Plesk 9.5 databases broken on PHP 5.3 upgrade
 

I tried to upgrade a Plesk 9.5.5 Windows server to PHP 5.3.x this morning, and I don't think it can be done.

This server has two main applications on it: vBulletin and WordPress.
- vBulletin simply gave a "Internal Server Error"(error 500).
- Looking from the server itself, you got "Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect()"
- WordPress gave "Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress" on one version.
- An older version of WordPress gave "Error establishing a database connection."

Here's the troubleshooting steps I took.
- Enabling the MySQL extensions made no difference.
- Verified the "extension_dir" and it was set properly to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Parallels\Plesk\Additional\PleskPHP5\ext"
- Tried the "old" PHP 5.2.17 php.ini, and it failed.
- Even tried both new ones that came with PHP 5.3 -- with edited extensions entries, of course -- and it made no difference.

The php was there, and would see MySQL in the info file, but refused to work in the actual apps.
Yes, Plesk's run-time was disabled, as per the instructions for Parallels:

1. Stop Plesk services (‘Control Panel’ and all that are included in the ‘Plesk Run-Time’ section)
2. Rename folder %plesk_dir%\Additional\PleskPHP5 to the orig_PleskPHP5
3. Create a new folder %plesk_dir%\Additional\PleskPHP5
4. Download necessary version of PHP, unzip its content, and copy it to the newly created folder PleskPHP5
5. Copy the file php.ini from the old folder orig_PleskPHP5 to the new one
6. Make sure the permissions are inherited
7. Start Plesk services
8. Click the "Refresh" button in the Components Management section in Parallels Plesk Panel and check if you can see the new PHP version there

From http://kb.parallels.com/6670
That works perfectly fine to upgrade PHP 5.2.x versions. But seemingly not to upgrade to 5.3.x

I even rebooted the whole server, to no avail. :wall2:

The version used was PHP 5.2.17 nts (non-thread safe), as stated by the WinCache requirements.
And the new failed attempt was for PHP 5.3.21, current as of today, Feb-17-2013.
More info on thread-safe vs. non thread-safe here: http://www.iis-aid.com/articles/my_w..._safe_binaries

So that failed.

I don't understand why. :wall1:

So it's being left on PHP 5.2.17 for now. I guess the whole thing as to be upgraded, not just PHP.