For those of you who might not know, PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext PreProcessor.” It allows you to embed scripting code into a normal HTML file. The Web server will execute those bits of code, then send back the resulting HTML file.
For those of you who might not know, PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext PreProcessor.” It allows you to embed scripting code into a normal HTML file. The Web server will execute those bits of code, then send back the resulting HTML file.
If you’re running Red Hat or another distribution that uses RPM, you can run rpm -qa and look for the “php4″ package. This single large package will contain everything you need. However, Mandrake subdivides PHP into smaller RPM packages. This means you can install only the parts you need without wasting disk space. You will always need the base and common PHP packages, but you are free to choose from optional packages.
Debian also splits PHP into multiple packages. You can run the command dpkg –list “php4*” to see if it’s already on your system. If it isn’t, you can run apt-get install php4 to automatically install it.
If you wish to compile and build PHP by hand, you can find the latest source at http://www.php.net/ or one of its mirrors. Once you have unpackaged the source, you must decide exactly how you want to install PHP.
Most of the time, you will want to compile PHP as a Dynamic Shared Object (DSO). To find out if you can do this, run httpd -l and see if the string “mod_so” is present. If it is, run the following command to configure PHP:
