If you choose to set up PHP on Linux or any other version of Unix, then these are the requirements:

– The PHP source distribution can be found here http://www.php.net/downloads.php

– The latest Apache source distribution http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi

– If your application is database driven then a working PHP-Supported database like MySQL , Oracle, MS SQL etc.)

– Any other supported software to which PHP must connect (mail server, BCMath package,JDK, and so forth)

– An ANSI C compiler

– Gnu make utility – you can freely download it at http://www.gnu.org/software/make

Now here are the steps to install Apache and PHP6 on your Linux or Unix machine. If your PHP or Apache versions are different then please take care accordingly.

If you haven’t already done so, unzip and untar your Apache source distribution. Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, /usr/local is the standard place.

[php]

gunzip -c apache_1.3.x.tar.gz

tar -xvf apache_1.3.x.tar

[/php]

Build the apache Server as follows

gunzip -c php-5.x.tar.gz

tar -xvf php-5.x.tar

cd php-5.x

Configure and Build your PHP, assuming you are using MySQL database.

./configure –with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs

–with-mysql=/usr/bin/mysql

make

make install

Install the php.ini file. Edit this file to get configuration directives:

cd ../../php-5.x

cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini

Specify where you want Apache server to serve files and extensions you want to identify PHP files. A .php is the standard however you may use .html or whatever you want to specify.

For that Go to your HTTP configuration files (/usr/local/apache/conf or whatever your path is)

Open httpd.conf with a text editor.

Search for the word “DocumentRoot” (that should appear twice), and change both paths to the directory you want to serve files out of (in our case, /home/httpd). This is recommend to have a home directory rather than the default /usr/local/apache/htdocs as it is more secure, but it doesn’t have to be in a home directory. All PHP files will be kept in this directory.

Add at least one PHP extension directive, as shown in the first line of code that follows. In the second line, we.ve also added a second handler to have all HTML files parsed as PHP.

[code]
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html
[code]

Restart your server. Whenever you make any changes for HTTP configuration or php.ini files, you must restart server.

[code]

cd ../bin

./apachectl start

[/code]

Set the document root directory permissions to world-executable. The actual PHP files in the directory need only be world-readable (644). If necessary, replace /home/httpd with your document root below:

[code] chmod 755 /home/httpd/html/php [/code]

Open your preferred text editor. Type: <?php phpinfo(); ?>. Save this file in your Web server’s document root directory and give it name as info.php.

Open Web browser and type the file. You must always use an HTTP request (http://www.yourdomain.com/info.php or http://localhost/info.php or http://ip-address/info.php) rather than a filename (/home/httpd/info.php) for the file to be parsed correctly.

You should see a table of information about your new PHP installation message. If this is then Congratulations!