PHP 5.2.17 > 5.3.10 upgrade & Zend/Ioncube issues

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[Steve Wyant]

My Jreviews installation is currently on a shared server (Hostgator reseller) with PHP 5.2.17 installed. I need to install another plugin that requires PHP 5.3. The host issues this warning regarding the upgrade:

Please keep in mind: Using PHP 5.3 will break any sites requiring Zend or ioncube that were encoded with PHP 5.2. We recommend you check with the application developers to see if they have a 5.3 version available.

They also state the upgrade step as:

We currently have 5.3.10 (or higher) installed on all servers. A handler for PHP 5.3 is added to our shared and reseller servers for those who wish to utilize it. In order to utilize this handler, you will need to add the following code to your .htaccess file:
# Use PHP 5.3
AddType application/x-httpd-php53 .php

So before I upgrade my PHP to 5.3, what steps do I need to take so Jreviews does not break?

Specs: Jreviews Version: 2.3.19.213; Joomla 2.5.4

[Alejandro]

The important thing is that the ionCube loaders need to be upgraded to the php 5.3 version. JReviews works fine in both php 5.2 and php 5.3 as long as the correct loaders are used.

[Steve Wyant]

Is that handled in the PHP.ini file?

It looks like the current loader is here:

Code:

zend_extension="/usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so"

So would I change it to:

Code:

zend_extension="/usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so"

If the above is correct, is there anything else required? I see another reference to 5.2 under [ZEND]:

Code:

extension="ixed.5.2.lin"
zend_extension="/usr/local/Zend/lib/Optimizer-3.3.9/php-5.2.x/ZendOptimizer.so"

Does that need to be revised to 5.3 as well?

[Kristian]

You only need to change this line:
zend_extension="/usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so"

to this:
zend_extension="/usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so"

Of course, the ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so file needs to exist in /usr/local/IonCube/ folder.

[Steve Wyant]

As it turned out, all I needed to do was add the php5.3 code to the .htaccess file, and remove (renamed) the php.ini file.

I tried that because I created a new hosting account under my Hostgator reseller plan, revised the .htaccess file for php5.3, and did a fresh install of Joomla 2.5.4 (using QuickInstall) to see what the php.ini file contained. To my surprise, not a single php.ini file could be found! So I removed it on my live site's directory, and everything has gone swimmingly (so far).