what does backported mean

I installed a webserver based on scientific linux 4.4 yesterday (not my
idea, but my bosses) and after doing all updates (apt-get and yum) the
version of PHP was 4.3.9. Current version (at least for PHP4) is 4.4.6.
4.3.9 is 2.5 years old.
Scientific linux is based Red Hat Enterprise Linux so I took a look
there: same thing, but it mentioned that bugfixes were backported.
What exactly does this mean ? Does it mean that all/some of the changes
(bugfixes, ...) since the appearance of version 4.3.9 are applied to
your installation but that the version number of your server doesn't
change. Is there any means to know how up to date you version of php is
? Does my 'backported' 4.3.9 equals version 4.4.6 of 4.4.4 or ...

JM wrote:
> I installed a webserver based on scientific linux 4.4 yesterday (not my
> idea, but my bosses) and after doing all updates (apt-get and yum) the
> version of PHP was 4.3.9. Current version (at least for PHP4) is 4.4.6.
> 4.3.9 is 2.5 years old.
> Scientific linux is based Red Hat Enterprise Linux so I took a look
> there: same thing, but it mentioned that bugfixes were backported.
> What exactly does this mean ? Does it mean that all/some of the changes
> (bugfixes, ...) since the appearance of version 4.3.9 are applied to
> your installation but that the version number of your server doesn't
> change. Is there any means to know how up to date you version of php is
> ? Does my 'backported' 4.3.9 equals version 4.4.6 of 4.4.4 or ...


There happens there is a bug that has been in for a long time, moved
with each update before been found in the recent version, as the around
code changes, it's not sure the patch that you apply to 4.4.5 to fix the
bug will work on 4.3.9, so you have to fix the patch so it applies to
4.3.9, this is the backport. With a backport you only affect the bug
itself, you don't patch it up to 4.4.6, so your PHP is still 4.3.9, but
isn't affected by the bugs that the backported patch fixed.

It's possible to backport features too, that happens more often in the
kernel, specially features from the 2.6 kernels to the 2.4 kernels.

--

//Aho

J.O. Aho wrote:
> JM wrote:
>> I installed a webserver based on scientific linux 4.4 yesterday (not my
>> idea, but my bosses) and after doing all updates (apt-get and yum) the
>> version of PHP was 4.3.9. Current version (at least for PHP4) is 4.4.6.
>> 4.3.9 is 2.5 years old.
>> Scientific linux is based Red Hat Enterprise Linux so I took a look
>> there: same thing, but it mentioned that bugfixes were backported.
>> What exactly does this mean ? Does it mean that all/some of the changes
>> (bugfixes, ...) since the appearance of version 4.3.9 are applied to
>> your installation but that the version number of your server doesn't
>> change. Is there any means to know how up to date you version of php is
>> ? Does my 'backported' 4.3.9 equals version 4.4.6 of 4.4.4 or ...
>
>
> There happens there is a bug that has been in for a long time, moved
> with each update before been found in the recent version, as the around
> code changes, it's not sure the patch that you apply to 4.4.5 to fix the
> bug will work on 4.3.9, so you have to fix the patch so it applies to
> 4.3.9, this is the backport. With a backport you only affect the bug
> itself, you don't patch it up to 4.4.6, so your PHP is still 4.3.9, but
> isn't affected by the bugs that the backported patch fixed.
>
> It's possible to backport features too, that happens more often in the
> kernel, specially features from the 2.6 kernels to the 2.4 kernels.
>


I am waiting for scientific linux to come out, which will have PHP5.1.
Suppose all bugfixes will be backported. And I want to use a feature
thta requires PHP 5.2. Is that possible or do they only backport
bugfixes and no added features ?

Pugi!

JM wrote:

> I am waiting for scientific linux to come out, which will have PHP5.1.
> Suppose all bugfixes will be backported. And I want to use a feature
> thta requires PHP 5.2. Is that possible or do they only backport
> bugfixes and no added features ?

