[afnog] Apache2-PHP5 Installation Issues

[Hervey Allen]

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 04:27:22AM -0400,
>  Hervey Allen <hervey at nsrc.org> wrote 
>  a message of 38 lines which said:
> 
>> I've had to compile php from source several times in order to build
>> dynamic sites. The issue with RPM installed apache and php is that
>> the choices made by the distribution vendor often are not what
>> you'll need for the code you plan on writing.
> 

Stephane:
	I've responded to your comments out of order. First:

>> Also, remember that the OP is a beginner: he is not used to Unix
>> system administration and, even if you think that recompiling might be
>> useful, it is typically not for the beginner.
>> 

I totally agree! Alain, if you are reading this my post was
not directed at you but the list. Actually, Alain, I noted 
that you originally installed both "httpd" (Apache I 
assume?) and PHP from source. I don't know if your box is 
live, or just being set up. But, if you are still having 
problems re-installing everything from RPM would definitely 
be a good place to start.
	The major issue is uninstalling Apache and PHP will be hard 
to impossible once they are installed from source. You can 
try "make uninstall" for both and see if this works, however 
I didn't see this as an option for PHP or Apache. Anyone 
else tried this?

>> A last warning: installing things by hand and not by a regular package
>> will make more work for the next upgrade. Recompiling and installing
>> by hand may seem faster but it lays problems for yourself (or your
>> colleagues) in the future.
>> 

Again, I agree. It's _really_ painful to deal with 
source-installed software under Linux when you want to 
remove or upgrade in the future.

OK, so your original question I've put below. I didn't want 
to go off on this tangent until I'd made it clear that there 
are some serious caveats to installing software outside of 
packaging systems under Linux, i.e. from source.

> Can you give specific examples? Because I never had to recompile PHP
> so I'm curious.
>  

I've installed RPMs for PHP under Fedora 2, 3 and 4. I was 
doing this for sights using LAMP configurations.

I took detailed notes from one box where we needed PHP 4 and 
PHP 5 to run on the same box. The final configure looked 
like this:

./configure' '--enable-pic' '--with-bz3'
'--with-kerberos=/usr/kerberos/' '--with-openssl'
'--with-png' '--with-regex=system' '--with-zlib'
'--enable-bcmath' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-magic-quotes'
'--enable-track-vars' '--enable-trans-sid' '--enable-yp'
'--with-pear=/usr/share/pear' '--with-mysql=shared,usr'
'--enable-memory-limit' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-dbx'
'--enable-dio' '--enable-mcal' '--with-mysql=/usr/lib/mysql'
'--enable-bcmath' '--enable-force-cgi-redirect'
'--prefix=/usr/local/php5'

The differences from the RPM version were:

Remove --with-apxs=DIR
Add --enable-force-cgi=redirect
Add --prefix=/usr/local/php5
Add --with-mysql=/usr/lib/mysql

Removing --with-apxs ensures that we did not install php5
over php4 and that it installed as a CGI module. I did
this so that we could test php5 alongside php4 for the
moment.  The --prefix option makes sure that we did not
overwrite php4 configuration files (we had a fairly
specialized php.ini file). The --with-mysql option was
required as php5 no longer includes(d) MySQL support unless 
you specify it explicitly.

and, in the PHP Makefile itself we had to add:

EXTRA_INCLUDES = -I/usr/kerberos/include/

This was because OpenSSL complained that it could not find
krb5.h header file. This was because Kerberos had placed all
their include files in /usr/kerberos/include instead of the
more standard (imho) /usr/include/kerberos directory.

Note that some of these specific issues may have changed or
been corrected since this was done. This is simply one example.

On another box I had to add the
"'--with-pear=/usr/share/pear'" switch for a php 4.x
install. Other switches that can have a major impact on how
your code interacts with your data include, but are not 
restricted to:

'--with-regex=system'
'--with-zlib'
'--enable-bcmath'
'--enable-ftp'
'--enable-magic-quotes'
'--enable-track-vars'
'--enable-trans-sid'

Some will, some won't want these enabled, etc., etc... and
the switches change between PHP versions, vendors, distro
versions, etc.

One reason why I like FreeBSD source installs. You can 
specify stuff as needed, yet you can still uninstall 
reliably. But, MySQL plays so much nicer with Linux that if 
you need the speed, then you may feel compelled to choose 
LAMP over FAMP.

Cheers,
	- Hervey


-- 
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Hervey Allen      Network Startup Resource Center
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