Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Installing Apache, mySQL and PHP on VISTA
I remember this installation on XP used to be simple as hell before mySQL5 came out and PHP stopped their built-in support. Then, getting the right DLL for Apache servers proved to be a problem and for some time, users had to download the DLLs for the newer version from the web! While it ain't so messed up any more, installing these things on VISTA is still a bit tricky - certainly not as straightforward as before. For the record, I have VISTA Home Premium so I don't really if some of the issues I faced here also hold true for other editions.
So, to get started, I first installed Apache in C: drive only to find out VISTA did not let it create the configuration files - httpd.conf and mime.types. A workaround, install somewhere else or copy manually. While the installation steps are simple and need no walking through, I would, however, suggest changing the Control Apache Server shortcuts to always 'Run in Administrator' mode and set compatibility to 'Windows XP SP2' for Monitor Apache Servers link to get it to work.
Next up is mySQL. This installation is a breeze and needs no explaining IMO - no seriously!
Lastly, PHP - having extracted the .ZIP to C:\php\ (or whatever directory you wish), make sure you copy the files ntwdblib.dll and libmysql.dll to C:\windows\system32\ or else you can say good bye to mySQL support in PHP. Also, remember to uncomment these lines in php.ini:
extension=php_mysql.dll
extension=php_mysqli.dll
All this may sound simple enough, but without any prior experience of VISTA's circumspect behavior in such installations, this took quite some of my time. Btw, all this was in an effort to test Joomla's latest stable release for a bug fix which I'm glad to report has been fixed! Hurrah!
Here's the sofwtare versions I worked with:
Apache 2.2.4
PHP 5.2.2
MySQL 5.0
and of course VISTA Home Premium
Hope it helped!
So, to get started, I first installed Apache in C: drive only to find out VISTA did not let it create the configuration files - httpd.conf and mime.types. A workaround, install somewhere else or copy manually. While the installation steps are simple and need no walking through, I would, however, suggest changing the Control Apache Server shortcuts to always 'Run in Administrator' mode and set compatibility to 'Windows XP SP2' for Monitor Apache Servers link to get it to work.
Next up is mySQL. This installation is a breeze and needs no explaining IMO - no seriously!
Lastly, PHP - having extracted the .ZIP to C:\php\ (or whatever directory you wish), make sure you copy the files ntwdblib.dll and libmysql.dll to C:\windows\system32\ or else you can say good bye to mySQL support in PHP. Also, remember to uncomment these lines in php.ini:
extension=php_mysql.dll
extension=php_mysqli.dll
All this may sound simple enough, but without any prior experience of VISTA's circumspect behavior in such installations, this took quite some of my time. Btw, all this was in an effort to test Joomla's latest stable release for a bug fix which I'm glad to report has been fixed! Hurrah!
Here's the sofwtare versions I worked with:
Apache 2.2.4
PHP 5.2.2
MySQL 5.0
and of course VISTA Home Premium
Hope it helped!
Labels: apache, mysql, php, windows vista
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