Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Installing PHP

Installing PHP proved to be very simple for us. We went to http://www.php.net and selected downloadsand got the latest release. This produced the usual 2MB of gzipped tar file.

When the software was unpacked, we dutifully read the INSTALL file. It offered two builds: one to produce a dynamic Apache module (DSO), which we didn’t want, since we try to keep away from DSO’s for production sites. Anyway, if you use PHP at all, you will want it permanently installed.

So we chose the static version and put the software in /usr/src/php/php-4.0.1p12 (of course, the numbers will be different when you do it). Assuming that you have the Apache sources, have compiled Apache, and are using MySQL, we then ran:

./configure --with-mysql --with-apache=../../apache/apache_1.3.9 --enable-track=vars
make
make install

We now moved to the Apache directory and ran:

./configure --prefix=/www/APACHE3 --activate-module=src/modules/php4/libphp4.a
make

This produced a new httpd, which we copied to /usr/local/sbin/httpd.php4. It is then possible to configure PHP by editing the file /usr/local/lib/php.ini. This is a fairly substantial file that arrives set up with the default configuration and so needs no immediate attention. But it would be worth reading it through and reviewing it from time to time as you get more familiar with PHP since its comments and directives contain useful hints on ways to extend the installation. For instance, Windows DLLs and Unix DSOs can be loaded dynamically from scripts. ...