Installing mysql and php on local machine

deltrotter

I'm quite used to ASP and SQL server, but I'd really like to get into mysql and php.

What I'd like to do is set my machine up so that I can try out php and mysql locally. One problem is that I have a permanent connection to the internet on my machine. Servers are not allowed to be installed on this network.

Can I install apache, mysql and then php and have all the server components switched off?

Any ideas or has anyone else attempted something similar?

All help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Del

piersk

Apache and MySQL are both servers, so no you cant switch them off.

To use PHP like you do ASP (ie to get web pages out) then it has to be run via a server.

dannys

I assume you want to install this lot on Windows.

If so, check out PHP Triad (http://sourceforge.net/projects/phptriad) as this is designed to make it as easy as possible to setup Apache+MySQL+PHP on Windows 🙂

dannys

Any half decent firewall will be able to stop programmes serving to the internet while allowing them to serve locally. http://www.zonealarm.com is one such (free) product.

piersk

But dont forget to let the servers etc. access the local network, otherwise you wont be able to use them. I know that this works for zonealarm, but not sure about others...

dannys

Of course, if people spent 10mins setting up Apache & MySQL properly, they'd see that it's really quite easy to restrict the allowed connections - firewall or not 🙂

deltrotter

Thank you very much. I can make a start now!

Out of interest, if I had a machine that wasn't connected to the Internet, could I install something like phptriad and it should work ok??

Sorry if that is a dim question.

Cheers

Del

piersk

I presume you're talking about allow/deny in apache...

dannys

Originally posted by deltrotter
Out of interest, if I had a machine that wasn't connected to the Internet, could I install something like phptriad and it should work ok??

Yeah should be fine.

piersk

If you had a computer that wasnt connected to the internet then surely you could run php+apache+mysql and not be worried about anyone else accessing it, since it is a standalone?

deltrotter

Yep, that is what I will do. Grab an old machine (900mhz!) and set up on that.

Out of interest, what is the allow / deny in Apache?

Cheers

Del

dannys

Originally posted by piersk
I presume you're talking about allow/deny in apache...

Yup

For example one of my vhosts looks like this

<Directory /usr/local/www/sites/php5.kyboshed.com/>
	Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews IncludesNoExec
	AllowOverride None
	Order deny,allow
	Deny From All
	Allow From 192.168 217.206.112.254
	AuthName "PHP-Dev/Zend2 Testing"
	AuthType Basic
	Require group php-dev
	Satisfy any
	AuthUserFile /usr/local/www/users
	AuthGroupFile /usr/local/www/groups
</Directory>

This puts up a password box for anyone not at my work or on my local net. If you removed the Auth* directives then people not here or at work wouldn't get in full stop.

MySQL has similar options for limiting who can connect and from where. I have MySQL setup to only accept connections from localhost, since nobody has any need to connect to it 🙂

piersk

900 Mhz is old?? Mine is 1Ghz!! memo to self: must upgrade...

Anyway, allow/deny are directives that you can use to specify who has access to your server.See here for more details

(sorry, dannys posted before I could, but still go to the link above to see how it all works)

deltrotter

Interesting, thanks guys.

Cheers

Del