API module structure `php5_module’ in file libphp5.so is garbled

I’ve been running Apache 2.0 with PHP 5.2 for a while now and recently I decided to upgrade the server to Apache 2.2 since 2.0 is getting older. The problem was that this compilation didn’t work out properly and every time I’ve tried to upgrade I got those stinkin error messages:

API module structure `php5_module’ in file libphp5.so is garbled

I was of course very frustrated and nothing helped. When I was googling on the problem I saw that more people had the same problems and everybody promised gold if they just did this or that. If there was any instructions or HOWTO’s for this problem, the information wasn’t enough to solve anything. People also said ”Install from a fresh source” which I also did. Didn’t work either – of course.

Here’s the part that I missed because of the lack of documentation!

What I forgot due to my own frustration was that ”from a fresh source” also meant ”Install TO a fresh destination”. I wasn’t thinking that way at all, so when I tried to reinstall the software, I used my old destination. I was thinking that overwriting old libraries should fix the problems anyway. But of course they didn’t. Why?

Well. One of the reasons was because I didn’t understand more than the instructions I was reading no the internet. I never thought about going one step further and THINK!

When I was making a new version of apache, the compiler still used the old apxs2-binary for apache 2.0 and that’s what people means with ”fresh source”, actually. So do NOT compile to your old spot without cleaning that place up – specially the apxs2-part! Of course I could choose to install pre-compiled packades from various distributions or the packages from apache friends, but realizing that I probably get other crap installed to apache too, made me avoid those packages completely without looking. I like personalize my system, I will do that as long as I can. This probably will cause more hair-loss, but my system is at least still mine!

This is how I solved the problem without shutting anything down for my users. The solution might be very unique but my webserver is a bit dependent on where all the files are stored today. No packages or cleaning up would help me out here here. Besides, if something goes wrong, the server may be gone for hours.

The following system is used:

Current apache version: 2.0.59
Going to: 2.2.4
Current PHP version: 5.2.0
Going to: 5.2.2

Before I was using Apache 2.x, I was (of course) using Apache 1.x, so the current path configuration is /usr/local/apache2
Also note that the use of apr may differ a bit depending on where you have it installed.

> tar jxf httpd-2.2.4.tar.bz2
> tar jxf php-5.2.2.tar.bz2
> cd httpd-2.2.4
> configure –prefix=/usr/local/apache2.2 –with-apr=/usr/local/apr –with-apr-util=/usr/local/apr
> make && make install
> cd ../php-5.2.2
> configure –with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2.2/bin/apxs –with-apr=/usr/local/apr –with-apr-util=/usr/local/apr
> make && make install

(The italic line over here may be the golden key to success!)

Now, so far, so good. Running apache from the new installed directory should work properly. At this point, I have to go back to my apache configuration. Since I have more things to compile for the webserver, I now run my full configuration… When I’m checking the modules directory in the new installation I also see that the libphp5.so is included. This means that it really went good, through the first step.

> cd ../httpd-2.2.4
> # — run full configure here with above settings —
> make && make install

> Now… If everything’s ok, httpd should still start properly… And actually – it does!

root@predator:/usr/local/apache2.2/bin# ./httpd
(98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:80
(98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80
no listening sockets available, shutting down

But since the old webserver still running, nothing more than this happens. But that’s ok with me – as long as the new compilation isn’t garbled!

The next step is to move all configuration to the new place. So I’m just lifting over my conf-dir to the new apache directory. To be sure to not ruining anything I’m not moving anything, just copying… Now, it is very important to change your configuration to the right directory since it now reading from the old one. But instead of doing this, everything I do is renaming the old directory and replacing it with the new one…

shell> mv apache2 apache2.0
shell> mv apache2.2 apache2

Now, there’s a new problem. The new apache-directory was pointed to apache2.2 and that directory doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not please here, so to make everything look like before, I now run configure for apache one more time. This time I’m using the old prefix again (–prefix=/usr/local/apache2) but this time I also doing a cleanup just to make sure that everything changes the way I want.. You should also use the same thing for PHP 5.2.2 – start with PHP (otherwise you might loose something important and nothing would work any good)!

> make clean && make && make install…

And meanwhile my old server runs like nothing has happened…

If everything went ok all the way down here, the only thing you have to do now is to restart your apache server… Weiha!

Thanks to Dan Anderson for the very informative description of this, that made my thinking a little bit further!

This is a repost from this forum