Relating this example above to a few details:
#1 Reasonable concern "What if people upgraded, use the (wrong, old and non-serviced) mod-php happily and will now be broken by the SRU? => As shown above, once you are in this situation your mod-php is doing nothing. That IMHO invalidates the regression concern for that set of users. Only if you would manually ensure to keep all of the bionic php stack (libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-cli php7.2-common php7.2-json php7.2-opcache php7.2-readline) installed from bionic would it still work. I tried bryce PPA on this special corner case of already a special situation. Yes it would upgrade (as intended) The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libargon2-0 php7.2-cli php7.2-common php7.2-json php7.2-opcache php7.2-readline Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: libapache2-mod-php libapache2-mod-php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-common php7.4-json php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline The following packages will be upgraded: libapache2-mod-php7.2 1 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. PHP is still working, but now in 7.4 instead of the former 7.2. #2 "Is this just our case, after all one of the server team filed it?" let me be honest - I'm not a php user or web server admin. But other than this bug we know that "in the wild" this has happened more than a few times. Bryce has mentioned that while working on this he found a few external references of people hitting and working around it in some way. #3 Why do we consider this important "now" so late"? Well, we have to admit of not seeing/knowing it earlier -> that explains the lateness. I'm (personally, I don't know how bad that really is as I'm neither a PHP nor a security expert) concerned that people might expose secrets by accident. Imagine the former php code used on bionic was this: $ echo '<html> <head> <title>Test</title> </head> <body> <?php echo "<p>You only see this</p>"; # secret to DB is foobar ?> </body> </html>' > /var/www/html/index.php On the web page as served to people on Bionic they saw see: "You only see this". But after upgrading to Focal the bug is active and people will see: "You only see this; # secret to DB is foobar ?>" I know it would be bad practice to put such secrets there in the first place, but still for me this gives the importance of the issue a slight bump. I'm not sure if this is convincing enough, but I considered it worth to share/summarize. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1890263 Title: release upgrade does not move to the new php apache mod To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php-defaults/+bug/1890263/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs