Multiple PHP versions on Ubuntu

Many of the site which work on, are running on old versions of PHP. Usually is not possible to upgrade. Thats reason, why I need to have several different versions of PHP.
PHPFarm allow multiple versions of PHP to be run concurerentry on the same machine.

PHPFarm

We install it into /opt directory which is for 3rd party software in the linux file hirearchy.

$ sudo git clone https://github.com/cweiske/phpfarm.git /opt/phpfarm

Compile Options

Now you are almost ready to compile PHP. The last task is to sort out the compile options.

For a vanilla PHP you don't need to specify any compile options, however this will leave you with a PHP that doesn`t have support for many of the things you need for running web applications - such as support for databases, GD, curl, bzip2, etc.

Here is my custom-options-5.4.sh file:

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#!/bin/bash
#gcov='--enable-gcov'
configoptions="\
--enable-bcmath \
--with-mysqli \
--with-curl \
--with-gd \
--enable-calendar \
--enable-exif \
--enable-ftp \
--enable-mbstring \
--enable-pcntl \
--enable-soap \
--enable-sockets \
--enable-wddx \
--enable-zip \
--with-zlib \
--with-gettext \
--with-openssl \
--with-pdo-mysql \
--with-mcrypt \
--enable-soap \
--with-bz2 \
--with-mysql \
--with-iconv \
$gcov"

Compile Time

To now finally compile the version we just have to run the compile.sh file as root and wait for the compile process to finish.

$ cd /opt/phpfarm/src
$ sudo ./compile.sh 5.4.32

This will download PHP 5.4.32 and buil it, using any custom compile options you have set up. When the compilation is complete you will find the PHP install in the inst directory within PHPFarm and within the bin directory, which will include symlinks to your compiled PHP files.

Verify PHP

To verify we`ve correctly compile our version we can now run the PHP binary.

$ /opt/phpfarm/inst/bin/php-5.4.32 -v
PHP 5.4.32 (cli) (built: Sep 13 2014 21:05:58) (DEBUG)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
$ /opt/phpfarm/inst/bin/php-cgi-5.4.32 -v
PHP 5.4.32 (cgi-fcgi) (built: Sep 13 2014 21:06:05) (DEBUG)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies

Setup Apache

Enable the fastcgi module.

$ sudo a2enmod fastcgi
Enabling module fastcgi.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 restart

Configure Apache

Now we have to configure Apache to use this as a FastCGI Handler. To do this we add those lines before the “IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.load” line.

$ sudo vim /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add this:

FastCgiServer /var/www/cgi-bin/php-cgi-5.4.32 -idle-timeout 240
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin-php/ /var/www/cgi-bin/

Next we have to comment the second last line of the configuration of the FastCGI module in /etc/apache2/mods-available/fastcgi.conf

$ sudo vim /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/fastcgi.conf

And comment this line:

FastCgiIpcDir /var/lib/apache2/fastcgi

This is how the file look now:

<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
  AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
  #FastCgiWrapper /usr/lib/apache2/suexec
  #FastCgiIpcDir /var/lib/apache2/fastcgi
</IfModule>

Prepare file structure

$ cd /var/www

If the cgi-bin isn`t already here create it

$ sudo mkdir cgi-bin

For each version of PHP you intend to use make one of these files. Replace the ending with the version number For PHP 5.4.32 we make file php-cgi-5.4.32

$ sudo vim /var/www/cgi-bin/php-cgi-5.4.32

And fill the file with this:

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#!/bin/bash
PHPRC="/opt/phpfarm/src/php-5.4.32/lib/php.ini"
export PHPRC

PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=3
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN

PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=5000
export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS

exec /opt/phpfarm/inst/bin/php-cgi-5.4.32

We also need to make sure the file is actually executable:

$ sudo chmod +x /var/www/cgi-bin/php-cgi-5.4.32

Setup Virtualhost

The next step is to set up an Apache VirtualHost to use PHPfarm. Add this snippet to your virtualhost configuration:

AddHandler php-cgi .php
Action php-cgi /cgi-bin-php/php-cgi-5.4.30
<FilesMatch "\.php$">
    SetHandler php-cgi
</FilesMatch>

For example my file /etc/apache2/sites-available/test.dev.conf:

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    ServerName test.dev 
    DocumentRoot /var/www/test/httpdocs

    <Directory /var/www/test/httpdocs>
        Options Indexes FollowSymlinks Includes ExecCGI
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        Require all granted

        AddHandler php-cgi .php
        Action php-cgi /cgi-bin-php/php-cgi-5.4.32
        <FilesMatch "\.php$">
            SetHandler php-cgi
        </FilesMatch>
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/www/test/log/error.log
    LogLevel info
    CustomLog /var/www/test/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Finish

Activate your site.

$ sudo a2ensite test.dev.conf

Restart Apache

$ sudo service apache2 restart

Now website test.dev should run on PHP 5.4.32