Narkaleptic Thoughtless

I just discovered that Vista can create symbolic links via the command mklink! It performs the same thing as ln in linux with both hard and soft links. My understanding of links is fairly limited but I use them on my web server to apply seam-less templates. Until now, this was something that I could only test on my web server and not my Windows 7 development PC. PHP 5.3 automatically uses the mklink command when you use symlink() but the problem comes with enabling it in Windows Vista or 7.

If you pull up a command prompt and try to use mklink, you’ll see something like this:

D:\Web>mklink /D nnnnn.com\content templates\bluemoon
You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.

Or PHP will throw this back at you:

Debug Warning: /includes/templates.inc.php line 78 - symlink() [function.symlink]: Cannot create symlink, error code(1314)


To fix this:

1. Bring up your run box, type “secpol.msc” and click OK.
2. Navigate under the Security Settings \ Local Policies \ User Rights Assignment folder.
3. Find “Create symbolic links” and add the Users group to it.

I think you need to restart your computer or something after doing this.

Josh Guides, Web Development mklink, php 5.3, policy, secpol.msc, symlink, windows 7, windows vista

Well, turns out I’d rather play with just PHP 5.3 RC4 for now. Here is my guide to installing it onto my CentOS 5 64-bit VPS from 1&1.

Update: PHP 5.3.0 has been released and there are some changes.

It went pretty smoothly. Here is the guide, minus the hours of trial and error, of course:

First, install anything you may need to compile with.

yum install gcc gcc-c++.x86_64

yum install \
  libicu-devel.x86_64 \
  libxml2-devel.x86_64 \
  mysql-devel.x86_64 \
  libpng-devel.x86_64 \
  libjpeg-devel.x86_64 \
  curl-devel.x86_64 \
  bzip2-devel.x86_64 \
  gettext-devel.x86_64 \
  gmp-devel.x86_64 \
  pcre-devel.x86_64 \
  freetype-devel.x86_64 \
  gd-devel.x86_64 \
  aspell-devel.x86_64

NOTE: You can copy that entire block and paste it, the backslash (\) will carry the command over to the next line automatically.

Next, make the folders for the configs and binaries.

mkdir /usr/local/php53 /etc/php53 /etc/php53.d


Begin, by downloading and extracting the latest snapshot. Don’t use the file name I have below, get it fresh from snaps.php.net.

cd ~
wget http://us2.php.net/get/php-5.3.0.tar.bz2/from/us.php.net/mirror
tar xjf php-5.3.0.tar.bz2
cd php-5.3.0.tar.bz2

# gz: tar xzf php-5.3.0.tar.gz
# bz2: tar xfj php-5.3.0.tar.bz2
# zip: tar xfZ php-5.3.0.zip

Now, set up all of your configuration options. You may want to adjust these. To see what they mean, type: ./configure --help

./configure \
  --prefix=/usr/local/php53 \
  --with-libdir=lib64 \
  --with-config-file-path=/etc/php53 \
  --with-config-file-scan-dir=/etc/php53.d \
  --with-bz2 \
  --with-curl \
  --with-exec-dir=/usr/bin \
  --with-freetype-dir=/usr \
  --with-png-dir=/usr \
  --enable-gd-native-ttf \
  --without-gdbm \
  --with-gettext \
  --with-gmp \
  --with-iconv \
  --with-jpeg-dir=/usr \
  --with-openssl \
  --with-png-dir=/usr \
  --with-pspell \
  --with-libexpat-dir=/usr \
  --with-pcre-regex=/usr \
  --with-zlib \
  --with-layout=GNU \
  --enable-exif \
  --enable-ftp \
  --enable-magic-quotes \
  --enable-sockets \
  --enable-sysvsem \
  --enable-sysvshm \
  --enable-sysvmsg \
  --enable-wddx \
  --with-kerberos \
  --enable-ucd-snmp-hack \
  --enable-shmop \
  --enable-calendar \
  --with-mysql=mysqlnd \
  --with-mysqli=mysqlnd \
  --with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd \
  --with-mysql-sock=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock \
  --with-libxml-dir=/usr \
  --without-mysql \
  --with-gd=/usr


Finally, compile and install!

gmake
gmake install


Lastly, you’ll likely want to use it in Apache… Here is how I set up my domain to use PHP 5.3:

<VirtualHost 74.208.46.111:80>
  ServerName php53.mainelan.com:80
  ServerAlias www.php53.mainelan.com
  UseCanonicalName On
  ServerAdmin "webmaster@mainelan.net"
  DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/php53.mainelan.com/httpdocs

  . . .


Josh Guides, Web Development centos 5, php 5.3

I started playing in PHP 5.3 with Zend’s Early Access 7.0 Studio and Server CE and wanted to put it on my web server. Problem: It isn’t released yet and the library name is “php5″, same as PHP 5.2. I didn’t want to replace my production-ready PHP installation with a release candidate. I’m sure that would make my clients happy about unknown security holes, yadda yadda. The only solution is to install PHP 6 and enable it by virtual domain or directory. Please note that it is entirely possible to install PHP 5.3 along side PHP 5.2.9 using the first as CGI, but I want to avoid the confusion.

My CentOS 5 64-bit server is a VPS from 1&1.

Final notes before we get started. I did a “yum update” to bring my system to the latest everything. And no, installing libxml2 or icu via yum won’t help you. You can skip the gmake test, it is 7180 individual tests that can take a LOT of time on slower servers. CentOS is based on RedHat, so this will likely work with it as well.


# install the stuff you need to compile

Oh yeah, and running along side PHP 5? Toss something like this in a new file: /etc/httpd/conf.d/php6.conf


ScriptAlias /php6-cgi /usr/local/php6/bin/php-cgi
Action application/x-http-php6 /php6-cgi
AddHandler application/x-http-php6 .php6


Now anything .php6 will run php6 as cgi. If you have problems with CGI or MySQL, try nixing SuExec first. If you want to use it, you’ll need to be recompile it with a special folder permission for PHP 6.

Josh Guides, Web Development centos 5, icu, libxml2, php 6, php6