Possibility to use also php4 along default php5 with mod_fcgid and suexec

SiteWorx Feature Requests
, ,
1

Php4 is still very much needed by some customers and sometimes its not trivial to migrate them to php5. Providing client switchable php5 or php4 option would be a nice thing. We are currently trying to implement it manually but I would rather see it in iworx-CP than a separate hack. After looking around for a proper solution we did choose custom php4 centos 5.x rpm (based on iworx php4-4.4.8 src rpm with some minor mods) + mod_fcgid + suexec combination - as supposedly it should be nearly as fast as mod_php. suPHP is told to be too slow. mod_fcgid + php supports also properly apache multithreading - so maybe using also php5 with mod_fcgid would be better solution overall than using mod_php.

Some references - http://typo3.org/development/articles/using-php-with-mod-fcgid/?tx_rlmpofficedocuments_pi1[view]=single&cHash=45a565e1de
http://www.interworx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1354
http://www.felix-schwarz.name/Secure_PHP_environments_with_PHP,suexec_and_FastCGI(mod_fcgid)_(en)

2

I did this several months ago using suPHP. In my case, I built the PHP 5 binaries from source and put them in /usr/local/bin. I also switched the PHP 4 config so that it too uses suPHP, mainly so that all php script are run under the owner’s UID for security purposes. I haven’t noticed any speed issues with my scripts.

FWIW, cPanel is using a similar solution, based on suPHP, and my host–which uses cPanel on all of their shared servers–doesn’t seem to be having any issues.

–Jason

3

We have this setup working - mod_fcgi + php4-cgi or php5-cgi. I’ll post my remarks how we did it but following directions are not maybe generally suiteable for everyone - or simply put you may need to make changes to make it suit for you.

The trickiest part was to build php4 rpm - that would support fastcgi api and would install without conflict besides php5 which is default on RHEL/CentOS 5 - os that we use. PHP4 rpm spec file hack is a dirty and quick one - and currently rpm install location is hard coded (/usr/local/activesys) - feel free to change it and clean it.

General steps:

  1. Install mod_fcgid.so for apache
  2. Install php4 rpms
  3. Configure desired vhost(s)

Step 1 - install mod_fcgid

Setup activesys yum repository for binary rpms (x86_64 only atm)

 nano -w /etc/yum.repos.d/activesys.repo
--- cut here ---
[activesys]
name=CentOS-$releasever - activesys packages for $basearch
baseurl=http://code.active.ee/CentOS/$releasever/activesys/$basearch/RPMS
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
protect=1
--- cut here ---
 
yum install mod_fcgid
service httpd restart
#following is required to correctly enable mod_fcid for apache
nano -w  /etc/httpd/conf.d/fcgid.conf
--- MODIFY ---
#LoadModule fcgid_module modules/mod_fcgid.so
--- MODIFY ---
 
nano -w  /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
--- MODIFY ---
LoadModule fcgid_module /usr/lib64/httpd/modules/mod_fcgid.so
--- MODIFY ---
 
service httpd restart

Step 2 - install php4-cgi under /usr/local/activesys/

 yum install php4 php4-mysql php4-pgsql php4-gd php4-mbstring
#as previous line removes php5 package - so reinstall it
yum install php
#make symlink for php libs
ln -s /usr/local/activesys/usr/lib64/php4 /usr/lib64/php4
 
nano -w /usr/local/activesys/etc/php.ini
--- MODIFY ---
max_execution_time = 60
memory_limit = 32M
post_max_size = 10M
upload_max_filesize=10M
--- MODIFY ---

Step 3 - configure vhost

#INSIDE DOMAIN HTML ROOT
nano -w /home/username/domain.ee/html/php.fcgi
--- PHP4 ADD ---
#!/bin/sh
PHPRC="/usr/local/activesys/etc"
export PHPRC
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=8
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=5000
export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS
exec /usr/local/activesys/usr/bin/php4-cgi
--- PHP4 ADD ---
 
--- PHP5 ADD ---
#!/bin/sh
PHPRC="/etc"
export PHPRC
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=8
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=5000
export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS
exec /usr/bin/php-cgi
--- PHP5 ADD ---
 
chmod 500 /home/username/domain.ee/html/php.fcgi
chown username:username /home/username/domain.ee/html/php.fcgi
 
nano -w /etc/httpd/conf.d/domain.ee.conf
#INSIDE DOMAIN VHOST CONF
--- ADD ---
AddHandler fcgid-script .php
<Directory /home/username/domain.ee/html>
    AllowOverride  All
    FCGIWrapper /home/username/domain.ee/html/php.fcgi .php
</Directory>
--- ADD ---

