Installing a custom version of PHP on Dreamhost

Dreamhost does not support php-fpm on it's VPS server so I put together q guide on how to get it to work if you ever need to. It seems to be a better way than the default CGI version.

Install dependencies first

Install all the libs php will need. They all need to be made and deployed. I like to add webp, zlib, and onigurma.

wget https://github.com/kkos/oniguruma/releases/download/v6.9.8/onig-6.9.8.tar.gz
tar -zxvf onig-6.9.8.tar.gz
./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/onig
make
make install

wget https://github.com/webmproject/libwebp/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
unzip main.zip
./autogen.sh 2>/dev/null || true
./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/libwebp

wget https://libzip.org/download/libzip-1.9.2.tar.gz
wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.28.3/cmake-3.28.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd libzip-1.9.2
mkdir build 
../../cmake-3.28.3-linux-x86_64/bin/cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/opt/libzip
make
make install

Add the new libs to your path for PHP

PHP will need to access these libs for some of the config features.

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/opt/onig/lib/pkgconfig:$HOME/opt/libzip/lib/pkgconfig:$HOME/opt/libwebp/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/opt/onig/lib:$HOME/opt/libzip/lib:$HOME/opt/libwebp/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Install php

Now we finally get to make PHP and install it. PHP does take some time tp make, about 10-15 minutes so don't be alarmed.

wget https://www.php.net/distributions/php-8.4.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf php-8.4.1.tar.gz
./configure \
  --prefix=$HOME/opt/php8.4.1 \
  --enable-fpm \
  --with-zlib \
  --with-curl \
  --with-openssl \
  --with-pdo-mysql \
  --with-mysqli \
  --enable-mbstring \
  --enable-intl \
  --enable-simplexml \
  --enable-gd \
  --with-webp \
  --with-jpeg \
  --enable-opcache \
  --with-zip \
  --enable-pcntl
make
make install

Now you can go to your newly created php instance create a few settings files, and run the server. Use the nodemonize directive at first for debugging.

./php-fpm --nodaemonize

Install Pecl

Pecl helps you easily add additional extensions for PHP. Installing it only requires a few commands and it is well worth it for things like Redis or ACPu for example. Start from back in the source folder.

curl -O https://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar
../php8.4.1/bin/php go-pear.phar

This will lauch the installer. You will want to adjust a couple things here. Set prefix to be /home/user/opt/pear and the temporary folders to be /home/user/opt/src/tmp. Make sure to use your user account. When finished, include it in your path and you should be all set!

export PATH=$PATH:~/opt/php8.4.1/bin:~/opt/pear/bin
pecl install apcu
pecl install redis

To enable the extensions you will need to edit your php.ini file and add configuration lines like extension=apcu.so.

Restart PHP-FPM

Kill all php-fpm processes and then start it up again.

pkill -9 php-fpm
~/opt/php8.4.1/sbin/php-fpm

That's all!