Submitted by Piete Brooks on Fri, 30/08/2019 - 12:09
The facility used by the dynamic user web page service to securely access the filer relies on a feature of the old filer which is not available on the new ones.
This requires all users of the dynamic user web page service to move their files to a separate volume on the filer. This should not affect most users, but anyone relying on hard links between dynamic_html and their main file space will need to consider alternatives.
We are taking the opportunity of possible disruption to user service to move to a more recent, supported, distribution on the servers. This includes
- an upgrade of apache from '2.2' to '2.4' which changes the directives used in many .htaccess files (see Access Control).
- an upgrade of PHP from 5.2 to 7.2 - e.g. mysql_* calls need to move to mysqli_* calls
- an upgrade to python3
We suggest that users try their pages:
- using the URL that they normally use (to check that thhe code works on the old server)
- rename the 'dynamic_html' directory in /auto/userfiles/$CRSID/ to something like 'OLD-dynamic_html', copy the contents to /anfs/dynamic_html/$USER/ and check it still works.
- changing to use www-dyn3 (to check that the code works under the new system)
- trying www-dyn3 from 'blocked' locations (to ensure .htaccess works as planned)
File systems will be moved in the week beginning 23rd September 2019, so users are advised to try the four methods above ASAP in case there are problems.
If (3) fails and you cannot easily fix things, or there are any other problems, please email sys-admin
