by ·0 Comments

It is not easy to upgrade PHP 5.5 to 5.6 in FreeBSD. Without proper preparation, the upgrade process may drive you nut. Before you decide to get your hands wet, here are what I recommend you to do:

  1. Back up your files
  2. Test your website in a PHP 5.6 environment on a different server. It is because PHP 5.6 has introduced some backward incompatibilities. Some of the codes written in the prior versions may introduce run time error. See here for more information.
  3. Schedule a down time. Depending on your CPU speed / typing speed / trouble-shooting skill, it may take you an hour.

Background

I am assuming that you use PHP for web purposes (rather than command line / CLI only), and I am assuming that you are using PHP with Apache. Here are the ports you will need to touch:

  • Apache: /usr/ports/www/apache22 or /usr/ports/www/apache24
  • Apache-PHP: /usr/ports/www/mod_php56
  • PHP: /usr/ports/lang/php56
  • PHP Extensions: /usr/ports/lang/php56-extensions

1. Remove the old PHP and extensions

cd /usr/ports/lang/php55
sudo make deinstall clean


cd /usr/ports/lang/php55-extensions
sudo make deinstall clean

2. Install PHP 5.6

cd /usr/ports/lang/php56

#Don't forget enable ZTS if you have threaded Apache.
sudo make install clean

3. Install PHP 5.6 Extensions

cd /usr/ports/lang/php56-extensions
sudo make install clean

4. Test PHP and its extensions

php -v
php -m

Clean up the error by removing the duplicated entries in:
/usr/local/etc/php/extensions.ini

5. Rebuild the Apache-PHP Bridge

cd /usr/ports/www/mod_php55
sudo make deinstall clean

cd /usr/ports/www/mod_php56
#Don't forget enable ZTS if you have threaded Apache.
sudo make install clean

6. Restart Apache

sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache restart

7. Test PHP using phpinfo

Create a code called test.php to display phpinfo. Verify that everything is okay.

< ?php
phpinfo();
?>

8. Reinstall Apache (optional)

If you experience any problem, try to reinstall the following ports:

Apache: /usr/ports/www/apache22 or /usr/ports/www/apache24
Apache-PHP: /usr/ports/www/mod_php56

That’s it! Enjoy the new PHP!

–Derrick

Our sponsors:

by ·0 Comments

I’ve never thought about deleting a Memcache key is a difficult task. It took me few hours to figure out a working solution. No kidding. FYI, I am using PHP 5.4

Suppose you store a very expensive data into the Memcache, and you decide to delete it later. According to the PHP documentation, it should be very simple:

$memcache_obj->delete('key_to_delete');

or

memcache_delete($memcache_obj, 'key_to_delete');

However, this method only works with scalar variables, such as string, integer, double, float, Boolean etc. It does not work with non-scalar variables such as array, object etc.

I have tried many different ways, such as setting the value to something else, e.g., 

$memcache->set('key_to_delete', 'deleted');

or making the key to expire immediately:

$memcache->set('key_to_delete', 'deleted', 0, 1);
$memcache->set('key_to_delete', 'deleted', 0, -1);

Unfortunately, none of these methods worked in my case (my variable is a non-scalar array). So, I ended up doing it in a low-level way: Bypassing the PECL-Memcache (PHP Library) and talk to the Memcache server directly. Guess what, it works very well. The variable gets deleted!

function MEMCACHE_DEL_HASH($key){
	
	if ($key == '') return FALSE;
	
	$socket = @fsockopen('localhost', 11211);
	$command = "delete {$key}";
	
	fwrite($socket, $command."\r\n");
	fclose($socket);
	
	return true;
}

And it is super easy to call this function:

MEMCACHE_DEL_HASH('key_to_delete');

Feel free to modify this function such that you can pass in the connector, port or do anything you like.

That’s it! Have fun with Memcache.

–Derrick

Our sponsors:

by ·1 Comment

After upgrading to PHP 5.4.3 (which is the first version of PHP 5.4 available in the FreeBSD port), I found that the pecl-tokyo_tyrant could not be compiled. Here is the error messages:

cd /usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant
sudo make

===>  pecl-tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0 cannot install: doesn't work with PHP version : 5 (Doesn't support PHP 5).
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant.

/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:1827: error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or '__attribute__' before 'php_tokyo_tyrant_class_methods'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:1867: error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or '__attribute__' before 'php_tokyo_tyrant_table_class_methods'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:1911: error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or '__attribute__' before 'php_tokyo_tyrant_query_class_methods'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:1936: error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or '__attribute__' before 'php_tokyo_tyrant_iterator_class_methods'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c: In function 'php_tokyo_tyrant_query_object_new':
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2001: error: 'zend_class_entry' has no member named 'default_properties'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c: In function 'php_tokyo_tyrant_iterator_object_new':
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2052: error: 'zend_class_entry' has no member named 'default_properties'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c: In function 'php_tokyo_tyrant_object_new_ex':
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2090: error: 'zend_class_entry' has no member named 'default_properties'
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c: In function 'zm_startup_tokyo_tyrant':
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2166: error: 'php_tokyo_tyrant_class_methods' undeclared (first use in this function)
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2166: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2166: error: for each function it appears in.)
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2171: error: 'php_tokyo_tyrant_table_class_methods' undeclared (first use in this function)
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2176: error: 'php_tokyo_tyrant_query_class_methods' undeclared (first use in this function)
/usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0/tokyo_tyrant.c:2182: error: 'php_tokyo_tyrant_iterator_class_methods' undeclared (first use in this function)
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/work/tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant.

Basically, it means that the pecl-tokyo_tyrant is not happy with the new version of PHP 5.4. I’ve tried several methods, including using pkg_add, compiling from source, copying a working tokyo_tyrant.so etc, unfortunately none of these methods works.

Finally, I found that the maintainer of this package has made a new version available(0.6.2) at github. Here is how I did it:

First, go to here to grab the source code. Make sure that you download the tag.gz version because it has the file attribute available.

Second, let’s remove the pecl-tokyo_tyrant from your system. You can either do it in the port or pkg_delete:

From port:

cd /usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant
sudo make deinstall

Or using pkg_delete:

sudo pkg_delete pecl-tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0

Now, extract the files and compile it from source:

tar -zxvf mkoppanen-php-tokyo_tyrant-0.6.0-2-gb0d7e0c.tar.gz
cd mkoppanen-php-tokyo_tyrant-b0d7e0c
sudo phpize
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

and don’t forget to include the .so file in your configuration:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/php/extensions.ini

Add the following (if not available) to the end of the file:

extension=tokyo_tyrant.so

Finally, let’s restart the Apache:

sudo apachectl stop
sudo apachectl start

That’s it! Have fun with Tokyo Tyrant with PHP 5.4.

–Derrick

Our sponsors:

by ·6 Comments

When PHP 5.4 was available few months ago, I was hesitated to upgrade my FreeBSD box to upgrade to 5.4, because it comes with lots of big changes, including removing LOTS of old stuffs that were available in 5.3 or earlier versions.

Today PHP 5.4.3 becomes available in FreeBSD ports. I guess it is stable enough and I should give it a try, and I am glad that I tried it in my test machine first.

Warning: Before you upgrade to PHP 5.4, make sure that you are not using any of the following packages, because they are not compatible with the PHP 5.4. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution yet. Basically, I could not get them compiled.

  • eAccelerator: /usr/ports/www/eaccelerator/
  • PECL-TokyoTyrant: /usr/ports/databases/pecl-tokyo_tyrant/ (Updated: I just came up a solution here)

When I performed the upgrade using the following command:

sudo portsnap fetch update
sudo portmaster -Da

I got the following error message:

===>>> The databases/php5-sqlite port has been deleted: Removed from core php
===>>> Aborting update

The reason why you see this problem because php5-sqlite is no longer available in PHP 5.4. In order to solve this problem, you will need to delete the php5-sqlite extension.

cd /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions
sudo make config

Uncheck the following: sqlite3 support

Now, deinstall this port. Yes, let’s remove it and install it again. (I’ve tried the reinstall option and it didn’t work, so let’s stick with deinstall and install.

sudo make deinstall clean install clean

Now let’s find out which php-SQLite we should delete:

pkg_info | grep php5-sqlite

In my case, I deleted this one:

sudo pkg_delete php5-sqlite-5.3.13

Now upgrade the port again and FreeBSD should be happy about it. Enjoy PHP 5.4.

–Derrick

Our sponsors:

by ·1 Comment

A user complained to me that my PHP web applications stopped working today. After I digged into the error log, I found that following message:

PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 262144 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 261900 bytes) in Unknown on line 0

Obviously, this is related to the memory error. Therefore I tried to increase the limit of memory_limit in php.ini. Since I have 8G of memory in my box, I think it is okay to set the memory limit of PHP to 4GB.

;memory_limit = 128M
memory_limit = 4096M

When I restart the Apache/PHP, I found another nightmare. My web application stopped working! When the user tries to access http://mywebsite/index.php, instead of rendering the code, the browser kept prompting the user to download the file.

