Thoughts Electrique

I’ve often seen Ubuntu being chosen instead of Debian because the LTS version offers support and security-fixes for five years. This kind of SLA is often a critical argument. But while Ubuntu is happily claiming to be enterprise-ready they yet enable the universe and multiverse software repositories per default even in the LTS server edition. Since these two repositories are not included in the SLA you might end up with software that is not provided with patches and therefore the whole security guarantee get’s thrown out of the window. While I’m not saying community backed security is bad it basically sets Ubuntu into the same mode of operation as Debian and this even without a specific warning or even notice. To be on the safe side you should disable the universe and multiverse repositories after installation or at least be aware of this fact.

The forbidden fruit

I recently discovered runkit for PHP and thought it could be a solution for a few problems I ran into during my work on various projects.

At heart runkit allows you do to stuff with PHP you shouldn’t, but eventually want to, do. In my case this is basically Sandboxing and redefining (even PHP-internal) functions. It really adds some cool stuff to your PHP toolbox. Have a look at the function reference for the complete list.

Sadly enough the runkit PECL package does not work on Debian Etch (because Etch uses PHP 5.2.0+) so I had to build the package myself. Read on to find out how to build and install runkit on Debian etch and things to keep in mind when using runkit.

Important: If you are unsure of using runkit have a look at The sections The Caveat and Final Remarks before you walk through the hassle of installing it.

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