[php-maint] Bug#662090: php5: Update problem with package php5

[Bob Proulx]

forcemerge 617478 662090
thanks

daniel wrote:
> php5 complained about missing libraries; I am not sure if php5 was still working. The messages below were printed to console and mailed by cron to user root:
> 
> PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php5/20090626/gd.so' - /usr/lib/php5/20090626/gd.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0
> PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php5/20090626/mcrypt.so' - /usr/lib/php5/20090626/mcrypt.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0
> PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php5/20090626/suhosin.so' - /usr/lib/php5/20090626/suhosin.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0

These messages are due to the current inability to conditionally load
libraries only when they are installed and not when they have been
previously installed and now purged.

> I got rid of these messages by installing php5-gd, php5-mcrypt and
> php5-suhosin. As they didn't reappear when I removed the packages
> again, I suppose the installation script should perform some
> cleanups to configuration files.

The problem occurs when they are installed and then removed but not
purged.  Removed packages have their configuration files left behind
as is expected.  But these configuration files say to load shared
libraries that have been removed.  That creates the bug.

This has been reported a number of times already but there is not an
easy fix available and so the bug remains.  I am merging it with the
previous bugs reported on this problem.

In the meantime you can fix the problem through one of two actions.

Either:
1) install the package again (undoing the remove) which will bring the
   .so library files back onto the system again and silence the error or
2) purge the package which will remove the configuration file too and
   remove the directive that is trying to load the non-existest .so
   library file.

In other words either
1) apt-get install php5-gd php5-mcrypt php5-suhosin
or
2) apt-get purge php5-gd php5-mcrypt php5-suhosin

Either of those actions should stop the above errors as a workaround
for this bug.

Bob