatic EL6 repository was being created, I chose to change the format of the repository so that it would no longer use the same package names as CentOS/RHEL base repositories. This is because the previous Webtatic 5 repository had be installed with enabled=0 to avoid accidental unwanted upgrades, and the new structure meant that Webtatic EL6 could be enabled by default.

This has now been rolled out for CentOS/RHEL 5.x with the new Webtatic EL5.1 repository. The new repository can still be used in conjunction with Webtatic 5 repository.

The Webtatic 5 repository (the older one), will still be maintained, including updates to existing packages, but any new packages will be placed in Webtatic EL5.1

With this change, Webtatic will now support PHP 5.4 packages on CentOS/RHEL 5, using the php54w naming used in Webtatic EL6. Along with this, Nginx 1.2 is also available, along with existing MySQL 5.5 and 5.1 packages.

The guides on the website have been updated to reflect these changes.

Latest Updates, Nginx 1.2.9, Zend OPcache for PHP 5.4 on CentOS/RHEL 6

Here are updated packages in the Yum repository:

The Nginx 1.2 release contains a security fix for CVE-2013-2070.

The Zend OPcache is Zend's now open-source Zend Optimizer Plus opcode cache, which is a Pecl extension now, and will also be bundled with the next PHP minor release 5.5.

The PHP extension updates are to put the extensions in line for the future release of PHP 5.5 on Webtatic, which is in the works for when it is released on PHP.net

Infrastructure change: multi-region yum repository

No data-centre can truly say they can guarantee infrastructure with 100% uptime, and neither can the one Webtatic has been hosted on, so the Webtatic repository is now going multi-data-centre and multi-region, giving it the possibility of being up and running even if one data-centre has issues.

Previously, Webtatic has been hosted in a single data-centre in east USA, with a backup AWS S3 bucket ready to serve on manual intervention. This I feel hasn't been adequate enough, so the last week I've been preparing changes to the repository so that even if a data-centre has connectivity issues, this should not affect your use of the repository.

The new changes bring in an additional mirror of the repository active all the time, which Yum will chose as another source for the repository.

So now we have:
http://us-east.repo.webtatic.com/ - the existing instance, still accessible from http://repo.webtatic.com/
http://uk.repo.webtatic.com/ - the new mirror, hosted in the UK
http://mirror.webtatic.com/ - the source for the mirrorlist and latest.rpm, located on AWS S3

What's more, with the Yum plugin 'fastestmirror' (which usually is pre-installed on RHEL/CentOS), wherever you are in the world, you'll get the best one of the two in your location.

All you need to do is upgrade to the latest webtatic-release, which can be done simply:

Webtatic 5 for RHEL/CentOS 5:

rpm -Uvh http://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/centos/5/latest.rpm

Webtatic el6 for RHEL/CentOS 6:

rpm -Uvh http://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el6/latest.rpm

The www.webtatic.com website is not yet multi-region, however this will be looked into in the next few weeks.

Latest updates, PHP 5.4.14 / 5.3.24

Here are updated packages in the Yum repository:

The PHP 5.3 and 5.4 releases mention no CVE security issues fixed.

Due to mysql55 being prepared for release on Webtatic 6 for RHEL/CentOS 6, the PHP 5.4 releases 5.4.12, 5.4.13 were inadvertently linking the mysql extension to it's latest client library, causing new installations to require/install MySQL 5.5 client library. This has been fixed, and as of this release will correctly link to the RHEL/CentOS base mysql client libraries.

A new package, php54w-mysql55 has been added which uses the MySQL 5.5 client library for compatibility and a replacement for php54w-mysql should you prefer to use MySQL 5.5. A similar package may be created in the future for mysqlnd (PHP MySql native driver).

The mysql55 release 5.3.31 is not yet ready on CentOS 6, due more work needed to resolve incompatibilities between CentOS 6.4 and earlier CentOS 6.* releases.

Latest updates, PHP 5.4.10 / 5.3.20, MySQL 5.5 on CentOS 6

here are updated packages in the Yum repository:

PHP.net mentions that PHP 5.3 will be entering an end of life cycle March 2013, and after that will only receive critical fixes.

New packages for MySQL 5.5 and Nginx 1.2 are now available in the Webtatic 6 repository. Guides will follow soon.