I am working in my first bits of Linux and have hit a snag that I just cannot solve. I did a mostly default install of the Debian client using the SARGE installer.

Debian: Test version 2.4.27
Apache: 1.3.31
MySQL (most recent from apt-get)
PHP4 (most recent from apt-get)

As I do not really know what I'm doing yet, I have been using a guide I found online aboutdebian.com. Which gave me the following instructions:

If you changed the /etc/apt/sources.list file pull package updates over the Internet and you have modem connection be sure to dial up your ISP before proceeding. (It's only about a 630K download.) To add PHP4 to your server enter the command:

apt-get install php4

At the end of the package installation answer No to the prompt to run the Apache configuration tool. We'll take care of that manually by enterting the command:

ee /etc/apache/httpd.conf

Arrow down until you find the section with all of the LoadModule statements and add the following statement at the bottom of them:

LoadModule php4_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so

Then exit the editor saving the file. You'll also want to configure PHP to work with the MySQL database. To do that open the PHP configuration file with the command:

ee /etc/php4/apache/php.ini

Look for the Dynamic Extensions section in the file for the line:

; extension mysql.so

and remove the ; character from the beginning of the line to uncomment it. Then exit the editor saving the file.

There's a lot you can do with PHP that doesn't have anything to do with databases. However, if you want to use your PHP pages to access MySQL databases, you'll have to install MySQL and a libraries package. To install the MySQL package, enter:

apt-get install mysql-server

Press Enter at the password notification screen and again at the purge databases screen to accept the default No selection (this is to remove any old MySQL files that may be on a system - which yours shouldn't have). Select Yes to start MySQL at boot up.

Now we install the library files with the command:

apt-get install php4-mysql

That's it! All we have to do is restart Apache so the PHP module gets loaded with the command:

/etc/init.d/apache restart

Now, when I try to restart Apache, I get an error stating that libphp4.so does not exist. I then tried to fix the problem by finding libphp4.so and putting it in the directory. I found libphp4.so in /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp4.so, so I proceeded to copy the file to /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so.

After putting the file into the directory, I get another error which is as follows:
Syntax error on line 205 of /etc/apache/httpd.conf; Cannot load /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so into server: /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so: undefined symbol: unixd_config

What I don't understand is why do I have apache 2 packages installed when I am running v1.3. Also I have no clue what this error does or means and I cannot find a lick of information about it online.

Any help or insight is much appreciated. I'll keep researching it and try to find a solution online, but I'm losing hope fast of figuring this out!

Thanks in advance!

Still working on this!

I ran into the same problem ...

I did following :

dpkg -l | grep apache

and I removed every single package containing apache2 like this :

# apt-get remove xxpackagenameyoufoundxxx
# dpkg --purge xxpackagenameyoufoundxxx

sometimes when you try to run apt-get remove xxxpackagenameyoufoundxxx it wont work cause the packagename does not correspond ...

then you have to do this :

apt-cache search packagename from dpkg -l without the version number, then do an apt-get remove with the package name that corresponds more or less from your dpkg -l ...

if you removed all the apache2 stuff you can do a find / -name apache2 to be sure you removed everything ...

I reinstalled all my packages, reinstalled apache (ver 1.3 !!!!) and php4 ...

keep posted, we'll fix your prob