I have a working PHP website at a client where I work which runs on IIS. As we are switching to MsSQL, I need to enable the php_pdo_sqlsrv_53_nts.dll. However once I'm enabling the extension, I start to receive a 500 error. My guess is that I need to restart the webserver but for certain reasons at this time we would like to avoid it.
Can you please tell me whether a restart of the web server is necessary on IIS to enable correctly a php dll?
A restart is required even if you work on your localhost !
yes - see Microsoft.com
Mind you, restarting any of my webserver takes only a few seconds so I'm not sure if that's a big issue for your client. Does he have more than one server with a load balancer or something? In that case you can do them one by one or something? Or maybe there's another smart idea of temporarily rerouting traffic elsewhere through changing the DNS?
Contrary to popular opinion, I'm going to say No, and here's why:
Since you are using IIS, you could try recycling the App Pool, if the restart is not necessarily urgent.
It might take a little while to cycle, but "recycle" uses an overlapping method, keeping the old process up until its active requests are finished while a new process handles any newly generated requests. This continues until all existing processes are finished, then the old pool gracefully exits. This will ensure that service is not disrupted for the end users. On the down side, if you have users that sit on the site for long periods of time, it may take a while before your PHP extension becomes available.
I've had success with this method in the past, was able to install PHP extensions without restarting IIS outright.
To Recycle in IIS 7:
Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
Navigate to SERVERNAME > Application Pools
Select the pool you wish to recycle (the one attached to the site where you need the extension)
In the Action pane, click "Recycle..."
Related
Can a PHP process exist/run in memory when its source file has been removed from the server?
Note, in this case the server does not have memcache or opcache - is running Apache and isn't behind a reverse proxy.
Context:
We use a backup service which installs a script on the server ( cloner.php ). The service has an external dashboard which displays the backup progress.
The backup system often fails and the external dashboard reports the backup process as still running. To clear the backup process and restart it their support suggests deleting the 'cloner.php' file. This in turn still doesn't change anything in their dashboard.
Their support is now saying:
"removing the cloner.php file from the root directory of your website
isn't enough since the process is loaded into your server. To stop
this process completely, you would probably need to flush or restart
your php processes on the server( which is often left for server
administrators to be able to perform). This is why you are seeing the
process still idling in the background even though the cloner.php
script is removed."
To me this seems technically incorrect and is more likely their product is in need of improvement and doesn't handle failures correctly.
Would love if someone more well versed in PHP internals could enlighten me.
I have setup a local server on a regular desktop (not a server desktop) and have 3-4 client machines accessing the local web application I developed from the server via a WIFI router (server is connected to router via cable. All clients via WIFI).
When two of the clients are connected to the application all is well, but when a third (or more) machine joins in there are periods where each machine does not get any service from the server (the application webpage remains loading until I manually reset Apache on the server via services). At times the server responds when one of the clients refresh their page but most of the time I have to perform a reset of the Apache server.
This occurs roughly once an hour on average (6 hours of continuous usage) as the clients are using the application.
Server is running Windows 7 and Apache v2.4 with PHP v5.4
Server and all client machines are running AVG internet security
Firewall is handled by AVG Internet Security
Is this issue due to the code in my application, desktop not being able to manage requests like a server machine, antivirus or a mix of the three?
If so, how can I set-up the server to reset automatically?
Thanks
UPDATE
It is a application where users write reports on files after reviewing information
-Frequent sql requests for file data
-No images
-Some pages contain multiple sql queries that represent the page content
-Network has no internet connection
-Code does not make requests for external information from the internet
-All client machines run the application on Google Chrome web browser
But it rarely happens but sometimes the amount of connection is restricted by the third-party interface being used by the application. We are unable to figure out the reason unless having more details like what content of your app, and the error code apache or HTTP returning.
This kind of situations is difficult to track, especially on Windows where diagnostic tools aren't as readily available as on other platforms.
I suppose you can try and check the antivirus by either running server and clients with no antivirus at all for some hours, or disabling and re-enabling the antivirus when the hangup occurs.
Apart from that, you would need to pinpoint where the error occurs:
in the connection stage (Windows OS is the problem)
in the response stage (Apache is the problem - try fiddling with the child spawning parameters)
in the management stage (PHP is the problem - you can probably check this by changing the setup from PHP-as-a-module, and PHP-as-CGI-application)
in the response stage (that is, connection to the SQL server). You can check this by setting up some pages that use different combinations of session, database, and output buffering and see whether those pages remain reachable even when the application is hung up.
For an example of the last, if a page such as
<?php print date("H:i:s"); phpinfo(); ?>
remains reachable and correctly refreshes (that's why the date() command) even when the app does not respond, this demonstrates that Windows, Apache and PHP are "innocent", and either the SQL server has issues, or you do not interface with it correctly. It might be for example be the case (though unlikely in this instance) that the resident PHP module is accumulating connections to the SQL server and not releasing them, so that after a while you need to stop Apache (thereby freeing the module) and restart.
