Update
I've just got a mail from the Technical Director at Blacknight pointing me to a post regarding PEAR availability on their shared hosting packages. However, it seems I am still having issues with the paths I was given for PEAR originally so am awaiting clarification.
End of Update
Update 2
Just got a mail from frontline tech support pointing me at the original paths. Not overly helpful given I have just pointed out, they don't seem to work.
End of Update
So this long weekend I was busy getting up and running on Blacknight where I've taken out a Minimus hosting package to evaluate their service using my current personal project Lost & Found Pets Ireland after continued very disappointing service from my current main shared hosting provider Namesco (formally Register365).
All was going nicely as I configured my site using their very clear and intuitive control panel, I uploaded my site, set up and imported my database, set folder permissions and configured the email services with no real problem. However, I quickly realised that not everything in the garden was rosy. I use the excellent Pear library to abstract my database interactions and after quite a bit of experimentation and several emails to support I learned that while for PHP4, there is an accessible shared version of Pear, it does not include MDB2 and there is no accessible shared installation of Pear for PHP5.
Getting the paths to Pear for both versions of PHP took a couple of emails and at that point it would have been nice if they could have told me that the PHP5 version wasn't accessible due to open-basedirectory restrictions never mind that the PHP4 version didn't have MDB2 installed. After quite a few mails I established that they did not see prospects for making Pear more available which is pity and means my search for a replacement to Namesco for the majority of my shared hosting still continues. With increasingly complex demands being made on even more basic sites it is a great pity that Blacknight have taken this position given the quality of PEAR and how much it speeds up development time. They had no difficulty with me installing my own copy though for me, that's just one more headache as I have to monitor versions and particularly security issues now - tasks I feel should really be in Blacknight's domain.
I spent the best part of 2 hours on Sunday massaging the web based installer to get a working copy of PEAR with MDb2 and the MySQL driver installed. While the Pear installer ran without issue and installed MDB2 in the root of my webspace, the big problem came when I tried to install the MySQL driver as all the folders Pear created during installation were only read only to me and the web installer didn't have the correct version of the MySQL driver to match the version of MDB2 it installs so a manual install was required.
After a couple of tries I eventually figured out that I had to create all folders created by the Pear installer myself first to guarantee ownership and then install PEAR with the MDB2 option enabled and then manually install the corresponding MySQL driver. A time expenditure I could really have done without.
This doesn't leave me much hope of installing other really useful PEAR modules like Mail or XML-RPC and my search for a small developer friendly host continues...
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
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Joe
ReplyDeleteWe will raise this issue with Parallels, as it is their implementation of PHP that is causing the issue for us, and by extension, for you.
You could also look at our VPS hosting which would give you more freedom.
Regards
Michele
As a temporary workaround, could I suggest adding a .htaccess file to your app with a php_value directive for the include_path setting that looks something along the lines of this:
ReplyDeletephp_value include_path .:/path/to/your/pear/directory
That way, until the issue with PEAR is resolved, you'll be able to upload your own copies of the PEAR libraries, with the benefit that you'll be able to use more up-to-date versions of them than Blacknight might support.
[Disclosure: I'm one of the in-house developers in Blacknight and spotted Michele's ticket with Parallels on the issue.]
Thanks K, that's exactly what I have done. I am coming to the conclusion that my personal installation is the way to go once I work through the permissions issues with the installations. FTPing up a 'gold code' version installed on my own Linux box here seems to be the way forward.
ReplyDeleteGreat to see Blacknight engage with customers on these kinds of issues. I do like to squeeze all the value I can out of my hosting :) Hopefully my current personal project will grow to a point where it justifies VPS.
I meant to add there that I have amended my original post somewhat to reflect Blacknight's engagement on this. Thanks again.
ReplyDeleteJoe
ReplyDeletePlease see:
http://www.blacknightstatus.com/2009/05/pear-module-mdb2-and-mysql-drivers-installed.html
(short url: http://tr.im/kKbx)
It appears that we do in fact have Pear on php5 and if you were told otherwise I do apologise, as the staff member was mistaken. If you could email me your a/c details or any ticket IDs on the matter we can look into any issues you may be experiencing (management@blacknight.com)
Regards
Michele