Installing Apache, PHP and MySQL using source files on Linux
Quite a lot of programmers who work with the LAMP framework simply download the rpms of each application and then install the application on thier O/s and hardware of choice.
In most cases this does work fairly well. However, when this is done the install is restriced to an rpm created for some generic O/s & hardware combination.
What I mean is that each rpm is not specifically created to work with the hardware architecture of the machine on which it is being installed.
The rpm has been created to work on most Intel or AMD compatible mother boards but not the specific mother board architecture of the computer on which it is being installed.
If all the computer mother boards were bought from Intel this would possibly work fine. Regretfully, this is not so, there are a huge selection of mother boards to purchase, Mercury, ASUS, Gigabyte and lots of others all offering attractive price points.
The cheaper the mother board most likely the manufacturer has cut corners somewhere to deliver at that price. Most flavors of Linux do not take kindly to such cost cutting, and most rpms of products such as Apache, MySQL and PHP do not either.
The Solution:
Simply download the source files of these products from their respective web sites. In most cases the source files are of the very latest version available, (which some say is not such a good thing on Linux but I kind of disagree there).
Each web site (Apache, MySQL and PHP) provides a set of simple instructions on how to compile their source files. The set of instructions are generally quite complete and easy to follow.
If you compile the source as instructed the output executable binds a lot tighter to the specific hardware architecture that the computer mother board is built around, and definitely performs a lot better.
Performance must be measured using standard tools. Compare the performance of source file, complied to work with the computer hardware architecture and that of a generic rpm run on the same machine, I'm pretty certain about which one will give you better performance figures.
Just incase, you find the installation instructions you downloaded from the product's web site a little difficult to follow (or if you are fairly new to Linux) do hop across to my web site (http://www.ivanbayross.com) navigate to my Free downloads and/or E-Books section and download pretty detailed instructions for installing each of the LAMP products using source tarballs.
I've captured screen shots and embedded them in the material as well. Most install instructions are for RedHat Linux and Fedora Open Core, but the instructions should step you through, on Mandrake, SUSE or any of the other flavors on Linux reasonably accurately as well.
Do drop me an Email if you find the downloads helpful or if you encounter errors in the material, I'd appreciate being told, I promise to try and correct these errors as soon as possible.
Alternatively, you can put up the corrected information on your web site for me (and others) to download and use if that's the way you wish to go.
