[TriLUG] Apache2 / PHP / MySQL Help?

[Brian McCullough]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 03:25:42PM -0400, Justis Peters wrote:
> Brian McCullough wrote:
> > I also tried reinstalling the php4 and php4-mysql packages.
> >
> > Still no joy.
> Brian,
> 
> Unless the best joy is to conquer the obstacle directly in front of you, 
> can you find another way to get to your goal?  Perhaps you could create 
> a virtual machine, install a fresh OS, and continue your configuration 
> from there.  There are quite a few distros that will give you the whole 
> LAMP stack as a simple install target (e.g. "apt-get install php-server" 
> or something like that).  You can even download quite a few pre-built 
> virtual appliances that already have a LAMP stack configured.  Here's a 
> starting point:
>   http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/lamp/

As it happens, Justis, rPath is my home these days too, and has been for
a couple of years.

Unfortunately, it is a client machine, in a rack in San Jose, installed
with Debian Sarge.  The VMware idea is intriguing -- I really don't
think it should be necessary to go that far, but maybe it is a way of
avoiding the problem, instead of trying to fix it.  The system has a
pile ( technical term! ) of Virtual Hosts defined in Apache, and we were
just trying to add another which needs to use PHP and MySQL ( Drupal
site ).

For some reason I seem to be able to add other modules successfully, 
( GD for example ), but can't seem to make MySQL work with PHP.  The
system administrator tells me that PHP has nothing to do with MySQL,
it's just a language, and besides it should have had the MySQL module
compiled in to PHP.  We don't seem to talk the same language!

Going back to the VMware idea, can we talk design?  The existing Apache2
listens to one address:port pair, and redirects queries to a couple of
dozen sites.  MySQL is listening on both a UNIX socket and on TCP
localhost.

If I install a VMware child, it would then have a new IP address within
the local network, and its Apache would be listening on that IP address.
I suppose that I could put a redirect in a placeholder in the original
Apache for the new site, bouncing connections to the new location. (
Code 302, I think )  Otherwise, we would have to publish a completely
new public IP address for the VMware Apache, correct?  The VMware
Apache, PHP and MySQL would work as we expect, I'm only concerned about
the outside access, unless you can see other issues.


Thank you for the suggestions,
Brian