NB! IF error 500 messages then there might be a need for user shell account to be enabled first time - unverified atm.
service httpd reload

Here is transcript for rpm rebuilders - we have rpmbuilder account for source rpm rebuilding.

mod_fcgid

#Go to rpmbuilder host
yum install httpd-devel
su - rpmbuilder
cd src_rpms
wget ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/epel/5/SRPMS/mod_fcgid-2.2-4.el5.src.rpm
cd ..
rpmbuild --rebuild src_rpms/mod_fcgid-2.2-4.el5.src.rpm

php4

Get php4-4.4.8 src rpm

  • http://www.labcoding.com/generic/php4-rpm-448-for-centos-5/
  • http://www.labcoding.com/linux/php-448-and-eaccelerator-0952-srpms-for-centos-5/ 

#on rpmbuilder host
yum install curl-devel gmp-devel aspell-devel pcre-devel libc-client-devel unixODBC-devel net-snmp-devel elfutils-devel libxslt-devel libxml2-devel ncurses-devel krb5-devel mysql-devel expat-devel
mkdir /usr/lib64/rpm
ln -sf /usr/lib/rpm/magic.mime /usr/lib64/rpm/magic.mime
 
su - rpmbuilder
#unpack src rpm for modification
rpm -Uvh src_rpms/php4-4.4.8-LAB4.src.rpm
 
nano -w redhat/SPECS/php4-4.4.8_LAB3.spec
---------------------------------------------
#modify line nr. 9
Release: asys
 
#modify line nr. 133
Conflicts: php4-apache
 
#add after line nr. 473
# Remove more failed tests on x86_64 (ActiveSys)
rm -f ext/standard/tests/file/bug26938.phpt
rm -f ext/standard/tests/file/proc_open01.phpt
rm -f ext/standard/tests/file/userstreams.phpt
 
#modify lines nr. 506, 507, 539, 555
--with-config-file-path=/usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir} \
--with-config-file-scan-dir=/usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.d \
--enable-fastcgi \
--with-mysql=shared \
 
modify lines starting from nr. 609
make install INSTALL_ROOT=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys
mv $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php4-cgi
make install-cli INSTALL_ROOT=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys
mv $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php4
 
618
make install-sapi INSTALL_ROOT=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys
 
621
# Install the default configuration file and icons
install -m 755 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/
install -m 644    php.ini-recommended $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.ini
install -m 755 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{contentdir}/icons
install -m 644    *.gif $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{contentdir}/icons/
 
 
# install the DSO
install -m 755 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/httpd/modules
install -m 755 build-apache/libs/libphp4.so $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/httpd/modules
 
# Apache config fragment
install -m 755 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys/etc/httpd/conf.d
install -m 644 $RPM_SOURCE_DIR/php.conf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys/etc/httpd/conf.d
 
install -m 755 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.d
install -m 755 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_localstatedir}/lib/php4
install -m 700 -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_localstatedir}/lib/php4/session
 
643
cat > $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.d/${mod}.ini <<EOF
 
648, 649
%attr(755,root,root) /usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/php4/${mod}.so
%config(noreplace) %attr(644,root,root) /usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.d/${mod}.ini
 
656
# Remove unpackaged files
rm -f  $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/php4/*.a \
       $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/{phptar,pearize,peardev,pecl}
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys/.channels \
       $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/build \
       $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys%{_mandir}/man1/
rm -f  $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/activesys/{.depdb,.depdblock,.filemap,.lock} \
 
678
%config(noreplace) /usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.ini
%config /usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/pear.conf
/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php4
/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php4-cgi
%dir /usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/php4
/usr/local/activesys%{_includedir}/php
%dir /usr/local/activesys%{_localstatedir}/lib/php4
%attr(0770,root,apache) %dir /usr/local/activesys%{_localstatedir}/lib/php4/session
/usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/httpd/modules/libphp4.so
%config /usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/httpd/conf.d/php.conf
%dir /usr/local/activesys%{_sysconfdir}/php.d
/usr/local/activesys%{contentdir}/icons/php.gif
 
693
/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/pear
/usr/local/activesys%{_datadir}/pear
 
698
/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/php-config
/usr/local/activesys%{_bindir}/phpize
 
701
/usr/local/activesys%{_libdir}/php4
----------------------------------------------
 
rpmbuild -ba redhat/SPECS/php4-4.4.8_LAB3.spec