Build and Install PHP

Build and Install PHP

This section has only been tested with PHP v4.x. If you are trying to build PHP 5.x, I do not have experience with this yet, and do not provide free support for you to get it working. Please note that there are many options which can be selected when compiling PHP. Some will have library dependencies, meaning certain software may need to be already installed on your server before you start building PHP. You can use the command

./configure --help | less

once you change into the PHP source directory. This will show you a list of all possible configuration switches. For more information on what these switches are, please check the PHP website documentation.

cd /usr/local/src/php-4.4.6 
 
./configure \ 
--with-apxs=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs \ 
--disable-debug \ 
--enable-ftp \ 
--enable-inline-optimization \ 
--enable-magic-quotes \ 
--enable-mbstring \ 
--enable-mm=shared \ 
--enable-safe-mode \ 
--enable-track-vars \ 
--enable-trans-sid \ 
--enable-wddx=shared \ 
--enable-xml \ 
--with-dom \ 
--with-gd \ 
--with-gettext \ 
--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql \ 
--with-regex=system \ 
--with-xml \ 
--with-zlib-dir=/usr/lib 
 
make && make install 
 
cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini

I like to keep my config files all together in /etc. I set up a symbolic link like this:

ln -s /usr/local/lib/php.ini /etc/php.ini

Then I can just open /etc/php.ini in my editor to make changes.

Recommended reading on securing your PHP installation is this article at SecurityFocus.com.

Edit the Apache Configuration File (httpd.conf)

I like to keep all my configuration files together in /etc, so I set up a symbolic link from the actual location to /etc:

ln -s /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd.conf

Now open /etc/httpd.conf in your favorite text editor, and set all the basic Apache options in accordance with the official Apache instructions (beyond the scope of this HOWTO).

Also recommended is the article on securing Apache.

To ensure your PHP files are properly interpreted, and not just downloaded as text files, remove the # at the beginning of the lines which read:

#AddType application/x-httpd-php .php 
#AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

If the AddType lines above don't exist, manually enter them (without the leading # of course) after the line

AddType application/x-tar .tgz

or anyplace within the <IfModule mod_mime.c> section of httpd.conf.

If you wish to use other/additional extensions/filetypes for your PHP scripts instead of just .php, add them to the AddType directive:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .foo 
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps .phtmls

An example: if you wanted every single HTML page to be parsed and processed like a PHP script, just add .htm and .html:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

There will be a bit of a performance loss if every single HTML page is being checked for PHP code even if it doesn't contain any. But if you want to use PHP but be "stealthy" about it, you can use this trick.

Add index.php to the list of valid Directory Index files so that your "default page" in a directory can be named index.php.

<IfModule mod_dir.c> 
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.htm index.html 
</IfModule>

You can add anything else you want here too. If you want foobar.baz to be a valid directory index page, just add the .baz filetype to the AddType line, and addfoobar.baz to the DirectoryIndex line.

Start Apache

We want to set Apache up with a normal start/stop script in /etc/rc.d/init.d so it can be auto-started and controlled like other system daemons. Set up a symbolic link for the apachectl utility (installed automatically as part of Apache):

ln -s /usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl /etc/rc.d/init.d/apache

Then set up auto-start for runlevel 3 (where the server will go by default):

ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/apache /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S90apache

Then start the daemon:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/apache start

You can check that it's running properly by doing:

ps -ef

and look for the httpd processes.