Fixing libxml2, php, WordPress, and the missing angle brackets

I was having problems with MarsEdit after updating to OpenSuse 11.1 because of a bug in php aggravated by a recent release of libxml2 (details here).
I was waiting for a real fix but lost my patience today. The advice was to “fall back to libxml2-2.6.32” so here’s what I did:

1. Grabbed the RPM from the OpenSuse 11.0 cd. Or, if you trust me you can download it from here: libxml2-2.6.32-11.1.i586.rpm
2. Install the RPM overriding any recent release which is what the “–force” flag does. Do the following as “root” from a terminal window:

   rpm -i --force libxml2-2.6.32-11.1.i586.rpm
   

3. Now fix the symlinks in /usr/lib so everyone uses the new (but old) library:

   cd /usr/lib
   rm libxml2.so libxml2.so.2
   ln -s libxml2.so.2.6.32 libxml2.so
   ln -s libxml2.so.2.6.32 libxml2.so.2
   

4. Actually, I didn’t do the above but instead replaced the actual 2.7.2 library:

   mv libxml2.so.2.7.2 libxml2.so.2.7.2.orig
   ln -s libxml2.so.2.6.32 libxml2.so.2.7.2
   

5. Restart apache so that PHP uses the new libraries:

   /etc/init.d/apache2 restart