NYCPHP Meetup

[John Lacey]

Jayesh Sheth wrote:
> 
> I think there must be XAMPP version for Linux with PHP 5, but I did want 
> to install it on top of my existing setup which had Apache 2, PHP 4 and 
> MySQL 4.0 already installed. So then I would need uninstall all of those 
> (AMP) and then install XAMPP. Another thing is that XAMPP is a 
> distribution meant for local development, as opposed to server 
> deployment. So it bundles every possible library, and leaves settings 
> wide open. I think I read once that there is a secure settings script, 
> but still there would hand tuning / human sanity checks required.

a few thoughts:

One of the things I like most about the way XAMPP is "installed" on 
Windows is that it's not really installed (ala registry entries), but 
puts everything in C:\xampp (assuming the default).  As you know, you 
can either install Apache and MySQL as services or just run them with 
the ...start.bat files and keep the dos cmd windows open.

The same holds true for XAMPP on Linux.  If you take the default it 
wants to "install" into /opt/lampp (as opposed to say, /usr/bin/blah...) 
So, you don't really have to uninstall Apache PHP4, MySQL, but merely 
stop those services.  Of course, as you've stated, XAMPP is not meant 
for production, security-wise, but for development [and learning]. For 
example, it sets register_globals to "On", etc.

To that end, I've used XAMPP [on Windows] in both PHP5 and PHP4 "mode" 
by using the php_switch.bat "feature".  XAMPP on Linux can also be 
switched back and forth:

By the following command you can switch "back" to PHP 4.3.x:
/opt/lampp/lampp php4
And with the following command you can switch back to PHP 5.0.x:
/opt/lampp/lampp php5


> 
> I figured it would easier just to add PHP 5 as a CGI binary mapped to a 
> specific subdirectory of my htdocs folder, so that I could continue to 
> use PHP 4 while also using PHP 5-specfic apps.

As to running them both --from a previous talk post re: John's note on 
running PHP4 and PHP5 on the same box...

Here's the August post John Coggeshall wrote with regard to mod_proxy:
http://lists.nyphp.org/pipermail/talk/2004-August/011613.html

and the link to the instructions from the above post:
http://wiki.coggeshall.org/Main/RunningPHP4AndPHP5Concurrently


HTH,
John