Hitchhiker's Guide to the Ward by a Codebreaker: Install PHP 7 + mod

PHP 7 has become a hot topic in recent time as it claims to have the running speed catching up with HHVM whereas no big change in the source code is required, except for those deprecated function calls in the new release.

This is good news as nowadays Guest VM for hosting tends to be slim and small in terms of resources, i.e., 512MB, 256MB or smaller. Running a plain old build of Apache server with default settings is going to slow down everything.

This is a quick guide for a fresh installation of LAMPP server with newest PHP 7 engine on top of it. To maintain high response rates without interruption in a high concurrency situation, you may want to run PHP in CGI mode. Please check those steps below carefully. For the god sake, you might miss something along the passage without the help of a cup of coffee which is exactly my situation.

PHP 7 is now in the final stage before the official release is out. So, the source update is happening frequently than ever. As of the time of writing, it is PHP 7.0.0 RC 6. Of course, no one would like to miss that bit, even for nightly update.

Here we start in Terminal app on Ubuntu 14.04:

Step 1:

Try installing LAMPP from the ground up:

$
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

Please mind the caret (^) at the end.

You will have to install packages for Apache 2, MySQL & PHP 5 (not PHP 7 at the moment).

Step 2: (Optional)

You might want to upgrade a bit for the not-so-entirely-new version of Apache 2 which is locked in version 2.4.7 in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Release as LTS implies not only a stable build but also less frequent update to its packages.

For upgrading Apache 2, you may add new repo to Ubuntu's source list and do a forced re-installation:

$
$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -f install apache2
$

Step 3:
Obtain PHP 7 early release

This is to add Zends PHP7 early access repo:

$
$ sudo echo "deb http://repos.zend.com/zend-server/early-access/php7/repos ubuntu/" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
$

To install PHP7 nighly build, we need to issue the following command:

$
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install php7-nightly
$

Once done, PHP7 will be installed to /usr/local/php7. So you might want to keep this in mind to find something important regarding PHP configuration.

To use PHP7 with Apache, first make sure Step 1 is done properly, then copy the required modules and libs to Apache 2 folder:

$
$ sudo cp /usr/local/php7/libphp7.so /usr/lib/apache2/modules/
$ sudo cp /usr/local/php7/php7.load /etc/apache2/mods-available/
$

For initial PHP with OpCache configuration, we can create new php.ini in the following path:

/usr/local/php7/php.ini

Please copy and paste the following parameters into php.ini:

max_execution_time=600
memory_limit=128M
error_reporting=0
display_errors=0
log_errors=0
user_ini.filename=
realpath_cache_size=2M
cgi.check_shebang_line=0
zend_extension=opcache.so
opcache.enable_cli=1
opcache.save_comments=0
opcache.fast_shutdown=1
opcache.validate_timestamps=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=60
opcache.use_cwd=1
opcache.max_accelerated_files=100000
opcache.max_wasted_percentage=5
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.consistency_checks=0

Step 4:
Install mod_fcgid module

$
$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-fcgid
$

Step 5:
Enable and disable relevant Apache modules

Default build of Apache use MPM Event but for mod_fcgid to work we need to enable MPM Worker instead. Before enabling new MPM, we need to disable previously enabled MPM modules first.

For one important thing here, you might have to entirely disable PHP5 module in order to avoid any conflict with the upcoming PHP7. Apache can't have both PHP5 and PHP7 modules loaded for the same .php filetype handling or else Apache won't even start.

$
$ sudo a2dismod mpm_event
$ sudo a2dismod mpm_prefork
$ sudo a2enmod mpm_worker
$ sudo a2dismod php5
$

Step 6:
Enable SSL in Apache

Enable SSL module as follow:

$
$ sudo a2enmod ssl
$ sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl
$

Prepare self-signed certificate:

$
$ sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.key -out /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.crt
$

The key and certificate will be created and placed in your /etc/apache2/ssl directory.

Open the default SSL configuration file with root privileges now:

$
$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf
$

Modify two lines to match the newly created certificate files:

SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.crt

SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.key

And finally it may look like this:

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
    <VirtualHost _default_:443>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
        SSLEngine on
        SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.crt
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.key
        <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
                        SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
        </FilesMatch>
        <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
                        SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
        </Directory>
        BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
                        nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
                        downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
        BrowserMatch "MSIE [7-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown
    </VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

To activate SSL Virtual Host, please type:

$
$ sudo a2ensite default-ssl.conf
$

Step 7:
Add mod_fcgid related configurations

Go find the default configuration files for Apache, like

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf

Edit each file with the following instructions.

Add the following configuration to the root directory section in the vhost block:

<Ifmodule mod_fcgid.c>
 # FCGID registers a handler named fcgid-script
 AddHandler fcgid-script .php
 Options +ExecCGI
 FcgidWrapper /usr/local/php7/bin/php-fcgid-wrapper
</IfModule>

Also, add the relevant settings outside the vhost block:

<Ifmodule mod_fcgid.c>
 # Context - server config
 FcgidMaxProcesses 150
 # Otherwise php output shall be buffered
 FcgidOutputBufferSize 0
</IfModule>

Step 8:
Add Wrapper script of php-cgi

Now you need to create the wrapper script that is used by mod_fcgid to launch php-cgi processes.

Script filename: php-fcgid-wrapper

#!/bin/sh
# Set desired PHP_FCGI_* environment variables.
# Example:
# PHP FastCGI processes exit after 500 requests by default.
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=10000
export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS
# Replace with the path to your FastCGI-enabled PHP executable
exec /usr/local/php7/php-cgi

The actual location of the wrapper script at /usr/local/php7/bin/php-fcgid-wrapper can be stored anywhere and the path has to be mentioned in apache configuration.

Make the wrapper script executable using chmod:

$
$ chmod +x /usr/local/php7/bin/php-fcgid-wrapper
$

Step 9:
Turn on Apache server

This is the final and the most important step for all those configurations we have made:

$
$ sudo service apache2 restart
$

Step 10:
Testing

You can open a browser locally and visit https://localhost to check if SSL connection is working properly.

Or, try create a simple php info page to see if all parameters are setting as desired:

$
$ sudo echo "<php phpinfo();" /var/www/html/test_me.php
$

It's been a long time PHP's performance seems to be lagging behind since Facebook's era comes. People who are aggressive might lean to take HHVM approach to accelerate things up, yet the development team might meet new challenges with switching coding practice and taking the risk of incompatibility with official PHP release.

You go for the option of PHP7 as you have the needs for speed. Forgetting about compatibility and performance sacrifice, let's test your apps with this brand new PHP engine!