Installing PHP on IBM/RS6000 AIX UNIX

I am attempting to install PHP on an IBM RS6000 AIX UNIX box. I am not getting very far and hope someone can point me in the right direction. Here is the message from the output:

checking for Apache 1.x module support via DSO through APXS

Sorry I was not able to successfully run APXS. Possible Reasons:

  1. Perl is not installed.
  2. Apache was not compiled with DSO support.
  3. 'apxs' is not in your path.

The output of /usr/HTTPServer/bin/apxs follows

./tmp/src/php-4.2.3/configure[3308]: /usr/HTTPServer/bin/apxs - not found

configure error aborting.

This is the command that I used:
./tmp/src/php-4.2.3/configure --with-apxs=/usr/HTTPServer/bin/apxs

I also tried it this way and received the message of unable to execute:

./tmp/src/php-4.2.3/configure --with-apxs=/usr/HTTPServer/bin/

Perl is installed, 'apxs' is in the specified directory. I am also loged in as root. Any suggestions? Thank you.

Hi. Please cut and paste the output of this command:

ls -l /usr/HTTPServer/bin

Hi Neo,
Thank you for responding. Here is the output:
total 1384
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 47095 Dec 7 2000 ab
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 7354 Dec 7 2000 adminctl
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 20992 Dec 7 2000 admrestart
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 7061 Dec 7 2000 apachectl
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 20900 Nov 19 08:39 apxs
-rwxrwxr-x 1 root system 20967 Nov 19 08:36 apxs.sav
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 6454 Dec 7 2000 dbmmanage
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 34978 Dec 7 2000 htpasswd
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 447887 Dec 7 2000 httpd
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 23162 Dec 7 2000 logresolve
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 19329 Dec 7 2000 rotatelogs
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 17886 Dec 7 2000 setupadm
-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblaw lawson 5244 Dec 7 2000 setuplang

I also found these comments in the apxs script:
## IMPORTANT NOTE FOR APXS USE ON AIX (ONLY):

##1. AIX requires that all dynamically linkable objects to EXPORT their public
## interfaces in a .exp file. This is required at the link step.
## If you do not have an .exp file, then you can generate one containing
## a single line with the name of the module. For example, in our sample
## module, example_module.c we generate an example_module.exp with
## 1 line -> example_module.
## For AIX only we have added an additional option -bE: <filename.exp>
## which is supplied as option on input to APXS script.

##2. Some 3rd party modules use a ./configure script with an APXS option. These
## configure scripts use the APXS script with a -q (query) option to get
## information on Compiler flags and Link flags. If the congfigure script
## relies on getting CFG_LDFLAGS_SHLIB from APXS script then the configure ## script will fail. The CFG_LDFLAGS_SHLIB in APXS script are not complete ## without the :bE options passed as input to APXS. Many configure script
## on AIX have an option to supply these Link Flags.

##3. NOTE: The httpd.exp file on IHS 1.3.6 is installed into
## /usr/HTTPServer/example_module
## but this script relies on httpd.exp being located in
##
## /usr/HTTPServer/libexec
## Please copy httpd.exp to /usr/HTTPServer/libexec before executing
## the APXS script.

for number one I am not sure I understand. Number two I changed the -q to -bE and for number three I copied httpd.exp to the specified directory. Still no luck.

Did you compile the source yourself or are these executables pre-compiled binaries?

Hi Neo,
They are pre-compiled binaries. Which I suspect is the problem. I have decided to take a different approach and use Linux. I have loaded Red hat 7.2 on a PC and will try using Apache and PHP there. IF I use Apache 2.0 do you know what version of PHP I should use? From what I can read it should be PHP 4.3. Thank you for your help.

It is currently recommended that you do not run Apache 2.x in production with PHP. PHP.ORG recommends you run 1.3.X in production.... if this is your first webserver and you are not using some advanced features (like WEBDAV) then you should using the 1.3.X tree with PHP (until the Apache 2.0 bugs are squashed).

Hi Neo,
Just thought I would let you know that I took your advice and installed the most recent version of Apache 1.3.x and also PHP4.2.3. They installed fine and work like a charm. Thank you for your help.