I'm somewhat new to Redhat and by no means a linux guru, but I am stuck taking care of a production server running Redhat 9.

It was installed with php-mysql-4.2.2-17.2. This is altogether pretty out of date as far as I can see. I tried to upgrade MySQL using the rpms from mysql's website since I couldn't find a php-mysql package. MySQL seemed to upgrade fine, all the databases were working and php was communicating with it. But after a little while apache's children started having segmentation faults.

The best I could find about why this was happening was related to the php libraries for communicating with mysql getting overwritten.

I --oldpackage'd back down to the old mysql that was installed (3.23.xx..) and everything has been working fine again.

My question is this: How can I upgrade this old RH9 to have the up to date php/mysql/apache installs with the least downtime?

The fact that I am stuck running on the old php-mysql instead of the rpm's or source compiles from each respective website seems to be more a hazard to me now that RH9 is not regularly maintained and supported.

Thanks for any help.

Try compiling apache, php and mysql from source if its an option.

Can that be done without interfering with what's installed at the time?

Yes its possible. When you compile from source, usually you put the packages in /usr/local, so they won't interfere with the packages you already have. There is a good how to at hostlibrary. You can use that as a guide to install the latest packages although it may refer to slightly older packages.

Another alternative, would be to upgrade to the latest Fedora Core or RHEL. You can use CentOS if you don't want ot pay for RHEL.