Always such a problem?

Anon

I've been using PHP for over a year now. I've really enjoyed using it, and it helps me add a lot of neat features to my site.

However, I've recently taken up learning Linux system administration. PHP was already set up on my current server, so I never really had to mess with it.

Anyway, I set up a Linux machine here at my house to practice on. I got Apache/MySQL/PHP running (PHP = apache module). It seemed like it took forever for the things to compile, and it was a pain configuring them.

That would be fine, no problem, but what about when a new version of PHP gets released? I have to recompile all three just to get them to work right?

When I recompile, is it going to overwrite my apache configuration files, my php config files, and my DB's in MySQL? Is it going to set it up into the same directories, or are there new/different ones?

I guess I have to get comfortable with compiling and installing programs, that's fine, but I have no desire to do this if every time I need to update the program I have to redo all the configurations!

Have I tried it? No, it took 3 days to get everything working okay, the last thing I need is to break all my work!

Well thanks in advance for any help.

Anon

First, if you find compiling everything such a hassle, do what is common practise on unix machines: write a script!

Once you have figured out what should be done to get something compiled, put those commands in a script and next time you can just run the script, which saves you a lot of headaches wondering "how did I do that?"

Second, I have personally never done this but it is supposed to be possible to use PHP as a module that is loaded by apache through the configuration (as opposed to the 'normal' way of compiling apache with the module in it)

Third, usually a new installation of apache will not overwrite the 'old' configuration files.

Fourth, make BACKUPS. Done assume that something will go right. Murphy will prove that thingswill go pear-shaped at inopportune times.
You can make a full dump to tape (recommended, but it takes ages) but in some cases you can get away with just tarring the apache directory etc.

kparker

If you are (rightfully) paranoid, you will just save copies of phpx.ini and httpd.conf before you start. But actually, the apache installation has been (in my experience) quite good about leaving your working copy of httpd.conf alone if it's already there in the target directory.

Anon

You only need to recompile the new parts if you are using .so (shared objects) and not .a or static linked libs. Since you said you were using modules, you should only need to recompile the single new module.

Note that in order of time to compile, my experience is that apache takes about a minute to 2 minutes, php about twice that long, and mysql takes forever, plus a couple of minutes. Postgresql is only a little faster to build than mysql.

So, you can test out a new version of php without recompiling apache or mysql, but if you get a new version of mysql, you'll need to recompile php since it uses the include files from mysql (or most other databases) to build it's interface.