Ohhh, I had to be that person, i hope I can be forgiven 5.2.12a and embedded_images on Centos7

I have been running centos 6, but that has just become so outdated I had to try and make a move.
Tried debian 12 first, now trying Centos 7. I have almost everything working except the embedded images module. It crashes trying to genearate the preview with 500. I have gd and image magic installed and php 5.6.40 running the lightspeed webserver. I have been out of coding for so long, but have spent 30 hours probably on chatgpt trying to sort it out...Now that was a tail chaser.
is this worth pursuing to do I just leave the thing on centos 6.
Thanks in advance
Rob
[edit] I saw something about the string functions being sensitive to timezone, and they are both CST.


Request URL
[www.ppbb.com]
Request Method
GET
Status Code
500 Internal Server Error
Remote Address
10.20.0.194:80
Referrer Policy
strict-origin-when-cross-origin



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2025 08:10PM by Rob Granger.

I just uploaded an image, and i can read that back, older images hang on the scaling jig.

old: won't scale
stat 3943
  File: '3943'
  Size: 264236    	Blocks: 520        IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: fd02h/64770d	Inode: 51949011    Links: 1
Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (  502/    ppbb)   Gid: (  502/    ppbb)
Access: 2025-11-27 19:19:44.823000000 -0600
Modify: 2025-10-03 09:24:40.000000000 -0500
Change: 2025-11-27 19:18:59.350000000 -0600

new : does scale and display
stat 3944
  File: '3944'
  Size: 497579    	Blocks: 976        IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: fd02h/64770d	Inode: 40145549    Links: 1
Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (  502/    ppbb)   Gid: (  502/    ppbb)
Access: 2025-11-27 19:20:37.468000000 -0600
Modify: 2025-11-27 19:16:19.157000000 -0600
Change: 2025-11-27 19:18:59.350000000 -0600

finally got a good build of php with all the modules, but could never get previews to display. Tried neutering the js to just post the image without scaling but that failed.
Attempt 2, that was several days, I thought I was on track with Centos7, even got php 5.3.29 going (as close as I could to centos 6 5.3.3) and still can't get previews to display. Clicking the error will bring up the full image, but no joy on preview.
I think that is about a close as I am going to get, so, resigned to stick on C6 util the board dies.

if anyone has a brilliant idea, or just an idea, I may tackle this again.

Thanks
Rob