Guys,
I have had a Pi2 based Phone Nanny that manages and rejects the many nefarious dodgy phone callers I seem to get in retirement. The project has been slowly getting clever and has been running well for over 5 years. The main program is C coded and uses an HTML/PHP interface system to both view results and control things. It has been running without real issues on PHP 7.*. This has both eased the day to day management of the running program through the Lighttpd HTML server and displayed the daily reports.
Through this web interface, supported by PHP 7, I can stop and start the program, re-compile newly uploaded source code and Re-Boot and Shutdown the whole thing. I lets me update details of callers so that in some cases they get rejected next time they call, and they do try. These updates get written to new files that get vacuumed up by the main HTML pages allowing new data to appear in old pages. That was until, chasing new ideas, I deployed the whole lot to my Pi5 running Trixie. The bit I've lost is that part that runs the program control/ Shutdown and Reboot as well as managing the AMIXER program to report and adjust the audio in/out audio levels (was very proud of this).
Turns out 'they' have made PHP 8 a lot more secure (for all the right reasons, BUT ...) and removed all the useful features that make a simple Pi based user interface possible. Seems, having done a search others have hit this issue and I have followed threads on re-enabling the missing features. The key seemed to be the php.ini file. Its reported as having a clause listing the features that have been disabled and sure enough there it was in my php.ini Trouble was, the clause was empty. Nothing was disabled, I guess my once well used PHP functions that gave me control over my application had been completely pulled. Turns out even informed choice is not an option.
My point of posting here, in 'Other Programming languages', is perhaps a warning about PHP 8 as a programming language that provides easy interfacing to the many applications folk like me was running on Pi's. I had included a very useful web page that accesses the Lighttpd/PHP error log, a real games changer, while debugging PHP. Trouble was these things that don't work weren't reported as errors which made trying to work out what was wrong more than a bit tricky. I have also struggled to ask the right question of the web search engines so remain blind.
Suggestions welcomed.
I have had a Pi2 based Phone Nanny that manages and rejects the many nefarious dodgy phone callers I seem to get in retirement. The project has been slowly getting clever and has been running well for over 5 years. The main program is C coded and uses an HTML/PHP interface system to both view results and control things. It has been running without real issues on PHP 7.*. This has both eased the day to day management of the running program through the Lighttpd HTML server and displayed the daily reports.
Through this web interface, supported by PHP 7, I can stop and start the program, re-compile newly uploaded source code and Re-Boot and Shutdown the whole thing. I lets me update details of callers so that in some cases they get rejected next time they call, and they do try. These updates get written to new files that get vacuumed up by the main HTML pages allowing new data to appear in old pages. That was until, chasing new ideas, I deployed the whole lot to my Pi5 running Trixie. The bit I've lost is that part that runs the program control/ Shutdown and Reboot as well as managing the AMIXER program to report and adjust the audio in/out audio levels (was very proud of this).
Turns out 'they' have made PHP 8 a lot more secure (for all the right reasons, BUT ...) and removed all the useful features that make a simple Pi based user interface possible. Seems, having done a search others have hit this issue and I have followed threads on re-enabling the missing features. The key seemed to be the php.ini file. Its reported as having a clause listing the features that have been disabled and sure enough there it was in my php.ini Trouble was, the clause was empty. Nothing was disabled, I guess my once well used PHP functions that gave me control over my application had been completely pulled. Turns out even informed choice is not an option.
My point of posting here, in 'Other Programming languages', is perhaps a warning about PHP 8 as a programming language that provides easy interfacing to the many applications folk like me was running on Pi's. I had included a very useful web page that accesses the Lighttpd/PHP error log, a real games changer, while debugging PHP. Trouble was these things that don't work weren't reported as errors which made trying to work out what was wrong more than a bit tricky. I have also struggled to ask the right question of the web search engines so remain blind.
Suggestions welcomed.
Statistics: Posted by RaspISteve — Fri Nov 28, 2025 8:04 pm