I can't say what the policy is for Scientific Linux about backporting, but on
most other distros they only backport security patches and not add on new
features to older versions of programs. If you need a new feature, then it's
better to upgrade to the new version.

--

//Aho

J.O. Aho wrote:
> JM wrote:
>
>> I am waiting for scientific linux to come out, which will have PHP5.1.
>> Suppose all bugfixes will be backported. And I want to use a feature
>> thta requires PHP 5.2. Is that possible or do they only backport
>> bugfixes and no added features ?
>
> I can't say what the policy is for Scientific Linux about backporting,
> but on most other distros they only backport security patches and not
> add on new features to older versions of programs. If you need a new
> feature, then it's better to upgrade to the new version.
>

Scientif linux 4 equals RHEL 4 minus somethings and plus somethings
(like apt-get).
Don't think that is possible with scientific linux and red hat without
manually installing new version from source. Even that gave trouble
because I couldn't use yum or apt-get to update some packages that were
required for PHP5, because they were not available. Don't know what
using debian or fedora packages will do to my installation of scientific
linux, probably break updating process.

What distro do you use ?

Pugi!

JM wrote:
> J.O. Aho wrote:

>> I can't say what the policy is for Scientific Linux about backporting,
>> but on most other distros they only backport security patches and not
>> add on new features to older versions of programs. If you need a new
>> feature, then it's better to upgrade to the new version.
>>
>
> Scientif linux 4 equals RHEL 4 minus somethings and plus somethings
> (like apt-get).

I thought i was part of RHEL, there was already an unofficial version when I
used RH7.3 and as I have understood it has been included into Fedora, which is
the development platform for RHEL.


> Don't think that is possible with scientific linux and red hat without
> manually installing new version from source. Even that gave trouble
> because I couldn't use yum or apt-get to update some packages that were
> required for PHP5, because they were not available. Don't know what
> using debian or fedora packages will do to my installation of scientific
> linux, probably break updating process.

Even if apt-get has it's root in Debian, the debian packages won install on a
RPM based system (you need a deb based system for that).

Fedora packages may work, but that depends on the package dependencies, one
way to get around those a bit is to use a source-rpm and rebuild it for your
system.

Yet another way would be to make your own rpm, there are guides that describes
how to do that and you can use a spec file from an older version as a
guideline for the new spec file.

There is the bound to break the system a bit later way, to make a bogus RPM
that will make the system tho think it has the rpm installed and you install
php from a tarball. Of course the dependencies that the tarball build has
won't be monitored, where it's smarter to build the rpm instead.


> What distro do you use ?

Nowadays I use Gentoo Linux for x86/amd64/PowerPC/Sparc, it has a somewhat
easy way to mix stable and unstable "packages", the drawback with Gentoo is
that you need to compile all the packages, which will use up resources on a
live server. You could always have a secondary machine which has the same
software installed and build the packages on it or an option that is somewhere
between is to use distcc (allows you to use more than one computer for one
compile).

--

//Aho

"JM" <reply@group.svp> wrote in message
news:1e-dnVY3d8Xxb27YRVnyhgA@scarlet.biz...
....
> I am waiting for scientific linux to come out, which will have PHP5.1.
> Suppose all bugfixes will be backported. And I want to use a feature thta
> requires PHP 5.2. Is that possible or do they only backport bugfixes and
> no added features ?

Have you tried just installing PHP 5.2?
--
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/

Mike Russell wrote:
> "JM" <reply@group.svp> wrote in message
> news:1e-dnVY3d8Xxb27YRVnyhgA@scarlet.biz...
> ...
>> I am waiting for scientific linux to come out, which will have PHP5.1.
>> Suppose all bugfixes will be backported. And I want to use a feature thta
>> requires PHP 5.2. Is that possible or do they only backport bugfixes and
>> no added features ?
>
> Have you tried just installing PHP 5.2?

There was no other way than installing from source, but it gave errors.
For example for PCRE and gd. And updates for yum and apt-get are
broken. I will wait for a couple of weeks, then , hopefully, scientific
linux 5 will be available and it has PHP5.1.6 on board.

Pugi!