I am trying to install a software product on an existing system running debian sarge (before the new release, so i guess stable now??), apache1.3, and postgresql as the db.

I tried installing php5 through apt-get install php5 and got an error saying libmm11 is not installable. I was however, able to get php4 downloaded, but it doesn't seem to be running (as php scripts are not executing, merely being offered to be downloaded... my source code!).

Could someone please answer the following questions:

1. Do i have to compile php5 from source to get it to work? (vs apt-get)

2. Do I need more than just php5 when apt-getting? I've seen things like libapache-mod-php4, do I need this and other things?

3. Could i be getting errors installing because i have a mix of debian versions (testing and i saw a few unstable, and do i need to use stable for sarge now?)

4. Do i have to update my sources.list file to get certain packages? if so, where can i find them?

5. Is it possible/hard to upgrade to php5 after i get php4 working?

Any help getting this up would be great and is really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

If I am not mistaken (I'm not, I've just checked), PHP5 is not available in debian yet (any flavour - stable, testing, unstable, not even experimental).

So unless you have some external unofficial repositories in sources-list (DON'T DO THIS!), you will have to compile it from source code.

Clean up your sources.list to only include official repository and one flavour (sarge for a server, maybe you can consider unstable for a workstation).

After that you should be able to install php4 using apt or compile php5 from source.

r0b0,

thanks for clearing up the difference between php4 and php5 on debian. I still have one question though, my php4 still doesn't seem to be running, so do i need to install anything else for it to work with my existing apache server (ex. libapache-mod-php4??)

my source list is posted below, how would i go about "cleaning it up" to be sarge (now stable)? is there anything on there i should remove because it may be creating dependency conflicts?

thanks again

Holly cow, 20 repositories in sources.list! I don't know who did this to that poor machine but no wonder it's misbehaving.

You sould be very strict about what you put into sources.list because you are into great dependency problems otherwise. If you want to run stable, leave just 2 lines there - the main archive (you can use other mirror, not ftp.sk.debian.org) and the security updates.

As to the problem with php files not executed, I am not sure how the modules work in apache1. I use apache2 and this is how it is set up:

Apart from checking the config setup, you can also have a look into apache log files if you see something suspicious there about the PHP module.

i changed my originally long source list to:

1 #deb file:///cdrom/ sarge main
2 deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
3 deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

and i solved all my dependency problems i was having, thanks for the tip

now to get my apache server to work properly, lol