PHP on IBM iSeries

WARNING : Of course there is no warranty on this software. However, to my knowledge there is no viruses or trojan horses in the software that I provide here. I also checked all the signatures and MD5SUM when they were provided by the web sites where I downloaded the source files. Naturally, if you follow what I show you in this page, you can also rebuild the distribution on your own machine. I provide now the full source distribution of what I did and within this source distribution, you will find a compilation script which setup everything for you. It's a very basic bash script that you can/ customize to your need. You will find this source (it isv ersion 2.0 there is no 2.1 file because it is only a small upgrade distribution) HERE If you cannot do that you can also download the distribution and test it on a ... test machine.

There is only a 70 Mb file which contains everything. The file is called local-V5R3-2.1.tar.bz2. The MD5SUM signature is fb0bb1c3f36e91c7994975fb248bc9aa. You must first use the bunzip2 command on a PC (if you don't have it on your AS/400). Many freeware or commercial software can manage this kind of archive under windows. However, I advice you to use winrar or the latest beta version of 7zip (7zip version 4.27 or above, it is not out yet, I discovered a bug in this software ;-)). I noticed that this kind of utilities could corrupt the extracted data. Then after decompression, you will have a tar archive that you can upload to your machine in binary mode with ftp for example. Because I don't have enough space on this web server, I created a FTP server where that's going to be possible for you to download this file. But be careful, only 2 users can download the file at the same time (the iSeries community is not so big ;-) ). So, if you have some trouble to download this file it might be because this limit has been override. So, try again later .....

Anyhow, I advise you to install it first on a test machine first. This software has been built on a V5R3 box. So, it will not work with V5R2. This is the first binary distribution which has been built in totality on the iSeries. In fact this distribution include a new gcc binary called gcc_for_OS400-V5R3.4.0.1. You can if you wish download this software if you click here

The above software has been compiled in the order they are displayed. I'm providing the different variable which were used for each software in the following compilation script. That you can see here.

I tried to use the most recent version of each software. Except for gettext-0.13 because it compiles fine with the iconv software include in the OS400. I didn't try yet to compile gettext-0.14.1 on V5R3.

A few installation notes :

I assumed that you don't have a /QOpenSys/usr/local directory.

You must installed the iSeries Tools for Developers (5799PTL) software program. You can find this software here

You must register with IBM to download the software which is free and the software is among the trials and betas. I guess it is better if you also ask to your IBM representative the 5733SC1 LPO which is freely available. This is because this distribution support OPENSSL.

This archive MUST be installed in the /QOpenSys/usr directory

You can uncompress it with the bunzip2 command : e.g. bunzip2 local-V5R3-2.0.tar.bz2.

you can then untar it with tar xvf local.tar

Of course, if you don't have bunzip2 command on your iSeries, you must do that with a utility on your PC such as WinRAR, 7Zip, a.s.o.... However it will be Ok to untar on the iSeries.

You must create a symbolic link the following way :

When you are in the PASE environment (CALL QP2TERM from a regular iSeries command line) type the following commands :

cd /usr

ln -s /QOpenSys/usr/local local

The above instruction will create a symbolic link which will permit the use of the software

You can now go in the /usr/local/php4/bin or /usr/local/php5/bin directories. There you can type the 'php -v' command.

If there is the version number which is displayed then everything should be fine for php.

You must configure mysql. To do that you must create a user profile on the iSeries called 'MYSQL'.

It is advised that you configured it as a *USER with no rights at all.

You must run the mysql configuration script which is in /usr/local/mysql/bin. The configuration script is called mysql_install_db.

You should then follow the instruction of this script.

With the command /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe &, you should be able to run the mysql daemon.

You must also configure your iSeries apache server (in your httpd.conf file) with the following configuration directives, if you want to use the included php-4.4.0 version :

ScriptAlias /php-bin/ /QOpenSys/usr/local/php4/bin


# new type mime definition


AddType application/x-httpd-php .php


Action application/x-httpd-php /php-bin/php


Action php-script /cgi-bin/php


&ltDirectory /QOpenSys/usr/local/php4/bin>


 Options +ExecCGI
 CGIConvMode %%BINARY/BINARY%%
 order allow,deny


 allow from all


</Directory>

If you want to use the PHP-5.0.4 version you must configure your httpd.conf with the following instructions :

ScriptAlias /php-bin/ /QOpenSys/usr/local/php5/bin


# new type mime definition


AddType application/x-httpd-php .php


Action application/x-httpd-php /php-bin/php


Action php-script /cgi-bin/php


&ltDirectory /QOpenSys/usr/local/php5/bin>


 Options +ExecCGI


 CGIConvMode %%BINARY/BINARY%%
 order allow,deny


 allow from all


</Directory>

Make sure you setup the folder and file permissions properly in the /QOpenSys/usr/local/php/bin folder and on the php executable.

The IBM Apache server uses the user profile: QTMHHTP1 when calling CGI applications unless you change the Server User Profile in the Apache config. Refer to the documentation in IBM iSeries Info Center.

*PUBLIC or user QTMHHTP1 will need to have read access to the QOpenSys folder, read access to the php folder, and read access to the bin folder. The owner of the files of the distribution is QPGMR

They will also need read and execute access to the php executable in the /QOpenSys/usr/local/php4/bin (or /QOpenSys/usr/local/php5/bin) folder.

To control mysql you should install phpmyadmin. You will find in this archive the compress archive of the version 2.6.3-pl1 version of phpmyadmim. If you want to use it you will have to install it on your web server. You can find the latest version here : http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php

Have Fun

Olivier

This is another version of the AS/400, iSeries, i5 open-source PASE software distribution.