The attached file is a modified version of the README.txt file for the
Windows distribution.
Changes I've made are as follows:
I've changed the wording of the opening paragraph about the ISAPI module to
make it clear that users really are likely to have a bad time with the ISAPI
module stability.
I've added a section at the end on how to fix common problems which should
save a good bit of list traffic.
If anyone has any comments, changes or suggestions please let me know, or if
people are happy with the changes, would someone be kind enough to commit
the file to CVS - I'm in the middle of setting up my new computer and don't
yet have a working CVS client up and running.
Cheers
--
Phil Driscoll
Dial Solutions
+44 (0)113 294 5112
http://www.dialsolutions.com
http://www.dtonline.org
PHP 4.0 - Win32 Distribution
============================
Note
----
PHP 4.0 for Windows comes in two flavours - a CGI executable (php.exe), and an
ISAPI module (php4isapi.dll). The latter is new to PHP 4.0, and provides
significantly improved performance and some new functionality. However,
please note that the ISAPI module is *NOT* yet considered to be production
quality and you are likely to encounter serious reliability problems especially on
platforms older than W2K - in particular you may witness a lot of server 500 errors
and suffer from other server modules such as ASP also failing. The reason for this
is that the PHP ISAPI module uses the thread-safe version of the PHP code, which is
completely new to PHP 4.0, and has not yet been tested and pounded enough to be
considered completely stable, and there are actually a few known bugs.
On the other hand, some people have reported very good results with the ISAPI
module, even though we're not aware of anyone actually running it on a production
site. In short - your mileage may vary; If you need absolute stability, trade the
performance of the ISAPI module with the stability of the CGI executable.
Requirements
------------
- Windows 95 or later, Windows NT 4.0 or later
- ISAPI 4.0 compliant Web server required for ISAPI module (tested on IIS 4.0,
PWS 4.0 IIS 5.0). IIS 3.0 is *NOT* supported; You should download and
install the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack with IIS 4.0 if you want native PHP
support.
- Windows 95 requires the DCOM update, freely available from:
http://download.microsoft.com/msdownload/dcom/95/x86/en/dcom95.exe
Support
-------
For questions and help with PHP under Windows, your best bet would be the
PHP-Windows mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). To subscribe, send
an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Installation
------------
Unlike PHP 3, PHP 4 is divided into several components; Even when you use
PHP in its CGI mode, php.exe is no longer a standalone executable, and relies
on external DLLs for execution. For this reason, if you install php.exe as
a handler for your web server, you must make sure that the DLLs in the
distribution exist in a directory that is in the Windows PATH. The easiest
way to do it is to copy these DLLs to your SYSTEM (Windows 9x) or SYSTEM32
(Windows NT) directory, which is under your Windows directory.
The DLLs that need to be copied are MSVCRT.DLL (it may already exist in there)
and PHP4TS.DLL.
Installation Notes for IIS 4.0 and 5.0
--------------------------------------
- Install the DLLs as mentioned above.
- If you wish to change any defaults, copy either the php.ini-dist or
php.ini-optimized files into your Windows directory, and rename it to
'php.ini'. You can then modify any of the directives inside it.
- Start the Microsoft Management Console (may appear as
'Internet Services Manager', either in your Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack
branch or the Control Panel->Administrative Tools under Windows 2000).
- Right click on your Web server node (will most probably appear as 'Default
Web Server'), and select 'Properties'.
- If you don't want to perform HTTP Authentication using PHP, you can (and
should) skip this step. Under 'ISAPI Filters', add a new ISAPI filter.
Use 'PHP' as the filter name, and supply a path to the php4isapi.dll that
is included in the distribution.
- Under 'Home Directory', click on the 'Configuration' button. Add a new
entry to the Application Mappings; Use the path the php4isapi.dll as the
Executable, supply .php as the extension, leave 'Method exclusions', blank,
and check the Script engine checkbox.
- Stop IIS completely (you would have to stop the IIS Administration service
for that - stopping it through the Management Console isn't good enough;
You can do it by typing 'net stop iisadmin' on a command prompt).
- Start IIS again (you can do it by typing 'net start w3svc' on a command
prompt).
- Put a .php file under your Web server's document root and check if it works!
Installation Notes for Microsoft PWS 4.0
----------------------------------------
- Install the php.ini file and the DLLs as mentioned above.
- Edit the enclosed PWS-php4.reg file to reflect the location of your
php4isapi.dll. Forward slashes should be escaped, for example:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\w3svc\parameters\Script Map]
".php"="C:\\Program Files\\PHP\\php4isapi.dll"
- In the PWS Manager, right click on a given directory you want to add PHP
support to, and select Properties. Check the 'Execute' checkbox, and
confirm.
At this point, PWS should have built-in PHP support.
Adding Extensions
-----------------
A few pre-compiled extensions are included in this release. You can load them
by adding a line like the following to your php.ini file:
extension=path\to\extension\extension_name.dll
Loading these extensions extends the functionality of PHP to support more
functions and protocols.
Note: MySQL support is *built-in* as of PHP 4.0. You don't need to load any
additional extensions in order to use the MySQL functions.
Common problems with IIS/PWS (some points also apply to other servers)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For test purposes it is best to use just a simple test script. One containing just
the following line will suffice:
<?php phpinfo();?>
- You have installed PHP, but when try to access a php script file via your
browser, you get a blank screen:
Do a 'view source' in the web browser and you will probably find that you can see
the source code of your php script. This means that the web server did not send the
script to php for interpretation. Something is wrong with the server configuration -
double check the server configuration against the php installation instructions.
- You have installed PHP, but when try to access a php script file via your
browser, you get a server 500 error:
Something went wrong when the server tried to run PHP. To get to see a
sensible error message, from the command line, change to the directory
containing php.exe and run
php.exe -i
If php has any problems running, then a suitable error message will be displayed
which will give you a clue as to what needs to be done next.
If you get a screen full of html codes (the output of the phpinfo() function) then
php is working ok, and your problem may be related to your server configuration
which you should double check.
- You have installed PHP, but when try to access a php script file via your
browser, you get the error:
cgi error:
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of
HTTP headers. The headers it did return are:
This error message means that php failed to output anything at all.
From the command line hange to the directory containing php.exe. Run
php.exe -i
If php has any problems running, then a suitable error message will be displayed
which will give you a clue as to what needs to be done next.
If you get a screen full of html codes (the output of the phpinfo() function) then
php is working ok.
Once php is working at the command line, try accessing the php script via the
browser again.
If it still fails then it could be one of the following:
file permissions on your php script, php.exe, php4ts.dll, php.ini or any php
extensions you are trying to load are such that the anonymous internet user
ISUR_<machinename> cannot access them.
The script file does not exist (or possibly isn't where you think it is
relative to your web root directory). Note that for IIS you can trap this error by
ticking
the 'check file exists' box when setting up the script mappings in the Internet
Services
Manager. If a script file does not exist then the server will return a 404 error
instead.
There is also the additional benefit that IIS will do any authentication required
for you
based on the NTLanMan permissions on your script file.
Good luck,
Zeev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Andi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [June 25, 2000]
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