Chapter 5. Installation

PHP is glue. It is the glue used to build cool web applications by sticking dozens of 3rd-party libraries together and making it all appear as one coherent entity through an intuitive and easy to learn language interface. The flexibility and power of PHP relies on the stability and robustness of the underlying platform. It needs a working OS, a working web server and working 3rd-party libraries to glue together. When any of these stop working PHP needs ways to identify the problems and fix them quickly. When you make the underlying framework more complex by not having completely separate execution threads, completely separate memory segments and a strong sandbox for each request to play in, feet of clay are introduced into PHP's system.

If you feel you have to use a threaded MPM, look at a FastCGI configuration where PHP is running in its own memory space.

And finally, this warning against using a threaded MPM is not as strong for Windows systems because most libraries on that platform tend to be threadsafe.

By default on Unix it should be in /usr/local/lib which is <install-path>/lib. Most people will want to change this at compile-time with the --with-config-file-path flag. You would, for example, set it with something like:

And then you would copy php.ini-dist from the distribution to /etc/php.ini and edit it to make any local changes you want.

On Windows the default path for the php.ini file is the Windows directory. If you're using the Apache webserver, php.ini is first searched in the Apaches install directory, e.g. c:\program files\apache group\apache. This way you can have different php.ini files for different versions of Apache on the same machine.

See also the chapter about the configuration file.

This probably means that PHP is having some sort of problem and is core-dumping. Look in your server error log to see if this is the case, and then try to reproduce the problem with a small test case. If you know how to use 'gdb', it is very helpful when you can provide a backtrace with your bug report to help the developers pinpoint the problem. If you are using PHP as an Apache module try something like:

If your script uses the regular expression functions (ereg() and friends), you should make sure that you compiled PHP and Apache with the same regular expression package. This should happen automatically with PHP and Apache 1.3.x

Assuming you installed both Apache and PHP from RPM packages, you need to uncomment or add some or all of the following lines in your httpd.conf file:

And add:

... to the global properties, or to the properties of the VirtualDomain you want to have PHP support added to.

Due to the way PHP 3 built, it is not easy to build a complete flexible PHP RPM. This issue is addressed in PHP 4. For PHP 3, we currently suggest you use the mechanism described in the INSTALL.REDHAT file in the PHP distribution. If you insist on using an RPM version of PHP 3, read on...

The RPM packagers are setting up the RPMS to install without database support to simplify installations and because RPMS use /usr/ instead of the standard /usr/local/ directory for files. You need to tell the RPM spec file which databases to support and the location of the top-level of your database server.

This example will explain the process of adding support for the popular MySQL database server, using the mod installation for Apache.

Of course all of this information can be adjusted for any database server that PHP supports. We will assume you installed MySQL and Apache completely with RPMS for this example as well.

Make sure you restart Apache, and you now have PHP 3 with MySQL support using RPM's. Note that it is probably much easier to just build from the distribution tarball of PHP 3 and follow the instructions in INSTALL.REDHAT found in that distribution.

No, PHP works fine with the FrontPage extensions. The problem is that the FrontPage patch modifies several Apache structures, that PHP relies on. Recompiling PHP (using 'make clean ; make') after the FP patch is applied would solve the problem.

Do a 'view source' in the web browser and you will probably find that you can see the source code of your PHP script. This means that the web server did not send the script to PHP for interpretation. Something is wrong with the server configuration - double check the server configuration against the PHP installation instructions.

Something went wrong when the server tried to run PHP. To get to see a sensible error message, from the command line, change to the directory containing the PHP executable (php.exe on Windows) and run php -i. If PHP has any problems running, then a suitable error message will be displayed which will give you a clue as to what needs to be done next. If you get a screen full of HTML codes (the output of the phpinfo() function) then PHP is working, and your problem may be related to your server configuration which you should double check.

This has actually nothing to do with PHP, but with the MySQL client libraries. Some need --with-zlib, others do not. This is also covered in the MySQL FAQ.

This error message means that PHP failed to output anything at all. To get to see a sensible error message, from the command line, change to the directory containing the PHP executable (php.exe on Windows) and run php -i. If PHP has any problems running, then a suitable error message will be displayed which will give you a clue as to what needs to be done next. If you get a screen full of HTML codes (the output of the phpinfo() function) then PHP is working.

Once PHP is working at the command line, try accessing the script via the browser again. If it still fails then it could be one of the following:

Make sure any user who needs to run a PHP script has the rights to run php.exe! IIS uses an anonymous user which is added at the time IIS is installed. This user needs rights to php.exe. Also, any authenticated user will also need rights to execute php.exe. And for IIS4 you need to tell it that PHP is a script engine. Also, you will want to read this faq.

You must set the cgi.force_redirect directive to 0. It defaults to 1 so be sure the directive isn't commented out (with a ;). Like all directives, this is set in php.ini

Because the default is 1, it's critical that you're 100% sure that the correct php.ini file is being read. Read this faq for details.

To be sure your php.ini is being read by PHP, make a call to phpinfo() and near the top will be a listing called Configuration File (php.ini). This will tell you where PHP is looking for php.ini and whether or not it's being read. If just a directory PATH exists than it's not being read and you should put your php.ini in that directory. If php.ini is included within the PATH than it is being read.

If php.ini is being read and you're running PHP as a module, then be sure to restart your web server after making changes to php.ini

On Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003:

On Windows 98/Me you need to edit the autoexec.bat file:

The PHP manual used to promote the copying of files into the Windows system directory, this is because this directory (C:\Windows, C:\WINNT, etc.) is by default in the systems PATH. Copying files into the Windows system directory has long since been deprecated and may cause problems.

There are several ways of doing this. If you are using Apache, read their installation specific instructions (Apache 1, Apache 2), otherwise you must set the PHPRC environment variable:

On Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003:

On Windows 98/Me you need to edit the autoexec.bat file:

If links to PHP files include extension, everything works perfect. This FAQ is only for the case when links to PHP files don't include extension and you want to use content negotiation to choose PHP files from URL with no extension. In this case, replace the line AddType application/x-httpd-php .php with:

This solution doesn't work for Apache 1 as PHP module doesn't catch php-script.

No, it is possible to handle any request method, e.g. CONNECT. Proper response status can be sent with header(). If only GET and POST methods should be handled, it can be achieved with this Apache configuration: