Upgrade PHP and MySQL

We need to upgrade PHP from 5.3.3 to 5.6 or greater. Also, MySQL needs to be upgraded from 5.1.73 to 5.6 or greater. Is there a recommended procedure to do this? We don't want to break any of the websites that we currently host with Virtualmin.

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Howdy -- we do indeed have a supported way to add a second PHP version, if you're using a 64 bit version of CentOS.

That is described here:

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/web/multiplephp

Unfortunately, there isn't a similarly easy way to upgrade MySQL.

While it's possible to run two PHP versions side by side, Virtualmin doesn't support having two MySQL versions.

Now, it is possible to use that same repo to install a newer MySQL version. But the process is complicated, and it won't work with Virtualmin out of the box... so unfortunately that's currently something that's unsupported.

An alternative to all that, is you could always migrate to a newer version of CentOS, which would come with newer software versions.

What is the latest stable version of CentOS? Which version has the least amount of problems?

The latest version of CentOS is CenrOS 7. All the CentOS versions are considered to be Grade A supported.

As I look though, it doesn't appear that CentOS 7 has MySQL 5.6, it only comes with 5.5.

If you need MySQL 5.6, and you want to stick with standard distro-provided software, you may end up needing to look into an alternate distribution.

Well -- CentOS 7 uses MariaDB as a replacement for MySQL --- and there is no MariaDB 5.6 --- SO the closest equivalent there would be to install MariaDB 10 (which ports a lot of features from MySQL 5.6) - I guess the question really is why you need MySQL 5.6 - do you need some feature there, or is it just a desire to have the latest? The farther you get off of the supported distribution the more chance you have of shooting yourself in the foot. We're just starting to look at upgrading our own servers to MariaDB 10 -