If this were the case, even if it's not a "real" fix, you can set up Apache so that all children die and are replaced after a small number of requests (once it was 150, but when leaks all but disappeared, I believe that the default became 0 -- Apache children no longer die. Check it out, I might well misremember).
I have been running a PHP site for years on my own servers. I recently purchased a dedicated server package and am trying to move my site to the dedicated server. I recently upgraded to PHP 5, and my current server is running PHP 5.6.16. I moved the files and the database, and put it in a live test domain, but the site is not functioning properly on the new dedicated server. Several key scripts are non-functional. I made sure that the dedicated server is running a version of 5.6. I have configured it to the same settings I have on the old server. I can see that the site is talking to the MySQL database. I turned on error reporting and I see no significant errors suggesting why these important scripts are now non-functional. I made sure the include path is there, and if it wasn't nothing would work. What am I overlooking? What could be different between one server and the other that might impact PHP functionality? I'm basically at my wits end here, so if these seems stupid please forgive me, but I don't know where to look next.
Start with the basics.
Does your web server respond to static page requests?
Is your web server configured to use PHP?
Can your web server execute and/or connect to PHP?
If you have a simple script with <?php phpinfo(); in it, does it work?
Are all the expected modules there in your phpinfo() output?
Do you have rewrite rules that need to be reconfigured? (Check your web server error log. Check your response status codes.)
Assuming PHP is all good, move into your application.
Are you absolutely sure error logging is on? (Again, check phpinfo() output. Try to force an error, maybe a syntax error or something and see if you see the error.)
How do you know your application is connecting to MySQL?
Start with a basic script that just echos some things.
Comment out large swaths of code and see if you can narrow down the problem that way, re-enabling chunks as you go. (You want to bi-sect the problem, cutting in half and in half and in half until you figure out exactly what the issue is.)
Other system-level things to check...
File system permissions? (See also https://serverfault.com/questions/48587/is-there-a-linux-log-for-when-a-user-is-denied-access-to-files-due-to-permission, for Linux.)
Firewalls? (Are you sure you can actually access MySQL over the network?)
Disk? (Are you out of space? Are your partitions set up correct? Is /tmp full?)
Once you figure out the problem, some advice:
Do this sort of thing regularly. Write a provisioning script to build yourself a new machine from one command, and do it regularly. These days with cloud providers (physical hardware or not) there's no reason you can't blow away your application servers on a regular basis, and re-provision them. Consider making this your system upgrade strategy. (Why reboot to get a new kernel when you can just have a whole new server with the new kernel and other patches, that you can cut over to?)
Ensure your development environment closely matches your production environment. (Consider Vagrant for this.)
You're using version control, right? If not, start using version control so that you can hack on your code for things like this and easily roll back when done.
I have created a simple website that will help me in my many projects by creating a sub domain for each new website project that I take on.
I keep going back to the older websites I've created so I have decided to keep all of them as a sub domain on localhost.
My PHP code works fine to add the information to the relevant files.
But I need to restart Apache for the changes to take affect.
I know PHP runs from the Apache service. Is it possible therefor to stop and start or even restart the Apache service from PHP code?
Yes, with exec()
exec("apachectl restart");
You might want to allow programs to close themselves before just shutting down the server, so I'd recommend:
exec("apachectl graceful");
Make sure PHP doesn't run in safemode (<= PHP 5.3), as these functions won't be available then.
Please note, this is how I restart apache on my server, you might have to adjust the command.
Also think about the permissions. Not all users (and probably not the one running php scripts) have permission to stop the server.
I am getting 403 Errors from Apache when I send too many, 12, synchronous HTTP Posts via a desktop app I am building in XCode / Objective-C. The 12 POST requests are just a few kb each and go out instantly one after the other and the Apache Error Log shows...
client denied by server configuration: /the-path/the-file.php
Apache 2.0 PHP 5 and I have this same setup working fine on my local machine. The error is coming from a VPS with my host, which runs very fast and smooth and has plenty of resources. To debug I threw a sleep(1); function (stalls script execution by 1 second) into the php file and that fixed it. This makes me think that I am breaking some limit for too many requests for a single IP in a certain amount of time. I have googled and combed PHP ini and Apache configs, but I cannot find what that directive/setting might be.
I should mention that the although it varies the first 4 or 5 POSTS usually work then it starts returning the 403 error intermittently after that. Just really acting like its bogging down.
Any ideas?
The error tells you everything: Most likely your VPS has flood control on their web server, which kicks in at 4 or 5 quickly-sequential hits. This has nothing to do with PHP itself, but ratherly completely to do with Apache. In other words, your home setup is not the same as the VPS's setup.
Try to off or configure mod_evasive. It is a module for Apache to provide evasive action in the event of an HTTP DoS or DDoS attack or brute force attack. (Here you can read more about it). Use the command to off mod_evasive:
a2dismod mod-evasive
service apache2 restart