diff --git a/lib/setup.php b/lib/setup.php
index 12cbb1eee2e..7eac4a0d55e 100644
--- a/lib/setup.php
+++ b/lib/setup.php
@@ -100,6 +100,10 @@ global $SCRIPT;
         }
     }
 
+/// sometimes default PHP settings are borked on shared hosting servers, I wonder why they have to do that??
+    @ini_set('precision', 14); // needed for upgrades and gradebook
+
+
 /// The current directory in PHP version 4.3.0 and above isn't necessarily the
 /// directory of the script when run from the command line. The require_once()
 /// would fail, so we'll have to chdir()