Building a current FLAP stack

In the past we have managed the FLAP stack on SUSE, but support for current versions of Apache and PHP are currently not available, so a switch to an alternative distribution seemed appropriate. The problem is which one provides better support? Having tried a few other platforms in the past a quick scan through them gave an indication that while the current PHP build, 5.4, is available in test repos, 2.4 build of Apache has not yet made it to the real world.  Not having used distrowatch for some time, I was pleasantly surprised that while the irritation of broken links still applies, more information is now current. However finding a more modern package set is still time consuming. A number of recent LTS distros are now locked to PHP5.3 and Apache2.2 and so are not pursuing the later versions of either, and some do not even support Firebird.

One thing that had been flagged via the PHP internals list was that while the current packages are still a little behind, 'Les RPM de Remi' provides a more up to date repository for Fedora. F18 is planned to be a more current build, but is only just at alpha stage, and there were problems getting the test distribution installed. Switching back to F17 introduced another problem since the 'network install' has no option to manually configure the IP addresses. OK I know I should sort out the DHCP system here, but with a pair of ADSL modems and extra mobile broadband modem sitting on the network it's easier just to manually configure and select the modem I want depending on available bandwidth. SUSE simply allows me to manually configure the network if it can't do it automatically and find the on-line updates. Anyway, installing F17 from the live disc and then manually configuring the network gives a working base.

(TODO ... check upgrade to F18alpha rather than trying to install it fresh)

While we do not need a desktop for a server, using the same distro on the desktop makes management of the text only systems easier, as the problems configuring Fedora when one is used to SUSE shows below. The first action on any desktop install is to kill all of the 'animation', and having ditched KDE when it completely (and unnecessarily) reorganised the way the desktop worked in favour of Gnome which still had a simple 'classic' workflow. Gnome's attempt to play catchup with KDE at least includes the 'gnome-rollback' which was missing from KDE's 'upgrade'. My own main problem with the latest 'improvements' is the moving over all the toolbar functions to the top. Having to use vari-focal glasses nowadays, the close work section is at the bottom of the field of view, so having to look up to the top of the screen is quickly tiring so working around the 'political' decision to block changes back has been annoying, Fedora seems to be supporting that stand, but we are now getting this under control. Classic view in Gnome3 are my own notes for carrying out this switch.

Anyway, next step was to gain access to the remi repository to configure the currently preferred FLAP configuration. Fedora does not seem to have a GUI access to the repository configuration, so a quick command line twiddle seemed to be required.

However what I was missing was that there is a small manually loadable RPM which can be used to configure these extra entries. Fedora 17 extra repos for the Remi Repo ( This is the UK mirror ). Installing this package manually nicely adds the base repo as well as the development one. I had already added them via the command line, but the third 'test' repo was also added, whoever I had to drop into 'software sources' and enable the extra one, and swap over the other two. Just need to remove the manually added ones.

One variation to remember here is that Fedora still uses 'httpd' for the apache package rather than 'apache2' which we have used in the past. Just another variation which can cause confusion when one is used to starting the 'apache2' service. Installing the stack just requires selecting the correct packages:-

httpd
httpd-manual ( useful for 2.4 changes )
php-eaccelerator-httpd
php-pecl-imagick

Of cause this will also pull up a lot of other packages including php itself, and it makes a nice change not have to build eaccelerator and imagick as we have in the past.

Fedora just then needs the 'httpd' service starting. A little strange when we are used to this starting automatically. 

The stock configuration drop the web directory into /var/www/html, and we need to nip around the security to add the useful 'phpinfo' page.

service httpd start

A quick browse to http://localhost/phpinfo.php gives me a 'Apache/2.4.3 (Fedora) PHP/5.4.7' from the stock install which is a good start.

Next step is to work out where things are located, and re-model that to our more normal /srv/ based configuration, and get Firebird running.