Posted by yolau

This article will help you install and run on the same server php 4 and 5. Users will be allowed to choose what version to use for their scrips.
Although I personally don’t recommend this as it has many performance implications it’s something that small webhosts use so that they don’t have to have different servers for different php versions.

O k, let’s get started. Before I explain how to install it please note that part of this article is inspired by a post on Defender Hosting Forum (http://forums.defenderhosting.com/showthread.php?t=2103)

1. Compiler check

/scripts/checkccompiler
rm -rf /home/cpphpbuild
mkdir /home/cpphpbuild
cd /home/cpphpbuild

2. Download and extract php

wget http://us2.php.net/get/php-5.2.4.tar.gz/from/this/mirror
tar zfx php-5.2.4.tar.gz
cd php-5.2.4

3. Configure and build the php installation (credits go to elix for an excellent work)

echo “#define HAVE_SENDMAIL 1″ >> /home/cpphpbuild/php-5.2.4/main/php_config.h
wget http://www.elix.us/tutorials/php5.gen.cpanel
chmod 700 php5.gen.cpanel
./php5.gen.cpanel
make
make install

4. Moving the files and finishing the configuration

cp -f /usr/local/php5/bin/php5 /usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5
chown root:wheel /usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5

cp -p /home/cpphpbuild/php-5.2.4/php.ini-recommended /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini
chown root.root /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini
chmod 644 /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini

echo “cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 ; needed for CGI/FastCGI mode” >> /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini

5. Now we have to add a few lines to the httpd.conf file

pico /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf

Add in the section – “index.php5″ before index.php4
Add after “AddType application/x-httpd-php .phtml”

Action application/x-httpd-php5 “/cgi-sys/php5″
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php5

6. Test the installation

service httpd configtest

If you get any errors please check that you done all the steps properly.
If everything is ok you can now restart apache

7. Restart apache

service httpd restart

Now any files with the extension .php5 will be parsed by php 5 and all the other files will be parsed by your “normal” php 4 installation.

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