Local web server under Linux, with automatic raising of hosts and switching versions of PHP

Most likely, some parts of this article are already familiar to many havers, but in connection with the purchase of a new working laptop, I decided to put all the grains together and create a convenient tool for development. I often have to work with many small projects, with different versions of PHP, often transfer old projects to new versions. In the distant past, when I was a Windows user, I used OpenServer. But with the transition to Linux, I lacked the simplicity of creating hosts and switching versions that were in it. So I had to make an even more convenient solution on Linux =)

Goals

1. Use the current software at the time of this writing.
2. To differentiate local domains, we will use a special domain .loc
3. We switch PHP versions through a subdomain using fast-cgi
4. Automatically create a host using vhost_alias and dnsmasq

What we have in the end. When going to

56.test.loc

Apache will start with PHP version 5.6.36

/ var / www / test.loc /public_html/index.php

By changing the subdomain to

72 .test.loc

the same file will be launched but with version PHP 7.2.7

Other versions are delivered in the same manner as described below.
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To create another site, simply create in / var / www / a folder with the ending .loc , inside which there must be a public_html folder that is the root of the site

That's all. As without additional torment, restarts, and editing configs, we have an automatic system for working with sites.

All this I will check on LinuxMint19, it is based on Ubuntu18.04, so everything will be the same with it.

First, put the necessary packages

sudo apt update sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libxml2-dev libfcgi-dev apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid postfix 

Postfix set as a bun, as a simple solution (in the installation wizard, everything is selected by default) to send mail from the local machine.

Since this is a local development and I am the only user. It is more convenient for me to move the project folder to my home directory. It is mounted on a separate disk and migrates when you reinstall the system. The easiest way is to create a link, then you do not need to change the path in the settings and the path is familiar to everyone.

Copy the folder created by the Apache into the home directory, create a link in its place, not forgetting to change the user to yourself and exchange groups with the Apache.

 sudo mv /var/www/ ~/www sudo ln -s ~/www /var/www sudo chown $USER:$USER -R ~/www sudo usermod -a -G www-data $USER sudo usermod -a -G $USER www-data 

Create a folder in which we will collect the PHP source for different versions

 sudo mkdir /usr/local/src/php-build 

We also need folders for CGI scripts.

 sudo mkdir /var/www/cgi-bin 

And runtime folder for the same scripts, with rights

 sudo mkdir /var/run/mod_fcgid sudo chmod 777 /var/run/mod_fcgid 

And since the directory we have is in RAM, we will add its creation when the system starts up, for this we will add to /etc/tmpfiles.d/fcgid.conf

  #Type Path Mode UID GID Age Argument d /var/run/mod_fcgid 0755 www-data www-data - - 

My dnsmasq-base comes from the box, if not then it can always be delivered.

 sudo apt install dnsmasq 

Add a rule to its configuration. You can find the dnsmasq.conf configuration file

 sudo updatedb locate dnsmasq.conf 

Or, if it is part of NetworkManager like me, then create a new configuration file in /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/local.conf
Add a line in it to redirect our local domain to a local machine.

 address=/loc/127.0.0.1 

You also need to include the necessary Apache modules.

 sudo a2enmod fcgid vhost_alias actions rewrite 

Preliminary preparation is complete, we start assembly of various local PHP versions. For each version of PHP we perform the following 4 steps. On the example 5.6.36

1. Download the source version of the desired version and unpack them

 cd /usr/local/src/php-build sudo wget http://pl1.php.net/get/php-5.6.36.tar.bz2/from/this/mirror -O php-5.6.36.tar.bz2 sudo tar jxf php-5.6.36.tar.bz2 

2. Collect the necessary version of PHP from source, and put it in /opt/php-5.6.36

 sudo mkdir /opt/php-5.6.36 cd php-5.6.36 sudo ./configure --prefix=/opt/php-5.6.36 --with-config-file-path=/opt/php-5.6.36 --enable-cgi sudo make sudo make install sudo make clean 

3. Create a CGI to handle this version in /var/www/cgi-bin/php-5.6.36.fcgi

 #!/bin/bash PHPRC=/opt/php-5.6.36/php.ini PHP_CGI=/opt/php-5.6.36/bin/php-cgi PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=8 PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=3000 export PHPRC export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS exec /opt/php-5.6.36/bin/php-cgi 

4. Making the file executable

 sudo chmod +x /var/www/cgi-bin/php-5.6.36.fcgi 

5. Add an action to handle each version in /etc/apache2/mods-available/fcgid.conf

 <IfModule mod_fcgid.c> AddHandler fcgid-script fcg fcgi fpl Action application/x-httpd-php-5.6.36 /cgi-bin/php-5.6.36.fcgi AddType application/x-httpd-php-5.6.36 .php #Action application/x-httpd-php-7.2.7 /cgi-bin/php-7.2.7.fcgi #AddType application/x-httpd-php-7.2.7 .php FcgidIPCDir /var/run/mod_fcgid FcgidProcessTableFile /var/run/mod_fcgid/fcgid_shm FcgidConnectTimeout 20 <IfModule mod_mime.c> AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi </IfModule> </IfModule> 

6. Add a rule to handle each version in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

 <VirtualHost *:80> # ServerNam ServerAlias *.loc #  CGI  ScriptAlias /cgi-bin /var/www/cgi-bin # DocumentRoot VirtualDocumentRoot /var/www/%2+/public_html #     <Directory /var/www/*.loc/> Options +ExecCGI -Indexes AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all <FilesMatch \.php$> #       <If "%{SERVER_NAME} =~ /56\..*?\.loc/"> SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-5.6.36 </If> <Else> # ,    ,    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-7.2.7 </Else> </FilesMatch> </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined </VirtualHost> 

Well that's all. It remains only to restart apache and dnsmasq and use

 sudo service apache2 restart sudo service network-manager restart 

Put the new phpinfo () test site in index.php and check that everything works.