Updates for Software like MYSQL and PHP

Hey Faisal,

It is not our place to over-ride your choices--and you've chosen the distribution, presumably based on the versions it contains and the features you need. In fact, I've gone to great lengths to insure that the packages that we provide fit into the existing system. So, instead of building a single Apache package for all systems, I am modifying and rebuilding the exact version from your OS. This means that if something works on your OS without Virtualmin, it's almost certain to run on the system with Virtualmin. This is a feature, not a bug...and I've worked excrutiatingly hard to do it this way. Believe me, it would be easier to go the route of our competitors--but customers have made it very clear that they hate the way most products in this space screw up their system with oddly installed packages (or in many cases not even proper packages, just big tarballs full of crud) that aren't compatible with existing software for the platform. That will not be the case with Virtualmin.

I will mention, however, that in two cases you will get reasonably new versions of packages from us.

1. We will be including PHP4 and PHP5 for all platforms, beginning with EA2 (Early Adopter Release 2--we're on EA1 right now). We will not provide a newer version of the one that is included with your OS (so PHP4 in FC3 will not be replaced by a newer PHP4), but the other one (PHP5 for FC3) will be installed alongside the existing one. This will allow you to choose on a per-script basis which PHP version to use.

2. Any package that only we provide (i.e. there is no upstream version that we have a responsibility to mimic in order to respect the OS choice of our customers) will be the latest revision available at time of packaging, and it will be updated when security updates are released. ClamAV falls into this category, and so assuming no incompatible changes occur, you will get a new version of ClamAV from our yum repository whenever one is available. In the event of incompatibilities we will integrate security bugfixes into the previous version, and/or provide an automated update script to make the upgrade transparent.

I can probably assist, however, with your MySQL troubles. The MySQL folks provide RPMs for MySQL 4, and they may co-exist with MySQL 3 installed from the OS standard packages. I've never done this, as MySQL 3 works with all of the scripts I've ever tried to use (and when I write database-backed scripts I use PostrgeSQL or SQLite depending on the requirements).

MySQL 4 packages can be found here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.0.html

They include RPMs about mid-way down. I would suggest testing on a dummy system if you use and rely on the existing MySQL 3 installation, just to be sure the packages can co-exist or you can upgrade cleanly (perhaps a dump/restore is needed to upgrade, I'm not sure...again, my familiarity with MySQL is as an end user of some scripts that use it...I've done no realy administration of a MySQL database).

Virtualmin will work with MySQL 3 or 4, you just have to select which one the MySQL Webmin module points to (Webmin can support both via the clone modules feature, but the default MySQL module is the one that Virtualmin will use for MySQL databases and users--so you have to decide which one you want Virtualmin to use and setup the default MySQL module to point to that version). You will certainly have to do a little configuration work, but it's merely a matter of pointing it at the right paths. Nothing complicated, and I'll be happy to help you find the right paths for your new installation. It's probably something that ought to be documented, as this kind of thing seems to be common.