IIS Hacks | Server and System Administration » Software

How to Install PHP 5.3 FastCGI on Windows 2008 IIS 7

Chris Stinson — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:35:08 +0000

PHP on Windows has come along way in the past few years. It used to be a chore to get PHP to work properly on IIS. Not so, anymore.

In the past I’ve recommended PHP ISAPI for IIS when using threaded applications and accelerators like eAccelerator, xCache and APC. APC now includes support for FastCGI (Non-Thread Safe). To install PHP 4 – 5.2.x ISAPI, see my previous post: How to install PHP ISAPI on Windows 2008 IIS7 x64.

With PHP 5.3.x, the ISAPI dll has been removed for Windows. In order to use it, you’ll need to compile it yourself. There is a big push to use FastCGI on IIS, and with good reason – the performance has increased dramatically. Since most web applications (blogs, forums, CMS) do not require a Thread Safe install of PHP, FastCGI is the fastest and most stable option around.

PHP 5.3 for Windows is now compiled with either VC6 or VC9. VC9 should be used with IIS and VC6 should be used with Apache 1 or 2. For the VC9 versions you will need the Microsoft 2008 C++ Runtime (VC x86, VC x64, even though you are installing 32-bit PHP, install the correct version of VC++ for the version of Windows that you have).

When installing multiple versions of PHP with PHP Manager, each install can have a different PHP.ini and set of extensions installed and enabled. Within IIS, you can have a different version of PHP enabled for each site.

1. Download and Install PHP Manager for IIS 7/7.5. (http://phpmanager.codeplex.com/releases/view/59970) Even though PHP is 32-bit, install the version of PHP Manager that matches your install of Windows (x86 or x64).

2. Download and Install PHP 5.3.x for Windows VC9 (Non-Thread Safe). (http://windows.php.net/download/) You can use the installer or zip package. I’d recommend using the installer package if this is your first install, as it will set the PATH for your PHP install in Windows. If you are adding a second version or upgrading PHP, download the zip package and simply unzip it. If you plan to use multiple versions of PHP at the same time, I’d recommend naming your directories with the PHP version, ie: C:\php_5.3.5\.

3. In PHP Manager (IIS Manager -> Server Name -> PHP Manager), click on “Register New PHP Version” and browse to where you unzipped the PHP files. Select the php-cgi.exe file and click OK. Once you have registered the PHP module, you’ll need to configure the PHP.ini. This can be done in Notepad or within PHP Manager (Manage All Settings). For most basic installs, the default PHP.ini will suffice. If you are using a MySQL database, you’ll have to enable the MySQL or MySQLi extension. Go to IIS Manager -> PHP Manager -> PHP Extensions -> Enable or disable an extension. Click on php_mysql.dll and/or php_mysqli.dll and under Actions on the right side bar, click Enable.

4. If you are using Windows x64, you’ll need to set your application pool settings to allow 32-bit PHP to function. If you are using 32-bit Windows, skip this step. In IIS Manager -> Application Pools -> Right-Click on the website’s application pool (or Default if you haven’t set one up yet) and select Advanced Settings. Set “Enable 32-bit applications” to TRUE. Click OK. This spawns the App Pool in 32-bit mode, so if you have other modules that need to be run in 64-bit mode, best to separate the website into two App Pools: one 32-bit and one 64-bit.

5. If you want to install multiple versions of PHP, all you need to do is register each version using PHP Manager. You can click on each individual website and select a specific version of PHP to run. Remember to modify the PHP.ini of each version you register. If you get CGI errors when trying to view a webpage, make sure cgi.force_redirect = 0, or it is commented out in the PHP.ini.

Removing the VMWare Server SSL Certificate Trust Warning

Chris Stinson — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:00:34 +0000

When you first install VMWare Server, you’ll find the administration area in Firefox or Internet Explorer has a security certificate error. This is because the certificate that ships with VMWare is self-signed (untrusted). One solution is to use a trusted certificate from a third party (Verisign, GoDaddy, etc) but that has costs associated with it and is not actually necessary. If you want your computer to properly trust the certificate, add it to the Trusted Root list.

Navigate to the SSL folder where VMWare Server is installed (ex. C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\SSL).
Double-click on RUI.crt.
Click “Install Certificate” on the Certificate Information window that pops up.
Click “Next” to start the Certificate Import Wizard.
Select “Place all certificates in the following store” and click “Browse”.
Select “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” and click “OK”.
Click “Next” and “Finished”.
A Security Warning box will pop up, click “Yes” and then “OK”.
Close the Certificate Information window.
The SSL warning will no longer show on the VMWare Server login screen.

VMWare Server Console on Firefox 3.6

VMWare Server Console on Firefox 3.6

Chris Stinson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:24:50 +0000

I just found out the hard way that VMWare Server 2.0′s Console plug-in does not work with Firefox 3.6.

Perhaps in the future VMWare will release a compatible plugin, but for now the fix is to use the console plugin for Internet Explorer, Firefox 3.5x or use VMWare Player 3.0.

The following error is what comes up in Firefox 3.6 or any other unsupported browser.

“Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out. The attempt to acquire a valid session ticket for MACHINE_NAME took longer than expected. If this problem persists, contact your system administrator.”

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/252218

Removing the VMWare Server SSL Certificate Trust Warning

Converting MySQL tables from Latin1 to UTF8

Chris Stinson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:33:13 +0000

Many content management systems and forums were originally created using the latin1 character set and the latin1_swedish_ci collation in MySQL. The problem many of these systems are facing today is the growing demand for multi-language content using special characters that cannot be accurately represented in the latin1 character set. This is where utf8 comes in.

The problem with simply converting a database from latin1 to utf8 is in the data itself. When you convert a database or table to a different character set or collation, it does not convert the content held within the tables. What happens is users end up with ‘strange’ characters in their data.

You can prevent this by taking steps to protect the data before you convert the database or tables.

An overview of the steps:

Backup the database. No, really, do it.
Alter the string field types to their binary equivalents in all tables. This will protect the data during conversion.
• VARCHAR to VARBINARY
• CHAR to BINARY
• LONGTEXT to LONGBLOB
• MEDIUMTEXT to MEDIUMBLOB
• TEXT to BLOB
• TINYTEXT to TINYBLOB
Convert the database and tables from latin1 to utf8 character set and latin1_swedish_ci to utf8_general_ci collation.
Convert the binary field types back to their original string field types.
Backup the resulting database.
Finished

Ex. Generic convert column to BLOB from TEXT

ALTER TABLE tbl_name MODIFY column_name BLOB

Ex. Generic convert table to new character set

ALTER TABLE tbl_name CHARACTER SET charset_name COLLATE collation_name

Ex. Generic convert database to new character set utf8

ALTER DATABASE database_name CHARACTER SET utf8;

Delete Spam Comments in WordPress via MySQL

Chris Stinson — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:16:01 +0000

When marking comments as “spam” in WordPress, it doesn’t actually remove them from the database.

From my own experience, most WordPress installations have thousands of spam comments in their databases, taking up valuable space.

In the wp_comments table the comment_approved column will show a value of “spam” on any comment marked as spam – and a value of “1″ for any approved comment.

To quickly delete ALL spam comments, execute the following query on your MySQL database:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = “spam”;

You can expand the SQL command to delete from multiple databases and multiple tables, quickly and effectively.