« The new Group has been elected!
PEAR Website Outage »

Fixing “unsupported protocol”

Some PEAR installations on PHP 5.2.9 and 5.2.10 seem to be corrupted. When trying to install something, you will get the error:

pear.php.net is using a unsupported protocal – This should never happen. install failed

This problem comes from corrupted channel files. Go into your PEAR php directory and backup .channels directory:


cd `pear config-get php_dir`
mv .channels .channels-broken
pear update-channels

This means you lost all your channels except for the default ones (pear, pecl, doc and __uri) – but at least you do not have to re-install PEAR.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 12:53 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “Fixing “unsupported protocol””

  1. PEAR Blog: Fixing “unsupported protocol” | Webs Developer Says:
    August 28th, 2009 at 07:02

    [...] message when working with the PEAR installation on your PHP instance, you should check out this quick post from the PEAR blog with a tip on how to fix it. When trying to install something, you will get [...]

  2. PEAR Blog: Fixing "unsupported protocol" | PHP Says:
    August 28th, 2009 at 09:04

    [...] message when working with the PEAR installation on your PHP instance, you should check out this quick post from the PEAR blog with a tip on how to fix it. When trying to install something, you will get [...]

  3. jmut Says:
    August 30th, 2009 at 11:39

    Very nice indeed…what about those?
    Hi, please let me know where I can post this issue and if further info required.

    #pear upgrade PEAR
    downloading PEAR-1.8.1.tgz …
    Starting to download PEAR-1.8.1.tgz (290,382 bytes)
    …………………………………………done: 290,382 bytes

    Warning: mkdir(): File exists in System.php on line 277

    Warning: mkdir(): File exists in /usr/share/php/System.php on line 277
    ERROR: failed to mkdir /usr/share/php/doc/PEAR

  4. krifur Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 12:27

    thx very much!

  5. PHP 5.2.10 comes with a broken PEAR Says:
    September 20th, 2009 at 07:53

    [...] Official solution is easier – just remove .channels directory and run pear update-channels [...]

  6. PEAR channel probléma php 5.2.9 felett « blerou szerszámosládája Says:
    October 17th, 2009 at 07:35

    [...] Egy gyors keresés után meg is találtam a megoldást. [...]

  7. carl Says:
    October 17th, 2009 at 05:17

    Where do we submit a bug report for that spelling of “protocal”? Or is that intentional?

  8. pear.php.net is using a unsupported protocal « Механический мир Says:
    October 29th, 2009 at 05:48

    [...] этому подвержены PHP 5.2.9 и 5.2.10, но я столкнулся на 5.2.11. Официальное решение [...]

Leave a Reply