Running php4 and php5 together in server

Normally, there will be one version of php in server that is running as Apache API. We can configure another version of php for a domain, and we run this php as CGI.

In this article, I assume that php4 is running server wide and configured as Apache API. We will configure php5 as CGI for a domain say domain.com with DocumentRoot /home/user/public_html.

The server wide php4 will be installed either in /usr or /usr/local folder. We will install the new php5 into a different folder say, /usr/local/php5

Following are the steps

1. Download, compile and install the source.

cd /usr/local/src
tar -xjf php-5.2.3.tar.bz2
cd php-5.2.3
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 --exec-prefix=/usr/local/php5 --with-mysql
make
make install

In the above example, I compiled php5 with only mysql support. You need to specify other options if you need support for them.

It will install the php5 into the folder /usr/local/php5. You will be able to see the following folders, if the compilation is successfull.

bin/  etc/  include/  lib/  man/

and inside the bin/ folder you will have the required binaries.

2. Configure Apache to use php5 for domain.com domain.

Add the following Directory tab outside the VirtualHost entry for domain.com.

<Directory /home/user/public_html>
        AddHandler php-script .php
        Action php-script /cgi-bin/php-cgi
</Directory>

Now, if any php file in that domain is referenced, it will use the php-script handler to process the php file. The action script specified in the above example is under the cgi-bin folder. So we need to copy the php cgi binary into that folder.

cp /usr/local/php5/bin/php-cgi /home/user/public_html/cgi-bin/

We are done!

The configuration of new php can be verified by putting a phpinfo page in that domain.

Tips: If apache is looking for the php binary in folder /usr/local/apache/ folder, you need to copy that php-cgi binary into the cgi-sys folder.