More PHP Updates

Nov 5, 2024 | IT | 0 comments

It feels like quite a long time since I blogged about PHP, and that’s because it is!  Over 5 years, to be precise.  Unsurprisingly, none of the supported versions of PHP I was running back then (7.2 and 7.3)  are supported today.  How about we start with a similar timeline from the PHP website:

As you can see, only 7.3 is still visible on their support roadmap, and support for that ended back in 2021!  7.4 is pretty much the minimum most web-based applications will work with now, but support for this ended just a year later, at the end of 2022.

Fortunately, most of my online services are running supported versions, but some are proving more problematic to update than others, and I’m not entirely sure how to upgrade them all.

The process for updating my TrueNAS/FreeBSD jails is still pretty much as described in the blog from five years ago. The PHP modules change occasionally, with some dropped as they’ve been included in the core and some new ones added, but they’re mostly pretty straightforward. Here’s a quick table of my services using PHP:

LimeSurvey is running in a FreeBSD jail, which I’ve updated to 13.4.  This will undoubtedly cause me problems, as 7.4 is no longer supported, so a pkg update && pkg upgrade will break things by removing PHP.  I have updated the database to 10.6, and LimeSurvey is running the latest version. Still, when I update PHP to anything other than 7.4, I get the error reported here on the LimeSurvey forum.  When I get some free time, I’ll play around a bit more, but this one might need to be rebuilt, perhaps starting to move away from jails to docker containers.

I rebuilt MediaWiki as much as a test as anything when I had some database upgrade issues. This is running a supported version and could be upgraded further if required. The suggested version was 8.2, so that’s where I went.

I upgraded NextCloud to the latest version, and that seems to be running fine, although I have noticed a few issues in the TrueNAS console where PHP is exiting in this jail, so I will need to keep an eye on things:

Nov  4 13:21:48 freenas0 kernel: pid 29684 (php-fpm), jid 36, uid 80: exited on signal 10

Pi-hole is running in its own VM, following the instructions on the website and using the simple curl build script. Other than updating things when I noticed a new version, I’ve not tried to do anything with PHP. It’s still receiving security updates until the end of 2025, so I have about 12 months before I need to do anything.

My live WordPress jail, where this blog is hosted, runs 8.2 and could be updated to 8.3. I’m not really sure why I haven’t done that, so I will before the end of the year. UPDATE 10-Nov-24: It is now running 8.3.12!

My test WordPress jail is running in a VM as a docker container, and other than updating WordPress, I’ve not touched the docker container.  This is still running 7.3, and I really need to consider updating this, but I’m unsure where to begin.  I will need to understand Docker a little more than I currently do if I’m considering migrating from TrueNAS Core to Scale at some point in the future, so this might be a good place to start.  It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I completely broke this and needed to create a new test environment.

Anyway, this is starting to sound like one of my annual ‘state of the server’ blogs, and given we’re not too far from the end of the year, I might be doing one of those again, very soon (sorry, Chris)

Swytch Review

Nov 2, 2024 | IT | 0 comments

I started this last month, but I’d already blogged twice at that point and had another one drafted (which I’ve since published), so why had I started another? Are blogs like buses? Well, not this blog, which is about a different form of transport: the good old bicycle, or in this specific case a Swytch eBicycle!

I blogged about cycling here when I purchased a new one in 2017, and while I did get out cycling more than I had, it never became a regular thing. For the past few years, I’ve only been out with my daughter, and I tend to go out on my older Dawes 401, which is more comfortable and better suited for cycling along canal paths.

My Boardman Road Team Carbon has been unused for the last two years, and I can’t remember where exactly the idea of turning it into an eBike came from.  I signed up on the Swytch website earlier this year to order one of their new Go eBike Kits. It has been a pretty strange process, and I’m still not entirely sure it’s one I would recommend, so let me try to explain why.

While I think you can go online and buy some of the Swytch kits (from the likes of Amazon and eBay), you can’t do that from their website.  If you want to buy a kit directly from Swytch, you have to register your interest and, in return, are offered fairly substantial discounts when it comes to ordering.  I don’t know how realistic the discounts are, but I was reasonably happy with my price compared to similar eBike kits from UK sellers.  If you look further afield, there are many options, but I wanted to buy from a UK-based company, for which I’d have some comeback if I had any problems.  

I can’t remember exactly when I signed up, but it was the 12th of August when I received an e-mail to say I could place my order.  I got to select which kit I wanted and had to pay a deposit of £200, and I was told the final configuration and order process would be completed later.  Quite unusual, but it all had been so far.  I reached out to Swytch at this point and asked about the compatibility of my Boardman Road Team Carbon. They said it was, with a typical asterixed cavitate *Please note that our technicians have done their best to identify your bike’s compatibility based on the data provided. We believe the Kit will fit, but we cannot guarantee this in all instances. 

