JasonDaly.name

Fixing ‘Unsupported Protocal’ Errors When Installing PEAR and PECL Extensions

Soon after updating to PHP5.3 on my local computer I found that some legacy code I maintain which can not be updated currently no longer worked. After a bit of research¹, I found the best solution for now was for me to downgrade back to the latest stable version of PHP 5.2, PHP 5.2.10. I needed to reinstall a few PEAR and PECL extensions which much of the code I maintain depends on.

[~] $ sudo pecl install memcache
pecl.php.net is using a unsupported protocal - This should never happen.

install failed

[~] $ sudo pear install Image_Color
pear.php.net is using a unsupported protocal - This should never happen.

install failed

I knew my PHP installs were done within /usr, so I found the PEAR .channels/ directories with

[~] $ cd /usr
[/usr] $ sudo find . -type d -name .channels
./lib/php/.channels
./share/pear/.channels

deleted them

[/usr] $ sudo find . -type d -name .channels -exec rm -rf {} \;

and then updated the channels

[/usr] $ sudo pear update-channels

Now installing extensions from PEAR and PECL is back to normal.