Fixing “unsupported protocol”

Posted on 2009-08-28 by cweiske

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.

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16 Responses to Fixing “unsupported protocol”

  1. Pingback: PEAR Blog: Fixing “unsupported protocol” | Webs Developer

  2. Pingback: PEAR Blog: Fixing "unsupported protocol" | PHP

  3. jmut says:
    2009-08-30 at 23:39

    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:
    2009-09-07 at 12:27

    thx very much!

  5. Pingback: PHP 5.2.10 comes with a broken PEAR

  6. Pingback: PEAR channel probléma php 5.2.9 felett « blerou szerszámosládája

  7. carl says:
    2009-10-17 at 17:17

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

  8. Pingback: pear.php.net is using a unsupported protocal « Механический мир

  9. Luis Freitas says:
    2009-11-30 at 12:43

    Problem solver in OpenSUSE 11.1 fresh install« when comes to update pear modules.

  10. Pingback: 骚客’s Blog » Blog Archive » Reverting PHP 5.3 to 5.2.10 on Snow Leopard （资料收集）

  11. Pingback: instalacja modułów z PECL’a na przykładzie xdebug’a « Michał Prochowski

  12. Pingback: Rootz.de - PHP-Pear: Warning: mkdir(): File exists in System.php on line 277

  13. Jani says:
    2010-05-04 at 00:49

    8 months and still one gets this error, with “pecl upgrade” for example, using latest PHP 5.3 checkout. 😀

  14. somebody says:
    2010-06-09 at 18:43

    This should never happen.

    Oh, really?
    Seems it is a long reported issue to me…

    Anyway, Another issue: Your solution does not work: The exact same directory is immediately created after the following command:
    sudo pear update-channels

    (Ubuntu 10.04 64bit)

  15. Becky Lighthouse says:
    2012-07-31 at 00:16

    I just ran into this error message with ‘pecl upgrade’. The solution was to run ‘pear upgrade’ first, then ‘pecl upgrade’ worked after that.

  16. Greg Rundlett says:
    2013-05-16 at 07:54

    @Becky way to go. You solved my issue on RHEL6 using remi and remi-test repos. Pear needed to be upgraded first.

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