MySQL Warning from CB

Hi,

I received the following warning from CB on my Joomla 4.3.4 site:

Community Builder will no longer be compatible with MySQL 5.7.39-42-log. The next stable release of Community Builder will be requiring a minimum of MySQL 8.0.13 and recommends MySQL 8.1. Please consider updating to at least MySQL 8.0.13. Contact your host if you are unsure how.

I asked my host, Siteground, about it and received this response:

MySQL is part of the server stack that we maintain and indeed you do not have the option to change its value. The currently used versions for our servers are MySQL 5.7.39-42.  In fact we have recently updated them from 5.6 to the 5.7 mentioned above.  Changes to the mysql are a very large scale operation and are done once every few years so we would not have information if such a change would be done anytime soon.

This would mean that for now that the Joomla extension's future updates cannot work on our hosting, and the current version of the extension is what should be used until further notice.

Does this mean I'll need to stick with CB 2.8.2 indefinitely?  Will something eventually break if that's the case?  Siteground runs a lot of Joomla sites, so I won't be alone. 

Looking at Joomla's requirements, apparently it also means I'll have to stick with Joomla 4 and avoid Joomla 5?  I'm starting to feel a little less secure than I did a few minutes ago...

Thanks!
 

We are not going to change our MySQL requirement anytime soon, but consider this your heads up notice. We will be moving to Joomla 5 minimum requirements sometime in the future in a stable release. Absolutely in CB 3.0 requirements will change, but it's possible we may need to increase them in CB 2.9 if we need to for Joomla 5 compatibility however at this time that is unlikely. The features MySQL 8.0 (and equivalent MairaDB) brings for accessing data in better and more efficient ways are typically a performance boost across the board so we will absolutely be using those features in the future.

Looking at Joomla's requirements, apparently it also means I'll have to stick with Joomla 4 and avoid Joomla 5? I'm starting to feel a little less secure than I did a few minutes ago...

The importance of staying up to date can't be underestimated and that's not just Joomla and CB, but your server too. This applies to the entire field of web development.

MySQL 5.6 is EOL (end of life) since 2021 and MySQL 5.7 is EOL as of the 25th of this month. For both of these that's EOL of their extended support. So it is only supported by Oracle at this point if you pay them for support. So both versions will never see another public update.

SiteGround has had 5 years to prepare functionality for users to move to MySQL 8.0 servers. They should be providing the means for you to move to an up to date, and secure, server or you should consider a new host in the future. I suggest reaching out to them again as surely there has to be a way for them to move you to an up to date server.

It's understandable they can't update an old shared server as that risks breaking sites, but there shouldn't be a problem moving you to a newer one. It's also not like updating software though. When MySQL is upgraded all the data in it must be imported back in. There's tools to assist with this though so a solution should've been made available by now.

That's a terrific answer, Kyle.  Thanks for helping me understand it and what would be involved to make the change.  I'll try Siteground again to see what my options are; this is all new to me.  Your points about staying up to date make a lot of sense and speak poorly of the host.  I hope Siteground is more forward-thinking on this than the rep made it sound ... they've been a HUGE improvement for us over Hostgator or Bluehost.

BUT ... I ended up asking Nick Dionysopoulos of Akeeba about this, since he had akeeba.com on Siteground for years.  He said he moved off in 2020 and doesn't recommend them anymore.  He, too, was amazed that they refused to move from a five-year-old database platform and noted that spoke volumes about the types of customers they may be currently aiming to serve (i.e., older Wordpress sites).  I can't see that there are currently any tools available even for customers with dedicated servers to update/reformat their databases.

That said, I guess software isn't fully "Joomla 4 compatible" if it won't work on Joomla 4's lowest-allowed tech platform.  That theoretically gives me until Joomla 4 end-of-life a year from now.  But as you advised, I'll work to find a better solution before then.  If I find out anything better, I'll post here in case anyone else is in this sinking boat.

Thanks again -- that really helped!

Report:

Well, since the average tech support person at Siteground (who are very good) doesn't seem to have any insight into the long-term corporate plan for MySQL, I resorted to Twitter/X.  Here's the answer I received:

We use a custom version of 5.7 which is optimised to better distribute the RAM on the server and we support it ourselves. Even though MySQL 8 is not available for the moment, we’ve planned to roll it out, but no ETA just yet.

It doesn't fill me with confidence, but I'll keep trying.

Even though MySQL 8 is not available for the moment, we’ve planned to roll it out, but no ETA just yet.

That certainly doesn't inspire confidence. They've had quite a few years to prepare for this and chose to do nothing. That's rather unfortunate.

I'd recommend moving to a new host in the future. We'll do our best to support MySQL 5.7 as long as possible, but it's very likely in CB 3.x we will have to increase the minimum. I can't say for certain as it depends entirely on what features we end up using in our queries. We might be able to handle it on a case by case basis (e.g. core works on 5.7, but a plugin requires 8.0).

At this point I basically just use VPS for hosting. Lets me control the environment, but requires experience with setting up servers. As for shared hosting you can probably take a look at KnownHost, DreamHost, or even the Joomla affiliated host ScalaHosting. I would recommend being sure they provide MySQL 8 though, but I believe they should (at the very least Scala should).

Hi, just a quick FYI to close the loop on this question, at least regarding Siteground.  They're upgrading all their servers, at last, to MySQL 8.  Ours have already been done.  It's a relief!  Please see this link .