RHEL 4 as a Webserver – Part 1

Posted by David Tucker in Apache, LinuxApr 6th, 2007 | one response

I have had so many requests for this article, I decided to move it from our internal wiki to the blog. So many people are running RHEL 4 and feel like it is too difficult to get PHP 5 and MySQL 5 on to the machine. This article shows that it is easier than you think - all thanks to the CentOS repositories. A little light command line work, a few downloads, and we are up and running.

1. After a clean installation, you will need to modify your repositories for up2date.

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CODE:
  1. cd /etc/sysconfig/rhn
  2. cp sources sources.original
  3. vi sources

Edit the file to have the following repositories (the CentOS 4 Repositories):

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CODE:
  1. yum centos4-Base http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/$ARCH
  2. yum centos4-Updates http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/updates/$ARCH
  3. yum centos4-extras http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/extras/$ARCH
  4. yum centos4-addons http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/addons/$ARCH
  5. yum centos4-centosplus http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/centosplus/$ARCH/

2. Next, you will need up import the key for the CentOS Repositories.

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CODE:
  1. rpm --import http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-centos4

3. Next, you will have to fix an error with the up2date program to get it work with these repositories. [More Detailed Information]

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CODE:
  1. cd /usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/
  2. cp packageList.py packageList.py-original
  3. vi packageList.py

Edit the file at line 649:

Remove:

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CODE:
  1. del self.packagesToUpdate[pkey]

And being sure to preserve the tabs of the original line replace it with:

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CODE:
  1. if pkey != "kernel-smp":
  2. del self.packagesToUpdate[pkey]

4. Now you can use up2date to get selective packages. Now we need to update Apache.

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CODE:
  1. up2date -u -v httpd

5. Now we need to install the new version of MySQL. As of this article, MySQL packages are available specifically for RHEL 4 on the MySQL Website. You will need (at a minimum) the mysql-server and mysql-client rpm's. Now we will need to remove MySQL 4.x and a dependancy.

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CODE:
  1. rpm -e mysql mysqlclient10 cyrus-sasl-sql

6. Now we can install the new MySQL Packages (replace these file names with the ones you downloaded in previous step).

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CODE:
  1. rpm -ivh MySQL-server-standard-5.0.27-0.rhel4.x86_64.rpm MySQL-client-standard-5.0.27-0.rhel4.x86_64.rpm

7. Now we need to re-install the cyrus-sasl-sql package from the RHN Source List (not the CentOS source list).

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CODE:
  1. cd /etc/sysconfig/rhn/
  2. cp sources sources.centos
  3. cp sources.original sources
  4. up2date -u -v cyrus-sasl-sql

8. Now we can update PHP. However, we will have to switch back to the CentOS Repositories for this.

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CODE:
  1. cd /etc/sysconfig/rhn/
  2. cp sources.centos sources
  3. up2date -u -v php php-mysql php-bcmath php-dba \
  4. php-dbase php-devel php-eaccelerator php-gd php-imap \
  5. php-ldap php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mhash php-ncurses \
  6. php-odbc php-pdo php-pear php-pecl php-readline php-snmp \
  7. php-soap php-tidy php-xml php-xmlrpc

9. Restart Apache

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CODE:
  1. service httpd restart

10. Run a phpinfo() check to ensure everything is working properly. Place this file in your web root.

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PHP:
  1. <? phpinfo(); ?>

Put the URL for that file in your browser, and you should see that it is running PHP 5 and MySQL 5.

11. Lastly, let's put everything back the way it was before the changes to the repositories.

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CODE:
  1. cd /etc/sysconfig/rhn/
  2. cp sources.original sources
  3. cd /usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/
  4. cp packageList.py packageList.py-centos
  5. cp packageList.py-original packageList.py




One Response to “RHEL 4 as a Webserver – Part 1”

  1. Herve Leger Discount says:
    June 12, 2010 at 2:54 am

    Beatiful spoken..I am in sunc with your post

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