Greetings,

One thing I'd like to do is run my pHp scripts locally, from my hard drive. I wasn't able to do this on Windows XP, and I've heard some people talking about how easy it is on Linux. Is this possible? It would help a lot to be able to test my scripts before uploading them to the web. Is there some sort of progam I need to download? Is it a command I enter into the shell?

Thanks,

Hello!

EDIT: Welcome to LQ!

Ok, first you need a webserver, best you download and install the "apache webserver" [www.httpd.apache.org] from here .
It's very easy, you'll get a documentation with the package.

Then you'll need PHP [www.php.net], download it from here . Documentation is also included.

Optionally you can download MySQL [www.mysql.com] from here .

You can find on this forum a lot of info about Apache+PHP+MySQL.

Hope this helped!
Boby

PS: I think Suse comes with these packages installed, or you can select them in the insllation options.

Alternatively you can use LAMPP http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html if you are not sure how to install all that stuff mentioned above. Although it should be pretty simple to start up apache; try this:
Command prompt (#):
#sudo su - (change to root)
#/etc/init.d/apache (or httpd) start

if the status sais ok try opening up your browser and typing in :
http://localhost

if you see something other than "unable to locate page" you are fairly well set, and all you need to do is put your php scripts for testing into /var/www/localhost/htdocs and run them by using url like this http://localhost/[your php scrpt].php . good luck.

Thanks a lot!
I am now running xampp with php and mysql, however, I cant find the directory /var/www/localhost/htdocs/. I DID find something else that looked convincing: /srv/www/htdocs, but when i try to write in it, it says "access denied, unable to write to /srv/www/htdocs/." What do i do?

since you are suing xampp, then your homepage directory will be somewhere under xampp install folder. Try searching for html files under xampp install. also the issue you are having is most likely due to the fact that you are trying to write to a folder with root or apache permissions as a user thus you are not priviledged enough to do so.

I know. How do I log in as root in the GUI? I can log in through su, but I need to be able to write to that folder.