How to find a "good" server distro

[David A. Bandel]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 04:29, James McDonald <james at jamesmcdonald.id.au> wrote:
> Collins Richey wrote:
>>
>> In my case "good" has a rather restricted meaning.
>>
>> 1. Solid, secure, etc.
>> 2. Capable of running latest PHP, MySQL (yes I know this is despised
>> by many list members) without contortions.
>>
>> The situation at work is this. We are running RHEL5/CentOS5, but
>> developers for some of the websites have a need for PHP5.3.
>
> Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't even have PHP5.3 yet (5.2.6) so you are probably out of
> luck with a server distro having it. Remembering server distro's are
> conservative.
>
> If you do as Michael says and compile you can run php in cgi mode and point
> it at the correct php binary.
>
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/suexec.html
>
> I notice my webhost provides a choice of php4 and php5 using suexec or
> something similar

When I run into a situation like this, what I do is grab the source,
compile, then use checkinstall to install it.  Checkinstall creates a
debian package and installs it.  That way, you can uninstall that one
and install the distro-supported one when it comes out.

Do all you need to do to compile.  For the `make install` step,
substitute `checkinstall`.  You'll get a few questions, then
checkinstall creates the package and installs it.  To uninstall, just
use your package manager of choice.

I do this with Asterisk.  No distro has the version I want to use, so
I create my own package.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
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