Thank you for clarifying that.
Since posting, I eventually found some further information on the pear.php.net site that hadn't turned up in previous searches, saying that versions of PEAR older than 1.4-something would no longer be able to access the former repositories, as they have changed format (since 1 Jan 2008) and the old format files have been removed. And the instructions to upgrade didn't work for me, probably because I'm cut off from access to the format that PEAR on SME Server uses.
I have tried (misguidedly, I now see) deleting the original installed files in /usr/share/pear and doing a fresh install into folders into a Primary/php directory (not html). The PEAR web installer just WOULD NOT allow me to write to the /usr/share/pear folder, even after I had changed the permissions to 777 as recommended. I had also tried changing the owner to www:www - but that didn't work either.
Anything on the server that depends on the original PEAR being present may not now work - so far, I haven't found what, but I'm hoping it doesn't matter as I'm only using it as a web server, not for email.
Is there a simple way to get the original PEAR files back? I REALLY don't want to have to do a complete fresh install to reinstate them, and I don't have another SME Server v7.3 to copy them from, just a v6.0.1-01 that this new server is designed to replace.
I've installed the current version of PEAR, but it isn't quite right yet either, probably because some install parameter or permission or fileowner is prevent webserver access. The installer wants a $php_dir value, which apparently isn't set on SME Server, or if it is, the installer isn't picking it up. And it doesn't tell you what it means, either, so I've had to guess. Is it the path to the binary executable php for CGI?
Anyway, I'll plug away at getting it to work, somehow, in the new form. Enough of it was working to be able to use the web-based package installer to get and install the HTML_QuickForm package, but I can't get a web page to use it yet.
Thanks again for taking the trouble to respond.
I much appreciate all the work the developers put into SME Server - it's been a really robust server for over six years in v5 and v6 that we've been using up to now. But it is a pity that so much of it depends on adapting existing stable versions of other distros (now CentOS) that the cumulative delays mean that even the latest version of SME Server is using currently obsolete and no-longer supported versions of (among other things) PHP, MySQL, and PEAR. Pity, because there are a few things I would like to use PHP 5 for, but it is definitely NOT recommended to try to upgrade to it, as other things break. And I don't want to go the CGI route, which is apparently possible.
John McC