About a week later, I received further details and a deadline to complete the order process and select any accessories required.  I did a little more research as the process isn’t that obvious, and I thought I needed a Universal Pedal Sensor and a Universal Torque Arm, as the forks on my bike are carbon.  I didn’t have an option to change the display from LED to OLED, although even if I had, I might not have selected this given the price was now over my £500 budget, including the £30 delivery.

My order was locked on the 25th of August, but shortly after reading more reviews, I contacted Swytch about changing my order to include the OLED display instead of the LED one.  The OLED provides additional information about speed and distance, and most reviews suggest getting this over the basis LED option. This was the point where my first concerns were raised.  It took several days for their e-mail reply, and it wasn’t all that helpful, suggesting that as my order was locked, any changes would delay delivery from September to October.  I said this was fine, and then they suggested I would need to add the OLED display for £60 when I just wanted that instead of the LED one, which was £30 in their accessory store (most of which are out of stock)

I was close to cancelling my order entirely when they eventually reopened my order and allowed me to edit the kit I had selected.  I expected this to cost a further £30, but the Go+ Kit with OLED was £40 cheaper than the kit I ordered!  I asked them about a refund, which was processed quickly, so I felt reasonably happy by the end of the process and waited for October to arrive.  In the meantime, I’d been reading many reviews. I joined a few Swytch forums, full of horror stories from people confirming orders and then waiting several months for kits to be delivered, with estimated days being pushed back month after month.  I contacted them once again at the beginning of October to express my concerns but was assured that my order would be delivered in October, and to be fair to them, it was.

I received a confirmation from UPS on the 16th of October saying it would be delivered the next day, but I was going to be out all day, so I rescheduled for the 18th. It arrived in the morning, but I didn’t have time to look at anything until Sunday, the 20th, when I foolishly started by removing the tire and innertube from my Team Carbon and fitting them to the Swytch wheel. It was pretty straightforward, but it would be removed as events progressed.  

If you stumble upon this blog and take anything away, be it this.  Don’t always start with the first step in the instructions!  In hindsight, I should have checked out some of the other steps first, specifically whether the Universal Pedal Sensor (UPS) would work with my bike.  The UPS (not the ones who delivered it!) has two parts – a round disc with small magnets around the edge that attaches to the pedal and rotates as you pedal, and a sensor connected to a clip that attaches to the frame in a way which aligns to the round disc.  There was no way this was possible on my bike, and even following the suggestion to remove the clip (this is molded so that it would have needed cutting), it did not seem there was any clearance between the pedal and either the down tube or seat tube to attach the sensor, and for it to be aligned with the disc.

I was pretty disappointed at this point and was unsure what to do.  I considered returning the whole kit, but I still like the idea of electrifying a regular bike.  Returning it would also result in a loss of £60 as their terms state delivery costs are not refunded, which I guess is fair enough.  It looked like the kit would have fitted onto my Dawes bike, but I didn’t want to electrify that as that’s what I use when going out with my daughter.  A few people in the FaceBook group (Swytch Bike Chat) suggested buying a second-hand bike to use, implying I’d be ruining a carbon road bike, so I had a quick look on Gumtree and, to my delight, found a second-hand Boardman Sport for sale just 10 miles away for £100.  It was exactly the same bike that a friend now used on their turbo trainer after upgrading themselves, so I gave them a call and asked if I could pop around to check if the UPS would fit.  There is much more clearance on this Boardman, and it was apparent it could be made to fit without any modifications to the sensor, so I contacted the seller on Gumtree and collected it that afternoon.

The bike was in excellent condition and had a new set of tires fitted, too!  The bar tape and seat are white, which is not ideal as they both looked pretty old and grubby, but they are easy to replace.  Installing the Swytch kit was very simple on this Boardman, although the tires were much more difficult to remove and refit.  I’ve not finished the installation, as I ordered some new black bar tape, so I haven’t installed the OLED display or tidied up the cabling, but I took it for a bit of spin once everything was cable-tied out of the way and it makes a nice difference going up the pretty steep hills where I live.

Somewhere in the process, I broke one of the lugs on the locking wheel washer, so I contacted Swytch, who sent out a replacement set within just a few days.  I also contacted them about the Torque Arm, which I couldn’t see how to install, and their instructions are not great.  The response directed me to the manual, so I went back to them and asked them to send this back as it’s not required now. I’m not using the bike initially intended.  A refund for that will help offset the cost of the ‘new’ bike, although I might end up selling the Team Carbon, which might just cover the cost of the Boardman Sport, Swytch Kit, and accessories!  It took several unhelpful e-mails, some days apart and some responded to in a matter of hours, to finally get the return approved, which pretty much sums up Swytch.  

I will add some pictures once everything is finished, but I think that’s enough of my Swytch story.  Would you recommend them after all that?

TrueNAS 13.3

Oct 27, 2024 | IT | 0 comments

Well, it’s been a busy month!

TrueNAS and FreeNAS (as it was named before that) have been one of, if not the, most blogged-about subjects in the last 250 blogs (yes, I made it to 250 and didn’t even notice) over the past 8 years (or at least it will be in November 2024).

I’ve just upgraded from TrueNAS 13.1-U6 to 13.3, which could be the last major release of TrueNAS Core, the FreeBSD-based version that was FreeNAS 9.2.8 when I started using it in 2013. 

Upgrading TrueNAS is usually pretty uneventful, even though it causes me no end of worry for weeks before and sometimes weeks afterwards.  This is one of these updates that I might still be fighting with in months to come!

I’ve already blogged about some of iXsystems focus changes here, with TrueNAS Scale based on Linux being the future direction of travel. What this means for TrueNAS Core is still a little unclear, but hopefully, there are still a few years before that becomes a major issue for me.

After updating TrueNAS (which is built on FreeBSD 13.3 rather than 13.1), the process of upgrading the jails begins.  This updates them to the base version of FreeBSD.  I successfully upgraded one jail from 13.1 to 13.3 and then updated and upgraded the packages (#pkg update & pkg upgrade), but it was only my Airsonic jail, which isn’t really used in anger anymore. I wouldn’t be upset if it broke and I had to destroy it.  

Lots of my jails are web-based applications running on a FEMP stack, or FreeBSD (as the operating system), Nginx (a web server pronounced Engine-X), MySQL (a database server, in my case Mariadb), and PHP (a programming language to process dynamic PHP content).  I’ve kept the jails running by upgrading the operating system between versions of TrueNAS using commands like #iocage upgrade -r 13.3-RELEASE <jailname> and then within the running jail #pkg update && pkg upgrade.  I needed to update PHP separately, which I blogged about here, but the one thing I neglected was the MySQL element.  My Nextcloud, WordPress, and LimeSurvey jails are all running Mariadb103, which, along with Mariadb104, are no longer supported.  The latest version of MariaDB is 10.11, so I’m pretty far behind.

I asked for some help from the TrueNAS forum, and as ever, I wasn’t let down with some excellent advice.  It turns out I can update the jail base to FreeBSD 13.4 on TrueNAS 13.3, so I’ll be doing that and then trying to update Mariadb103 to Mariadb105 as a first step.  I’ve struggled with this in the past and simply rolled back and found a way to update without touching the database.  In hindsight, that wasn’t a great idea, but at least now I have a problem that needs to be solved, and once I’ve solved it for one, it should be easy enough to apply to the others.  

It turned out to be a little more problematic than I thought, although that’s more down to my lack of System Administration skills than the technology. The first rule of updating databases is to ensure the old database has been shut down correctly and not aborted by trying to jump a step ahead and simply install the new one! I’m sure this will be in System Administration 101, which I think I also skipped.

I also learned about something called tmux, which lets you keep a session running on TrueNAS even when your SSH session is lost. How have I made it 10 years without knowing this? To be fair, they have only just removed the built-in shell console, which I tended to use more than the SSH method.

Anyway, I’m going to list some commands I’ve used to upgrade, which is more for me than anyone reading this:

#tmux new -t iocage (starts a tmux session called iocage)

#tmux a (restart the previous tmux session – I’m guessing you have could several running, although I’ve only tried with one)

#iocage fetch -r 13.4-RELEASE (downloads the release)

#iocage upgrade -r 13.4-RELEASE <jailname> (update the jail to the specified release – note, there are various ‘y’ prompts to confirm the process here, which is where tmux comes in handy.  There is also a step which appears to stop with a : prompt, and this is skipped by entering q several times)

#iocage restart <jailname> (restart jail after upgrading)

#iocage console <jailname> (console session into jail)

#pkg info (lists all installed packages and versions)

#service mysql-server stop (clean stop of database server)

#pkg install mariadb105-server (this will remove the old database server and then install the new one – 10.5 – along with any dependencies)

#service mysql-server start (this should start the new database server; check with #service mysql-server status)

#mysql_upgrade -u root -p (to upgrade the databases)

#pkg update && pkg upgrade (this will upgrade all of the other packages in the jail)

I’m not going to pretend I understand exactly what changed between mariadb103 and 105, but the main issue I encountered was the UNIX socket connection, which changed from /tmp/mysql.sock to /var/run/mysql/MySQL.sock. These changes were in the /usr/local/etc/mysql folder and ./conf.d folder.

So, while the database started and the upgrades worked, none of my web applications would start, as the configuration to the database was wrong.  So far I’ve fixed Nextcloud (/usr/local/www/nextcloud/config/config.php where you set ‘dbhost’ => ‘127.0.0.1’,) and WordPress (/usr/local/www/wordpress/wp-config.php where you set define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘127.0.0.1’);)

This got everything back up and running but after a reasonably stressful afternoon and several snapshot rollbacks where I’d broken things and had no idea what to do.  Thank goodness for TrueNAS snapshots and the incredibly helpful people who use their forum.  It’s still one of the best online communities I’ve come across, even though I visit less frequently since the forum platform changed.  I need to try and fix that!

iPhone History

Oct 11, 2024 | IT | 0 comments

When writing my last blog on the Kindle Scribe, I linked back to an Old iPhone blog, which I thought might be interesting to revisit some five years later!  I think my daughter has interrupted the natural order of upgrades, although other factors may be at play, too.

Let’s start with a lovely picture gallery!

In the previous blog, I’d just upgraded to the iPhone X, with my partner using the iPhone 7 and my daughter using the iPhone 6 (the middle row). My grandma was using the iPhone 5, but sadly passed away in 2021 at the grand old age of 89. That’s probably the main thing I’ll take away from this blog: regular blogging acts like a time machine and takes you back to places you’d started to forget about. It’s also a helpful reminder of some of the things you did, which this site now takes me back to 2016!

Anyway, I reminisce!  Back to the iPhones.  Since the previous blog, we’ve all had a few new phones starting in 2020 with the 12 and 12 Pro.  My X was only two years old for me at that point but was three years old from release.  The 7 my partner used is even older, so we all got an upgrade, including my daughter, although she was using an iPad at home now. The iPhone 7 sat as a spare for some time (before being sold on eBay in 2021, when I sold both the 6 and 7 for £76 – can’t remember individual prices).  

The 12 Pro was a great phone, but the following year, I upgraded again to the iPhone 13 mini.  I’d found the 12 Pro quite heavy and liked the idea of a smaller phone.  It was also the first time I’d ever bought an iPhone where I just went for the lowest storage configuration as I was starting to use iCloud more and more and had signed up for an Apple One account, giving me lots of iCloud storage and access to all the Apple services, importantly Apple Music so I didn’t need to carry a big music library with me.  So we all upgraded again, with my partner getting the 12 Pro and my daughter the X, which she did use a little more as you could send emojis!

I loved the iPhone 13 mini and might still be using it if my daughter did not want to start using a phone as an actual mobile phone when she started high school!  This is where the cycle was broken!!!  I bought an iPhone 15 Pro on the day it was launched from the Apple Shop in Glasgow, and the iPhone 13 mini was handed down to my daughter, with my partner sticking with her 12 Pro and 12 months later, after the iPhone 16 launch that’s still what we’re all using.

It’s certainly true that every year, Apple make a slightly better iPhone that offers slightly better functionality than the previous generation, but that doesn’t mean that the latest will always be considered the greatest.  I’m sure some would argue for the 1st generation, and while I didn’t own one, it was a flawed device.  Limited storage and missing some fundamental stuff like copy and paste kept me using a Nokia Communicator until the 3rd generation.  Even then, it didn’t feel too far ahead of the limited competition.  I think that changed with the 4th generation, and the design of that still carries through into today’s devices.  I certainly have a soft spot for the 4th generation, and it would be in my top 3.  The 5th generation felt like a step back in some ways, although looking back, it was probably better than I gave it credit at the time.  I loved my 7th generation Jet Black iPhone and used it for almost 3 years. It was perhaps the longest of any iPhone.  I also liked the iPhone X (10) and think that would also be in my top 3, introducing the button-less form factor and FaceID.  It was also the first which cost over £1000!  I loved the mini form factor, although I think the 15 Pro combines the best of the 4 and the 10 and might be my favourite of all time, disproving the statement I started this paragraph with!

To finish up, the only device I still have in the house (well, garage, actually) from the original Old iPhone blog where all this started is the iPhone 4.  It’s a bit of a classic, and I still have it in the original box, although I suspect they made too many for it to be worth anything in the future.  It’s part of the IT history cave, along with some 1980s Sinclair computers, but that is probably another blog altogether; I should have blogged about that when Sir Clive sadly passed away.  As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, I’m a bit of an Apple fanboi (although I work in IT, so I have devices running Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and ChromeOS in the house!)  As well as the family of iPhones, we all have other Apple devices, which is probably another blog.  In fact, I blogged about some of them here, here and here (although my daughter is now using an M1 iPad Pro from 2021, and the iPad I blogged about here is used to Facetime, another grandparent, this time my Dad or my daughter Grandad).