Notes

Apache - Marcus Povey

I have been using ownCloud for a while now as an option to share files between my different devices. I've even learnt on How to Make a Minecraft Server and it's been pretty fun. It's an PHP application, which makes it easy to create.
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In the end, I upgraded my server to PHP 7.3, in order to run the most current Known code, among other things. PHP 7.3 is the most up-to-date stable code and should be used by all.



This presented a bit of an issue, since ownCloud would only run on PHP version up to and including 7.2! The next version of ownCloud will likely to support PHP 7.3 However, the release schedules are a bit slow, and I really needed to get my syncing setup and up and running.



The obvious solution would be to run PHP 7.2 for the ownCloud server and then PHP 7.3 for all other things.





Installing PHP-FPM

If you're running the old school mod_php apache module, the first thing you must do is install PHP-FPM.



I had been meaning to do this in the past since this is the modern way of running PHP. It's faster, offers greater performance options and, more importantly for my purposes, it decouples Apache and PHP which allows you to run multiple versions.



On Debian based servers (mine is Debian, and I have an additional third party PHP 7.3 apt repository installed) This is incredibly simple:



You'll also have to install all the PHP modules (pdo and gd) however, that's entirely up to you.



Then, you'll need to change your configuration:



Two things to note here. First you must replace the a2dismod command with whatever php version you are currently running. Also, you'll be able to see that I did not enable PHP 7.2 FPM configuration. This is because I would like PHP 7.3 to be the default for all websites, but to be able to selectively enable PHP 7.2 on specific virtual hosts.



You'll probably find something similar to this when you look up phpinfo()



Note the PHP version and the Server API.



You'll see PHP 7.3 FPM servers running if you check your server's processes.





Configuring ownCloud's VirtualHost to make use of PHP 7.2

So, now you need to change your ownCloud VirtualHost to use the PHP 7.2 fast CGI server.



Again, this is really really easy, and is pretty much a cut and paste from the php7.2-fpm.conf file you'll find in your /etc/apache2/conf-available directory.



The following should be included in your ownCloud virtual host definition



Now you should be able to see PHP 7.2 running when you run phpinfo() on your ownCloud.



Now I'm able to get back to synchronizing my files while running the most recent PHP version for other domains.



This is a great feature that can be used for more than slow software updates. To begin this method lets me run a bleeding edge version of PHP such as PHP 7.4 against, for example, my development version of Known, but keep my blog running the stable release.



Anyway I thought it was cool. Hopefully you'll find it useful too!


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