After scratching my head for a while, I found that I missed something, which is very very important. I was running XAMPP (32-bit) on a Fedora 64-bit machine. See the problem? Since XAMPP is running in 32-bit, it does not understand what is 4096 MB. (If you install 4GB of memory in any Windows 32-bit machine, you will notice that Windows can only allocate 3GB of them, and the 1GB left memory is sitting inside your computer and doing nothing…) Therefore, I decrease the memory_limit to 2048MB, and that solved the problem.

Time to move away from XAMPP.

–Derrick

Our sponsors:

by ·3 Comments

A new version of PHP (5.3.9) was available in FreeBSD today. Since it contained a lot of security fixes and enhancements, I decided to give it a try. After testing the new PHP in couple test servers, I think it is ready to upgrade the PHP on the production server. Oh well, I didn’t expect that I needed to spend my whole lunch break to trouble-shoot this problem. So here is what I did:

# cd /usr/ports/lang/php5
# make install
===>  Vulnerability check disabled, database not found
===>  License check disabled, port has not defined LICENSE
===>  Found saved configuration for php5-5.3.9
===>  Extracting for php5-5.3.9
=> SHA256 Checksum mismatch for php-5.3.9.tar.bz2.
=> SHA256 Checksum OK for suhosin-patch-5.3.4-0.9.10.patch.gz.
===>  Refetch for 1 more times files: php-5.3.9.tar.bz2
===>  Vulnerability check disabled, database not found
===>  License check disabled, port has not defined LICENSE
===>  Found saved configuration for php5-5.3.9
=> php-5.3.9.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist in /usr/ports/distfiles/.
=> Attempting to fetch from http://dk.php.net/distributions/.
fetch: http://dk.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.9.tar.bz2: Requested Range Not Satisfiable
=> Attempting to fetch from http://de.php.net/distributions/.
fetch: http://de.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.9.tar.bz2: Requested Range Not Satisfiable
=> Attempting to fetch from http://es.php.net/distributions/.
fetch: http://es.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.9.tar.bz2: Requested Range Not Satisfiable
=> Attempting to fetch from http://fi.php.net/distributions/.
fetch: http://fi.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.9.tar.bz2: Requested Range Not Satisfiable
=> Attempting to fetch from http://fr.php.net/distributions/.
===>  Vulnerability check disabled, database not found
===>  License check disabled, port has not defined LICENSE
===>  Found saved configuration for php5-5.3.9
=> SHA256 Checksum mismatch for php-5.3.9.tar.bz2.
=> SHA256 Checksum OK for  suhosin-patch-5.3.9-0.9.10.patch.gz
===>  Giving up on fetching files: php-5.3.9.tar.bz2
Make sure the Makefile and distinfo file (/usr/ports/lang/php5/distinfo)
are up to date.  If you are absolutely sure you want to override this
check, type "make NO_CHECKSUM=yes [other args]".
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/lang/php5.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/lang/php5.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/lang/php5.

Initially, I thought it was a checksum error. So I decided to skip the checksum, i.e.,

#make install NO_CHECKSUM=yes

Unfortunately, it gave the same error. I think the problem might come from corrupted port files or port database. Instead of finding the source of the problem, I decided to rebuild the whole thing.

First, let’s remove the port database:

#sudo rm -Rf /var/db/portsnap/*

Next, we need to re-download all port files:

#sudo portsnap fetch extract

Some new ports may be released during the extraction, let’s make sure that the port tree is up to date:

#sudo portsnap fetch update

Now, we need to manually download the php source. Make sure that the file is stored in /usr/ports/distfiles/

#cd /usr/ports/distfiles/
#sudo wget http://fi.php.net/distributions/php-5.3.9.tar.bz2

Now, try to test whether the system can build php again. Notice that this will not install the PHP in your system.

cd /usr/ports/lang/php5
sudo make

If it gives no error, which means the PHP is ready to go. Now let’s clean up our work and make sure everything is ready.

sudo make clean

Notice that there is no way to upgrade the PHP from Make without uninstall it. Since it is a production server, I want to keep the website running. So I decide to let Portmaster to do all dirty works for me.

sudo portmaster -Da

Depending on your CPU, it may take 5 minutes to an hour to finish the update. Normally, the standard php package will work fine after the update. However, if it is not a standard package, such as PECL, you will need to do one more step. For example, here is the error messages right after I upgraded PHP:

#php -v
[eAccelerator] This build of "eAccelerator" was compiled for PHP version 5.3.8.
Rebuild it for your PHP version (5.3.9) or download precompiled binaries.

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20090626/memcache.so' - /usr/local/lib/php/20090626/memcache.so: Undefined symbol "php_session_create_id" in Unknown on line 0

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/20090626/tokyo_tyrant.so' - /usr/local/lib/php/20090626/tokyo_tyrant.so: Undefined symbol "ps_globals" in Unknown on line 0

PHP 5.3.9 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jan 12 2012 13:09:43)
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2012 Zend Technologies

[eAccelerator] This build of “eAccelerator” was compiled for PHP version 5.3.8.
Rebuild it for your PHP version (5.3.9) or download precompiled binaries.

To solve this problem, simple rebuild the package, i.e.,

cd /usr/ports/www/eaccelerator
sudo make deinstall install clean

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20090626/memcache.so’ – /usr/local/lib/php/20090626/memcache.so: Undefined symbol “php_session_create_id” in Unknown on line 0

#cd /usr/ports/databases/pecl-memcache
#sudo make deinstall
#sudo make install clean

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘/usr/local/lib/php/20090626/tokyo_tyrant.so’ – /usr/local/lib/php/20090626/tokyo_tyrant.so: Undefined symbol “ps_globals” in Unknown on line 0

#cd /usr/ports/pecl-tokyo_tyrant
#sudo make deinstall
#sudo make install clean

After the re-installation is completed, make sure that PHP gives no complain:

#php -v

PHP 5.3.9 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jan 12 2012 13:09:43)
Copyright (c) 1997-2012 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2012 Zend Technologies

That’s it! Have fun.

Our sponsors:

by ·1 Comment

When I tried to connect to the MySQL server through PHP, I got the following error: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock’ (2)

To give you some background, here is my situation. My Fedora Linux is a 64-bit machine, and I have installed a 32-bit version of XAMPP (i.e., 32-bit PHP, 32-bit MySQL) for the web server. Also, I have some PHP scripts that will be run in background. These scripts are run using 64-bit PHP. Both 32-bit and 64-bit PHP need to access the MySQL database. Long story short. I got the MySQL error message when I tried to execute using the 64-bit PHP, while the 32-bit PHP has no complain.

When PHP talks to MySQL, it needs to talk to the MySQL representative, i.e., mysql.sock. If it cannot talk to the mysql.sock, then PHP will be unable to access the MySQL database.

The reason why my 64-bit PHP could not talk to MySQL because of a wrong location of mysql.sock. To solve this problem, simply do the following:

First, let’s find out where is the PHP.ini of the 64-bit PHP:

sudo find / -name "php.ini"

In Fedora Linux, it is:

/etc/php.ini

Then, we need to find out where is the mysql.sock:

sudo find / -name "mysql.sock"

In my case, it is:

/opt/lampp/var/mysql/mysql.sock

Now, let’s tell PHP the location of the mysql.sock:

sudo nano /etc/php.ini

And change the following line from:

mysql.default_socket =

to:

mysql.default_socket = /opt/lampp/var/mysql/mysql.sock

Now, try to run your script again. The problem should be gone.

Have fun with MySQL.

–Derrick

Our sponsors:

by ·4 Comments

I am working on a PHP application which needs to be deploy to multiple places. One of the variables is the number of CPU core. Since each server has different number of CPU cores, I need to specify the number of CPU core in my application for each server. I think there should be a smarter way to do it.

PHP is a scripting language, it has limit support on accessing the hardware level information. In short, there is no library or function to do it. Fortunately, we can do it via shell command. In the other words, the following methods are not limited to PHP, it will work in any languages, as long as your language supports running the UNIX command and catch the return.

Getting the number of CPU Cores – Linux

(Tested on Fedora, Ubuntu Linux, should work on other Linuxs because they all use the same Linux kernel.)

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l

This will return something like this:

8

Getting the number of CPU Cores – FreeBSD

sysctl -a | grep 'hw.ncpu' | cut -d ':' -f2

which will return something like this (notice the extra space before the number):

8

Now, let’s put everything together. Run the command inside your application (Here I am using PHP for example):

//Linux
$cmd = "cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l";

//FreeBSD
$cmd = "sysctl -a | grep 'hw.ncpu' | cut -d ':' -f2";

$cpuCoreNo = intval(trim(shell_exec($cmd)));

Of course, you can make the application to detect the system automatically:

$cmd = "uname";
$OS = strtolower(trim(shell_exec($cmd)));

switch($OS){
   case('linux'):
      $cmd = "cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l";
      break;

   case('freebsd'):
      $cmd = "sysctl -a | grep 'hw.ncpu' | cut -d ':' -f2";
      break;

   default:
      unset($cmd);
}

if ($cmd != ''){
   $cpuCoreNo = intval(trim(shell_exec($cmd)));
}

That’s it! Happy PHPing.

–Derrick

Our sponsors: