Thoughts Electrique

I once had to install a custom PHP extension on a 1&1 managed server. In this case the company had already purchased a managed server which was running the corporate website. They wanted to install an extranet-like webapplication which needed the ImageMagick PHP extension. In the following post I will outlike how I compiled and installed this extension on the managed server without having administrative access.

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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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