Recompiling PHP (with bliundled GD): Will it cause issues with Plesk?

[owntheweb]

Hello,
I have a dedicated Ubuntu server setup, with Parallels Plesk installed. While I'm playing with Ubuntu web servers more and more, this is the first Plesk install that I've encountered (pre-installed - which is wonderful by the way).

There's a need to recompile PHP with bundled GD support (adds a bunch of functions missing from the non-bundled version). Scary! However, I was able to get this all going alright on a test cloud server (without Plesk) following these instructions:
http://www.howtoforge.com/recompiling-php5-with-bundled-support-for-gd-on-ubuntu

Do you see any issues with Plesk in the mix if I recompile PHP? Should I install Plesk to test in general?

My guess is that Plesk is looking for files in certain locations, but not intertwined all that much...

Thanks for the feedback in advance. I truly appreciate it.

 

[Nikolay.]

If you're on Plesk 11.5, then you should probably use this feature: http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-administrator-guide/72042.htm . Basically you should be interested only in "2. Register the new PHP version in Panel", since you already have compiling figured out. However you need to make sure not to overwrite system PHP files. In other words, configure with non-standard prefix.

Since your original question mentioned something like overwriting system PHP, I'll respond to that as well. Technically, this can be done and in theory it should work. However you'll probably get a lot of headache with updates (and later upgrades). So I highly recommend the approach I described above instead.

 

[owntheweb]

If you're on Plesk 11.5, then you should probably use this feature: http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-administrator-guide/72042.htm . Basically you should be interested only in "2. Register the new PHP version in Panel", since you already have compiling figured out. However you need to make sure not to overwrite system PHP files. In other words, configure with non-standard prefix.

Since your original question mentioned something like overwriting system PHP, I'll respond to that as well. Technically, this can be done and in theory it should work. However you'll probably get a lot of headache with updates (and later upgrades). So I highly recommend the approach I described above instead.

Thanks for the super fast, excellent feedback. Let me absorb that info and do a touch more research on non-standard prefix PHP installs.

Thanks again,

 

[owntheweb]

Actually, your shared link makes perfect sense! It will be great to install a different PHP while not messing up the currently running PHP. That makes life great.

Cheers!

EDIT: It seems my other reply is delayed/being moderated - if it shows after this one, please ignore...