On some old servers I’ve had problems upgrading PEAR. I don’t remember the exact error message but I used it for a quick Google search to find one solution. If you have problems upgrading old versions of PEAR, you can try these steps to force an upgrade from PEAR 1.3.2 and up.
You can use these commands to force the upgrade.
pear upgrade --force http://pear.php.net/get/Archive_Tar http://pear.php.net/get/XML_Parser http://pear.php.net/get/Console_Getopt-1.2.2 pear upgrade --force http://pear.php.net/get/PEAR-1.3.3 (use only if your PEAR is older than v1.3.3) pear upgrade --force http://pear.php.net/get/PEAR-1.4.3 pear upgrade PEAR
Here you can see the upgrade in action (fun fun fun).
[root@linux ~]# pear upgrade --force http://pear.php.net/get/Archive_Tar http://pear.php.net/get/XML_Parser http://pear.php.net/get/Console_Getopt-1.2.2 downloading Archive_Tar-1.3.2.tgz ... Starting to download Archive_Tar-1.3.2.tgz (17,150 bytes) ......done: 17,150 bytes WARNING: channel "pear.php.net" has updated its protocols, use "channel-update pear.php.net" to update downloading XML_Parser-1.2.8.tgz ... Starting to download XML_Parser-1.2.8.tgz (13,476 bytes) ...done: 13,476 bytes downloading Console_Getopt-1.2.2.tgz ... Starting to download Console_Getopt-1.2.2.tgz (4,252 bytes) ...done: 4,252 bytes Did not download optional dependencies: pear/XML_RPC, use --alldeps to download automatically warning: pear/PEAR dependency package "pear/Console_Getopt" downloaded version 1.2.2 is not the recommended version 1.2.3 downloading PEAR-1.7.1.tgz ... Starting to download PEAR-1.7.1.tgz (302,377 bytes) ...done: 302,377 bytes upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/PEAR-1.7.1 PEAR: Optional feature webinstaller available (PEAR's web-based installer) PEAR: Optional feature gtkinstaller available (PEAR's PHP-GTK-based installer) PEAR: Optional feature gtk2installer available (PEAR's PHP-GTK2-based installer) upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/Console_Getopt-1.2.2 upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/XML_Parser-1.2.8 upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/Archive_Tar-1.3.2 To install use "pear install pear/PEAR#featurename" [root@linux ~]# pear upgrade --force http://pear.php.net/get/PEAR-1.4.3 downloading PEAR-1.4.3.tgz ... Starting to download PEAR-1.4.3.tgz (276,859 bytes) .........................................................done: 276,859 bytes WARNING: channel "pear.php.net" has updated its protocols, use "channel-update pear.php.net" to update Did not download optional dependencies: pear/XML_RPC, use --alldeps to download automatically downloading Console_Getopt-1.2.3.tgz ... Starting to download Console_Getopt-1.2.3.tgz (4,011 bytes) ...done: 4,011 bytes upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/Console_Getopt-1.2.3 upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/PEAR-1.4.3 PEAR: Optional feature webinstaller available (PEAR's web-based installer) PEAR: Optional feature gtkinstaller available (PEAR's PHP-GTK-based installer) PEAR: To install optional features use "pear install pear/PEAR#featurename" [root@linux ~]# pear upgrade PEAR WARNING: channel "pear.php.net" has updated its protocols, use "channel-update pear.php.net" to update Did not download optional dependencies: pear/XML_RPC, use --alldeps to download automatically downloading PEAR-1.7.1.tgz ... Starting to download PEAR-1.7.1.tgz (302,377 bytes) ..............................................................done: 302,377 bytes upgrade ok: channel://pear.php.net/PEAR-1.7.1 PEAR: Optional feature webinstaller available (PEAR's web-based installer) PEAR: Optional feature gtkinstaller available (PEAR's PHP-GTK-based installer) PEAR: Optional feature gtk2installer available (PEAR's PHP-GTK2-based installer) To install use "pear install PEAR#featurename"
This article is based entirely from this PEAR Bug posting:
PEAR :: Bug #12990 :: Issues with PEAR Upgrade News Item from 1/3/08