Update Spotweb and PHP

[alootje46]

Some time ago I installed Spotweb on a Banana Pi M1 according the tutorial here on HTPC guides. I have three questions on this setup:

1. How can I update Spotweb to the latest version. Is it as simple as following two steps from the tutorial? This information might be a nice addition to the Banana/Raspberry Pi tutorials..?

Grab the latest Spotweb

Code:

git clone https://github.com/spotweb/spotweb /var/www/spotweb

Change the owner of Spotweb to be www-data so nginx has access to it

Code:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/spotweb

2. On a Dutch forum a developer of Spotweb mentioned that upgrading PHP to version 7 could result in a performance gain of Spotweb. I was wondering if I can update PHP (my version is 5.4.45) according this guide (following the steps related to Nginx off course)? Also this information might be a nice addition to the Banana/Raspberry Pi tutorials..?

3. I'm running mysql for Spotweb and for Kodi. Beside these tables I also have a large ibdate1 file (3170 MB). The Spotweb database is ~400 MB and the size of the Kodi databases is negligible. I assume the large of idbata1 is caused by Spotweb. Can someone give me a lead how I can verify this? I can also start from scratch* if that would be the quickest option?

*: drop all Spotweb/Kodi databases, delete the ibdata1 file via Winscp and recreate the Spotweb/Kodi databases

[Mike]

You should be able to do a git pull in the /var/www/spotweb folder to get the latest version. I have never tried this but it is what I would try, please back up first.

PHP 7 has a lot of benefits, even PHP 5.6 has speed benefits over PHP 5.4. Are you still running on Wheezy? If you upgrade to Bananian Jessie you will get PHP 5.6. For PHP 7 on the M1, I believe it is an armv7 processor so you can use this guide. It would be a great idea to make a new guide for this. Starting in Debian Stretch PHP7 will be there by default.

You can be sure the size of the database is due to Spotweb, there should be a way to clean it up by adjusting the retention in the spotweb settings.

[alootje46]

Thank you for the quick reply.

---

Regarding question 1:
I've copied the var/www/spotweb folder to my local computer. Did a git pull and received an error message that a folder with the same name (spotweb) already exists and is not empy. Renamed the existing direction to something else (spotweb2) and again did a git pull, now succesfull. Afterwards I did:

Code:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/spotweb

And to be sure I've restarted nginx and php:

Code:

service nginx restart
service php5-fpm restart

Went back to my spotweb site (via favorites), it gave some errors that I needed to run install.php. This meant I had to redo the steps after 'configure spotweb' in the tutorial. During this configuration I referred to the existing database and reused existing passwords. 
When I tried to log in with the user (for instance test123) created during the configuration I noticed that it wasn't an admin account anymore. It eventually turned out that, to log in as admin, I had to use admin as user and password of the user 'test123'. Don't know if this error is from my side, because of the update from an older spotweb version or because spotweb has changed something with its user accounts.
Eventually I could add user 'test123' to the admin group and now my spotweb is updated to the latest version. Do note that the filters etc. got a reset due to the update. Since I didn't edit this to much it doesn't matter to me, but it is advisable to export the filter settings and take note of all your other settings as well. UPDATE: after some reading on the github of spotweb it could be possible that the install.php is not mandatory, read 'I have upgraded Spotweb but now i get an error about needing to run "install.php"'.

I'm waiting to see if my cronjob remains working. It runs every hour and the first one succeeded. UPDATE: the cronjob seems to be working as it was.

---

Regarding question 2:
First some background information: as base I started with a kernel from armbian.com (Wheezy) and installed Openmediavault according one of your other great tutorials. Using:

Code:

cat /proc/version

Shows I have kernel version Linux 4.8.4-sunxi and using:

Code:

cat /etc/*-release

Shows I have version 7 - Wheezy. I don't know if it is possible to update to version 8 - Jessy and, if yes, if it wise. I remember reading some time ago, somewhere (pretty vague I know) that it doesn't work with Openmediavault? Between both guides (the ones I posted and the one you posted) it seems a different repository is used and the installation commands also differ   The guide I posted also has some important points on updating Nginx and updating existing sites (like spotweb).

---

Regarding question 3:

I've checked my 'retrieval settings' in spotweb:
Retention (in days): 900
Retention is for either everything or only the cached data: only extra data but keep spots
Retrieve full spots: yes
Prefetch images: no
Prefetch NZB files: no
Retrieve comments: yes
Retrieve full comments: yes <-- another issue: although it is activated I don't receive comments 
Retrieve reports: yes

Any hint on what is best to change to reduce the size of ibdata1?

[alootje46]

So question 1 is solved, now question 2 (updating PHP) and 3 (large ibdata1) remain...

TLDR: #2 Openmediavault v2 doesn't support PHP versions higher than my current 5.4.45. #3 I'm planning on deleting all tables and ibdata1 and recreate the tables.


After my previous post I have tried some things to try getting PHP updated to 7.0 (this on Debian Wheezy). It appeared that PHP 7.0 only can be installed on Jessie. I first searched if I could update Wheezy to Jessie, but this doesn't seem to work with Openmdiavault 2.x (a.k.a. Kralizec) For Debian Wheezy. Openmediavault 3.x will be compatible with Jessie, but this version is not released yet (somewhere I read this version will also include PHP7.0). 

Than I tried to build PHP 7.0 on the Banana Pi. Don't know the exact steps anymore but it broke more than it solved, so for me this wasn't a solution.

Than I tried to update to PHP 5.6 (see 'Building the PHP update yourself' below). This seemed successful, however when I ran a 'spotweb - retrieve' it gave some errors regarding MySQL. apparently the since PHP 5.5 or 5.6 the support for MySQL, now it was looking for SQLite.  I tried to set PDO (PHP Data Objects) from SQLite to MySQL but couldn't succeed. 

Than I searched some more and found out that Openmediavault V2.x doesn't work with PHP versions higher than 5.4 (see here and here). So my quest to update PHP has come to a halt and I need to wait for Openmediavault version 3.


Building the PHP update yourself
# Get the PHP source
# You can find the latest version number on the PHP download page: http://php.net/downloads.php
# Change `nl1` to your nearest mirror. Find the mirror list here: http://php.net/mirrors.php.

Code:

wget http://nl1.php.net/distributions/php-5.6.27.tar.bz2

# Unpack 

Code:

tar -xvjf php-5.6.27.tar.bz2

cd php-5.6.27

# update

Code:

sudo apt-get update

# install libxm12-dev (required for PHP 5.6, otherwise it will not install)
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev

Code:

./configure

# If on the Raspberry Pi 2

Code:

make -j4

# If on the Banana Pi/Pro

Code:

make -j2

# Otherwise

Code:

make

# install the build

Code:

sudo make install

# Reboot to make sure changes are effective

Code:

sudo reboot

# Check PHP version

Code:

php -v

[Mike]

Thanks for the update!

[jonesPhedra]

Thanks for the information, shell shockers will try to figure it out for more. Keep sharing such informative post keep suggesting such post.

[jonescelinaa]

Thanks for the information. The feeling of facing a worthy opponent in 1v1 lol mode is extremely exciting. This is a great opportunity to test and improve your skills.