Notes

Apache - Marcus Povey

So, ownCloud has been a great tool to share files between my various devices for quite a while. I've even learnt on How to Make a Minecraft Server, which has been pretty fun. The server is an PHP application, so it's pretty easy to set up.



Anyway, I updated my server to run PHP 7.3 which allows it to run the latest Known code, among other things. PHP 7.3 is the most recent stable code, and so is the one everyone should be running, really.



This caused a problem, as ownCloud would only run on PHP versions up to and including 7.2! Although PHP 7.3 will be supported in the next version of ownCloud but the release schedules aren't as fast and I had to get my syncing back on pace.



It is possible to use PHP 7.2 on the ownCloud server, and PHP 7.3 on other applications.



Installing PHP-FPM



If you are still using the old mod_php apache module, you will have to install PHP-FPM.



I had been meaning to do this in the past because this is the most modern method of running PHP. It's faster, offers more performance options and, most importantly, for my purposes, decouples Apache and PHP to allow you to run multiple versions.



This is possible on servers running Debian (mine is Debian with a third party PHP.7.3 apt repository). It's incredibly simple:



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



Then, you'll need to switch over your config:



Two things to note here. First, replace the a2dismod statement with the version of PHP you currently have installed. Also, you'll notice that I didn't activate the PHP 7.2 FPM config. This is due to the fact that PHP 7.3 should be the default site, but PHP 7.2 can be enabled on selected virtual hosts.



You'll see something similar to this when you look up PHPinfo()



Note the PHP version and the Server API.



You'll notice PHP 7.3 FPM servers running if you look at the server processes.



Configuring ownCloud's VirtualHost for PHP 7.2



You will now have to modify your personalCloud VirtualHost in order to use the PHP CGI server at the speed of 7.2.



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's definition of virtual host



Now when you execute phpinfo() on your ownCloud domain, you'll see it running PHP 7.2!



Now I'm back to synchronizing my files while running the latest PHP version for other domains.



This is a useful feature that could be used to get more than just slow to update software up and running. To begin, this technique will let me run a bleeding edge version of PHP like PHP 7.4 against, for example my development version of Known, but keep my blog running the stable version.



I thought it was cool. Skins I hope you'll find it useful!


Homepage: https://mc-skins.org/