Debian GNU/Linux installation notes

This section contains notes and hints specific to installing PHP on » Debian GNU/Linux.

Warning

Unofficial builds from third-parties are not supported here. Any bugs should be reported to the Debian team unless they can be reproduced using the latest builds from our » download area.

While the instructions for building PHP on Unix apply to Debian as well, this manual page contains specific information for other options, such as using either the apt or aptitude commands. This manual page uses these two commands interchangeably.

Using APT

First, note that other related packages may be desired like libapache-mod-php to integrate with Apache 2, and php-pear for PEAR.

Second, before installing a package, it's wise to ensure the package list is up to date. Typically, this is done by running the command apt update.

Example #1 Debian Install Example with Apache 2

# apt install php-common libapache2-mod-php php-cli

APT will automatically install the PHP module for Apache 2 and all of its dependencies, and then activate it. Apache should be restarted in order for the changes take place. For example:

Example #2 Stopping and starting Apache once PHP is installed

# /etc/init.d/apache2 stop
# /etc/init.d/apache2 start

Better control of configuration

In the last section, PHP was installed with only core modules. It's very likely that additional modules will be desired, such as MySQL, cURL, GD, etc. These may also be installed via the apt command.

Example #3 Methods for listing additional PHP packages

# apt-cache search php
# apt search php | grep -i mysql
# aptitude search php

The examples will show a lot of packages including several PHP specific ones like php-cgi, php-cli and php-dev. Determine which are needed and install them like any other with either apt or aptitude. And because Debian performs dependency checks, it'll prompt for those so for example to install MySQL and cURL:

Example #4 Install PHP with MySQL, cURL

# apt install php-mysql php-curl

APT will automatically add the appropriate lines to the different php.ini related files like /etc/php/7.4/php.ini, /etc/php/7.4/conf.d/*.ini, etc. and depending on the extension will add entries similar to extension=foo.so. However, restarting the web server (like Apache) is required before these changes take affect.

Common Problems

  • If the PHP scripts are not parsing via the web server, then it's likely that PHP was not added to the web server's configuration file, which on Debian may be /etc/apache2/apache2.conf or similar. See the Debian manual for further details.
  • If an extension was seemingly installed yet the functions are undefined, be sure that the appropriate ini file is being loaded and/or the web server was restarted after installation.
  • There are two basic commands for installing packages on Debian (and other linux variants): apt and aptitude. However, explaining the subtle differences between these commands goes beyond the scope of this manual.
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User Contributed Notes 6 notes

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37
thumbs at apache dot org
10 years ago
To refresh this document, perhaps it would be worth mentioning more modern methods to serve php content under apache httpd.

Specifically, the preferred method is now fastcgi, using either of those recipes:

(mod_fastcgi, httpd 2.2)
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/php-fastcgi

(mod_fcgid, httpd 2.2)
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/php-fcgid

(mod_proxy_fcgi, httpd 2.4)
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/PHP-FPM

While the legacy mod_php approach is still applicable for some older installations, the fastcgi method is much faster, and require much less RAM to operate, based on similar traffic patterns.

Thank you!
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26
kearney dot taaffe at gmail dot com
6 years ago
Compiling PHP on Ubuntu boxes.

If you would like to compile PHP from source as opposed to relying on package maintainers, here's a list of packages, and commands you can run

STEP 1:
sudo apt-get install autoconf build-essential curl libtool \
  libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev libreadline7 \
  libreadline-dev libzip-dev libzip4 nginx openssl \
  pkg-config zlib1g-dev

So you don't overwrite any existing PHP installs on your system, install PHP in your home directory. Create a directory for the PHP binaries to live

    mkdir -p ~/bin/php7-latest/

STEP 2:
# download the latest PHP tarball, decompress it, then cd to the new directory.

STEP 3:
Configure PHP. Remove any options you don't need (like MySQL or Postgres (--with-pdo-pgsql))

./configure --prefix=$HOME/bin/php-latest \
    --enable-mysqlnd \
    --with-pdo-mysql \
    --with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd \
    --with-pdo-pgsql=/usr/bin/pg_config \
    --enable-bcmath \
    --enable-fpm \
    --with-fpm-user=www-data \
    --with-fpm-group=www-data \
    --enable-mbstring \
    --enable-phpdbg \
    --enable-shmop \
    --enable-sockets \
    --enable-sysvmsg \
    --enable-sysvsem \
    --enable-sysvshm \
    --enable-zip \
    --with-libzip=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu \
    --with-zlib \
    --with-curl \
    --with-pear \
    --with-openssl \
    --enable-pcntl \
    --with-readline

STEP 4:
compile the binaries by typing: make

If no errors, install by typing: make install

STEP 5:
Copy the PHP.ini file to the install directory

    cp php.ini-development ~/bin/php-latest/lib/

STEP 6:

cd ~/bin/php-latest/etc;
mv php-fpm.conf.default php-fpm.conf
mv php-fpm.d/www.conf.default php-fpm.d/www.conf

STEP 7:
create symbolic links for your for your binary files

   cd ~/bin
   ln -s php-latest/bin/php php
   ln -s php-latest/bin/php-cgi php-cgi
   ln -s php-latest/bin/php-config php-config
   ln -s php-latest/bin/phpize phpize
   ln -s php-latest/bin/phar.phar phar
   ln -s php-latest/bin/pear pear
   ln -s php-latest/bin/phpdbg phpdbg
   ln -s php-latest/sbin/php-fpm php-fpm

STEP 8: link your local PHP to the php command. You will need to logout then log back in for php to switch to the local version instead of the installed version

# add this to .bashrc
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
  PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

STEP 9: Start PHP-FPM

    sudo ~/bin/php7/sbin/php-fpm
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-20
marin at sagovac dot com
9 years ago
To install LAMP stack on Ubuntu (+Server) from 10.04 you need first install taskel and then lamp-server for example:

Install taskel, follow terminal guides:
sudo apt-get install tasksel

Install LAMP stack package from Ubuntu repository:
sudo tasksel install lamp-server
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-29
juraj at jurajsplayground dot com
14 years ago
On Ubuntu (since 7.04), rather do:
sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Details:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ApacheMySQLPHP
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-30
John Fisher
17 years ago
With Apache2 and Php4 under Debian Sarge there is an extra configuration file :  /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
This file is not clearly documented, at least not for noobs, in Apache docs.

It overrides the conf file in the way you expect the /etc/apache2/conf.d/apache2-doc  to do according to the README.

Add ExecCGI to it to get rid of "Options ExecCGI is off in this directory"  errors.
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-40
tranzbit at yahoo dot com
14 years ago
On Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-server-5.0 phpmyadmin libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql

then restart the computer/start mysql manually
From:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186492
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