Guides on Sammy's Blog

Failed to enable crypto stream_socket_client() error after upgrading PHP

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I just upgraded the version of PHP on the server running this blog, and popped over to /wp-admin/site-health.php to check for any errors.

There were a few, the main one which caught my eye being The REST API encountered an error.

For the Google results, that error message in text is:

The REST API request failed due to an error.
Error: stream_socket_client(): SSL operation field with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:14094410:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:sslv3 alert handshake failure stream_socket_client(): Failed to enable crypto stream_socket_client(): unable to connect to ssl://words.samtarling.co.uk:443 (Unknown error) (http_request_failed)

Upgrading Apache from PHP 7.3 to PHP 7.4

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Okay, I know we’re not upgrading Apache, but y’know what I mean - let’s upgrade a Debian web server using PHP 7.3 to PHP 7.4!

I’ll also cover some pointers on if that web server is running WordPress.

0) Assumptions

I’m assuming:

The server runs Debian 9 (Stretch) or Debian 10 (Buster) with Apache version 2.4.38* (though it should work for other versions)
Apache is using the PHP module, not PHP-FPM
You have sudo and SSH access
You’ve made backups and any sites you’re hosting can tolerate downtime 😉

* You can get this info by running /usr/sbin/apache2 -v

Using PHP 8 with Laragon

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Laragon is local WAMP development server (and a much better one than XAMMP..) - I use it for most of my development work.

Recently I’ve moved a couple of my ongoing projects over to PHP 8, and was caught out slightly by some unexpected behaviour.

Laragon makes it pretty easy to add a new PHP/Apache version, but it makes a slight mistake when generating the mod_php config.

You need to change