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EasyApache 3: It’s been a long road, but it will be time to say goodbye soon.

It’s that time. No, not breakfast, or lunch. It’s time that we are finally defining the End of Life for EasyApache 3.  EasyApache 3 will be fully deprecated, receiving no further updates as of December 31st, 2018. This date allows us to end support in line with PHP 5.6; the last PHP version in EasyApache 3. There’s a lot to do before we get there, though, so let’s go through some details.

The Holdouts

Over the past 2 years we have worked to make EasyApache 4 the new standard for webstack usage in cPanel & WHM. While we’ve been working so much on EA4, there are two big things we want to address. Our current FastCGI implementation needs to be iterated on, and we need to add Tomcat support. These two are preventing the last few cPanel & WHM servers from migrating to EasyApache 4 and we want to give these server administrators an easier migration path. 
  • FastCGI
    • Our FastCGI implementation is currently defined as an experimental implementation. We are planning to iterate on this numerous times to ensure compatibility with MultiPHP.
  • Tomcat
    • We will be adding Tomcat support to EasyApache 4. The first step will be to have an experimental RPM for Tomcat out within the next couple of months, and we plan to add full support to cPanel & WHM before EasyApache 3 reaches End of Life.

The Deprecation and Blocker Plan

Our goal for 2018 is to release 4 new versions of cPanel & WHM, and that allows us to use cPanel versions to track the steps toward deprecation. Our current plans are as follows:

In cPanel & WHM version 72 (which we anticipate releasing around March of 2018) we will add a warning in the EasyApache 3 interfaces (both the command line UI and in WHM) displaying EasyApache 3’s End of Life date, and include links to the EasyApache 4 Migration UI. That warning will remain unchanged until v76. In v76 we will add that you won’t be able to upgrade to version 78 without migrating to EasyApache 4. 

tl;dr version: 

  • Advisements added to v72
    • Warnings will be added to the EA3 Interfaces to advise the fact that it is going EOL soon.
    • Links to the EA4 Migration UI will be added to the EasyApache 3 interfaces.
  • Deprecated in v76
    • Warnings will be added to the EA3 Interfaces to advise the fact that it is the last version of cPanel & WHM that will support EasyApache 3.
  • Removed in v78
    • We will be completely removing EA3 and all accompanied code in this version.
  • Upgrade blockers added to v78.
    • You will not be able to upgrade to v78 if you are running EasyApache 3. You must upgrade to EasyApache 4 to upgrade to v78.

If you haven’t migrated to EasyApache 4 yet, it’s easier than ever. Check out our documentation to get started.

https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/EA4/How+to+Migrate+Between+EasyApache+3+and+EasyApache+4

Updates to EasyApache 3 from now til Dec 31 2018

Since we’ve been focusing on EasyApache 4, we haven’t done much to the EasyApache 3 codebase over the past year. We will continue this trend until we fully deprecate EasyApache 3. This means, the only changes we’ll make to EasyApache 3 would be the following:

  • Software Upgrades
    • We will update currently provided EasyApache 3 PHP versions as they are released.
      • Currently, the only PHP version provided by EasyApache 3 getting updates is PHP 5.6.
    • We will update Apache 2.2 and 2.4 to current versions as new versions are released.
    • Any other software will not be updated.
  • Critical security changes  / Defects
    • We will only address critical defects and critical security issues with EasyApache 3.

Help us help you!

Have some reason why you can’t upgrade to EasyApache 4? We want to know! Comment below, or join the discussion on the cPanel forums in our thread here: 

https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/easyapache-3-its-been-a-long-road-but-it-will-be-time-to-say-goodbye-soon.613783/

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