Much of PHP’s success can be attributed to it being free and open, able to run on nearly every operating system, and being easy to use and learn.   Yet the same things that have made it so successful in the open source community have historically hindered its commercial success.   But why?

Quite simply PHP is a scripted language.   Unlike C programs which need pre-compilation to run, PHP is compiled and executed on the fly by the PHP engine.  Perl, JavaScript, and Shell script all execute in a similar manner.  This makes PHP very flexible and friendly to open source and hobbyist developers, but it essentially requires you to “give away” your source code in order to distribute your program.

Of course commercial developers attempting to make a profit on their work won’t  want to give away their code, not if they expect to make money! But the PHP market was huge and lucrative, so unsurprisingly a company stepped in to offer a solution.  That solution is IonCube, and here’s how it works.

First, the commercial PHP developer will write their application.   When it’s finished, the developer will use the IonCube program to encode the raw, human-readable PHP source code in a proprietary binary format.  This protects the underlying source code from prying eyes by turning it into a jumble of unreadable goobleygook.

Next,  the application is purchased by an end user.  After the purchase, the application developer provides the customer with a special key which is used to “unlock” the encoded source.

Finally, the customer installs the IonCube Loader on their web server, which acts as a on-the-fly decoder for the coded application.    At no time is the user ever able to view the PHP source code:  all the decoding happens inside the web server via the IonCube loader.   This keeps the application code a secret for the developer, as well as allowing fine control over the licensing of their application via the unlock key.

Though IonCube had a rocky start at its debut in 2002 (thanks somewhat to vocal opposition by strong open source proponents), it has slowly become the de-facto standard for distributing non-free PHP applications.   Though not all web hosts support it, The Linux Fix offers the IonCube Loader with every web hosting plan we provide.  We hope that it gives you the freedom of using whatever PHP application you choose, without much fuss!

CentOS 5 supports PHP 5.1.6, and will not ever officially support the newer versions of PHP.  As stated in the CentOS wiki “As with each other program in CentOS, the version numbers of released software will not change over the life time of a CentOS product.”  So in short, the yum repos we all know and love have no intention of including the new PHP software.

But what can we do?  Well, we’re Linux users.  We can do whatever we want!

Here at The Linux Fix we have a talented bloke named Greg who has worked on this problem in the past when he created a yum repo for PHP 5.3.5 for use with CentOS.  Well, what’s changed since then?  Not much actually!  In fact, most of the info here will just be the same helpful tips he wrote back in February.  Except now it’s with an updated repo for 5.3.6, with additional information for TLF clients!  (oh look, he beat me to this post!)

So first things first, you’ll need to add our TLF branded repo to your yum repository list.  We keep all that tidy PHP goodness over here at yum.thelinuxfix.com (with appropriate rpms for 32 and 64-bit systems).

Install Instructions:

As root run:

64-bit:
rpm -Uvh http://yum.thelinuxfix.com/RHEL/5/x86_64/tlf-release-1-2.noarch.rpm

32-bit:
rpm -Uvh http://yum.thelinuxfix.com/RHEL/5/i386/tlf-release-1-2.noarch.rpm

This will add our rpm repository to your yum list of approved repos!  We’re all excited about it.
So what’s left?  Updating(or installing) PHP of course!  You have a few options here.  If you’ve already got PHP installed (probably 5.1.6) then a simple

 yum update php

will do. This should nail the basics, like php; php-common; php-cli; (php and it’s immediate dependancies), as well as any additional php modules you may be using (like php-pdo; php-odbc; php-mysql; etc). This won’t always catch everything, so be thorough in making sure you update everything you need (case in point: This won’t catch php-pear, which is available in our repo).

zVPS™ Users:

But wait! You’re a customer using one of our zVPS™ Virtual Servers? Well, I’ve got good news!

As you (hopefully) already know, we have pre-designed single button install templates for many useful purposes.  One of these templates (VPS Template Web Server) has all the CentOS 5 latest rpms for php and a number of relevant mods.  And since I like you guys so much (almost as much as I like parenthesis), I wrote you a short little gift.

As root run:

wget -O - http://www.thelinuxfix.com/script/tlfphp53.sh|bash

If you’ve already installed our web server template, this will automatically set up and install the tlf-repo and update php and it’s friends to 5.3.6!

–Steven