My Linode has no AMP - what packages do I need for AMP in Slackware?
 

Hello All,

My first post - as an introduction this month is my ten-year anniversary: ten years since I clicked "Use all the disk" or words to that effect during installation of Linux (Mandrake) and wiped MS Windows. I have used Linux exclusively ever since at work and at home. I have used many distributions - when I found Arch I thought I had found "the one" but, much as I love Arch, the rolling release bit me a couple of times.

To cut a long story short, this year I have re-discovered Slackware and it has replaced all other distros on all my machines. The UNIX-like organisation, the init scripts and the simplicity all appeal to me. Thanks Pat, Robby, Alien and the rest of the people who bring us Slack!

Anyway, I am actually posting a question. I installed Slack on my Linode and I find that their (13.37 64bit) image does not include Apache, PHP or MySQL. Now I know that LAMP is wonderfully easy to setup on a full Slack install - but how do I do it here? I installed Apache and PHP, tweaked /etc/httpd/httpd.conf to enable PHP and started getting errors - missing packages. I then installed libidn, libmcrypt then libxml2 but the latter killed httpd, it would not start. I did not look in the logs, but re-built my Linode in the hope that I might have missed an "install LAMP" option. I had not.

My questions are
- What packages do I need in Slackware for AMP, and/or
- Is there an easy way to install the rest of Slackware on my Linode?

I can list the contents of /var/log/packages/ if that would help.

Thanks,
Bill

I believe (though I have not checked in detail) that the list of deps for Apache, PHP and MySQL should be something like this:

Save that as a file (e.g. 'package-list') and then you can grab them all with a command like this:

Once you have the packages install them with:

Alternatively if you have slackpkg installed and configured this might do the trick:

This assumes you have setup and configured slackpkg. This would take up a lot of space (perhaps more than you have allocated) and would normally be an overkill for a VPS. If you really want to go down that route start with the a/, ap/, l/ and n/ series. You might also want to consider installing d/ to allow you build stuff and perhaps even x/ as x/libX11 (and perhaps other libs) are occasionally used by non graphical apps and other libraries (e.g. l/gd depends on it and PHP can use l/gd).

Thanks Ruarí for your help. I installed all of the above and of course

Then by attempting to start httpd and reading /var/log/httpd/error_log I found that the following are also needed:

But unfortunately httpd will still not start:

The error log now looks like this:

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,
Bill

In desperation I tried installing everything:

Now Apache by itself works (it did before), but when I enable PHP by uncommenting Include /etc/httpd/mod_php.conf I get a different error:

So now I am confused. When I install Slackware64 14 from the DVD onto a 64bit server at work I can configure LAMP easily. When I build a Linode with Slackware64 13.37 and then install all the packages in a, ap, d, l, n and x - I cannot.

Help please!
Thanks,
Bill

In even more desperation I

1. Re-built my Linode
2. Installed slackpkg and selected a mirror
3. Used slackpkg to install everything - KDE, the lot:

4. Edited /etc/httpd/httpd.conf to set ServerName
5. Enabled and started httpd

At this stage I could browse to my site and see "It works!"

6. Edited /etc/httpd/httpd.conf to set:

and uncomment

7. httpd is now dead:

The log looks like this. Note the seg fault or similar nasty error detected in the parent process:

Should I give up and use Debian? Windows? Wooden tools?

Bill

I'd like to point out that it's quite possible to upgrade a Slackware 13.37 Linode to Slackware 14; I've done this a couple of times, though only once on a VPS. I don't remember my exact process, but it basically involved being really lucky about editing /etc/slackpkg/mirrors.

The Linodes default (expectedly) to a 13.37 mirror list. Going through one of my Linodes' /etc/slackpkg/mirrors.orig, it looks like I just added a section for Slackware 14:

I assume I subsequently ran slackpkg update && slackpkg upgrade-all; I don't remember exactly. Whatever the case, it somehow managed to succeed; after rebooting the Linode, it successfully booted into Slackware 14.0.

Considering you're already in the habit of rebuilding the Linode as things go horribly awry, such an upgrade is definitely worth a shot.

Thanks YellowApple, I will try it over the weekend. You are right, I do not have any content on the Linode yet so re-building it is easy.

Did what you describe update the kernel?

Bill

I have a Slackware 13.37 Linode as well. I have upgraded it to 14.0 successfully and installed everything except X and XAP (this includes the AMP stack).

If I remember it correctly, I just used slackpkg but selectively installed packages in order specified by the README file for upgrading.

Doesn't appear to have touched it at all; it's still running some 3.9.x-linode kernel (I don't remember the exact version number; I'm not looking at that server at the moment...). /boot is completely empty aside from a readme file pertaining to initrd generation.

I have got the same problem that httpd can't start at Linode.

The tech support said, that the problem because of version glibc-2.13. (Slackware 13.37). Httpd need >= glibc-2.14 version to run. I have upgraded to Slackware current (glibc-2.17)and the problem solve.

Which version of Apache/httpd were you running? From a quick check of one of my (non-Linode, but up-to-date according to slackpkg) 13.37 VMs, the Apache version is 2.2.25, which seems to run acceptably on glibc-2.13. pkgs.org (Apache's httpd page doesn't include jack squat about dependendies, at least not in an obvious place) seems to indicate that a glibc as old as 2.2.5 is supported.

Thanks all for your help. The problem turns out to be glibc: the (excellent) Linode support tells me

I then asked the Linode team about upgrading, and the referred me to

and added:

So how to setup LAMP using Slackware on a Linode? Here is one way:

1. Re-build Linode using 32bit Slackware

2. Install slackpkg

3. Select a mirror:

4. Setup slackpkg

5. Install additional disk sets

x may not be needed, but something may use a library in x and in the Slackware spirit of the "full install", I included it.

6. Configure Apache /etc/httpd/httpd.conf:

- Specify

- Add additional index file name extensions

- Uncomment

- Then

You now have PHP enabled - all that remains is MySQL: over to you.

Something seems fishy with Linode's explanation, though...

For one, if Linode knows this to be an issue with Slackware64-13.37's glibc, and are recommending upgrading to 14.0, then is there some reason why they aren't offering Slackware64-14.0 for their Linodes (if they indeed aren't, that is; I've yet to see one, though I haven't tried creating a Linode in a couple months)?

Second, if this is indeed a bug with Slackware64-13.37's glibc, then why am I unable to replicate this issue on a non-Linode Slackware64-13.37 VPS (specifically, running on an OpenVZ host)? Did Linode provide any kind of information on the exact bug they believe to be causing this?

I mean, I don't exactly object to the upgrade recommendation, but this seems like an odd response from Linode.

On another note, the fact that Linode believes you're running a 32-bit kernel indicates an alternate cause for your symptoms, though it's a wonder why the heck your VM was able to make it all the way to running httpd before it started to do silly things. Or did you switch from 64-bit to 32-bit as part of your troubleshooting at some point?