Non-static method PEAR::isError() should not be called statically

I'm afraid @johannes is incorrect - this is very doable. Simply substitute this in your recipe:

if ((new PEAR)->isError($mdb2_dbx)) {
    // Victory! Er, I mean, Error!
    ...
}

It may be worth noting that that calling PEAR::isError($obj) with one argument is equivalent to is_a($obj, 'PEAR_Error'), if you're updating your own code. I know it is not best practice to "unwrap" a library method like that, but it is basically just an "instance of" check.

No there isn't. PEAR::isError is legacy from PHP 4 times.

If changing the error level in php.ini is not enough you should check

• whether there is another php.ini file being loaded (check phpinfo() output via Apache)
• some script sets the error level.

If all that doesn't help, set an appropriate level using the error_level() function at runtime, or if nothing else helps, suppress the errors using the @ operator. Using @ should be avoided as it is relatively "slow" (error reporting is slow anyways ...) and it might hide other errors.

Long-term suggestion would be to use more modern libraries.