Owncloud 8.2.1 PHP upgrade help

After upgrading from Owncloud 8.0.4 to 8.2.1 the admin panel is telling me that PHP 5.4 is no longer supported, I am trying to find out how to upgrade to a newer version either 5.6 or 7.x. I tried running the pkg install php56 command and it did install but once I restarted the web server (lighttpd) it just sat there and gave me a white screen on the web browser. Are there other dependents I need to install? is there a document on how to go about upgrading the php on a freenas server?

Server configuration
Operating system: FreeNAS
Web server: LightTPD
Database: SQlite
PHP version: 5.4.45
ownCloud version (see ownCloud admin page): 8.2.1
Updated from an older ownCloud or fresh install: Updated from OC 8.0.4

Hi,

for getting help with updating PHP its advised to ask for support at a FreeNAS community. They have mostly more knowledge / experts which could far better help you with this task.

I'm also wondering why you have upgraded to 8.2.1 as the latest version for the 8.2.x branch is 8.2.7:

https://owncloud.org/changelog/#latest8.2

You should also note that running lighttpd ist not really recommended:

Just in general: If you install a second php package, make sure the webserver is using the newer one (put <?php phpinfo(); ?> into a test.php in your document root). White or empty screen doesn't tell you much, so please have a look into your logfiles.

If php modules are missing, you can install them via pkg-manager, just search their name:
pkg search php56 gives you a list of all php5.6-related packages.

I would go to php 7.0 directly, it makes a big difference in performance. Except you have still websites which are not working on php7.0 but if it's only for owncloud, I'd go with php7.

The reason I only went to 8.2.1 was because I didn't want to jump to many versions at one time. I tried that with my test instance and something broke along the way. From doing some reading 8.2.3 was the first version to fully support PHP 7. 8.2.7 is on the horizon for me to go to on this server.

Can I make the jump from PHP 5.4 to PHP 7 or do I need an interim jump to 5.6?

Hi,

this is a completely wrong reason and also a wrong upgrade path. A correct done upgrade path for your installation would be:

8.0.4 -> latest 8.0.x -> latest 8.1.x -> latest 8.2.x (No, not anything before)

This avoids that you're e.g. facing an problem in 8.2.1 which would have been solved if you directly got to 8.2.7

On OC 8.2.7 you can directly switch to PHP 7.0.x. owncloud-code supports both versions and there are no modifications required (unlike owncloud updates which can change the database structure and needs to be carried out in the right order).