All things sysadmin

Today I fell victim of a gotcha when custom compiling PHP 5.1.4 for a customer which runs MySQL 5.1.22. The customer in question requires the mysqli component which appears to be broken with these versions (fixed in 5.2.4 though). So if you configure PHP with --with-mysqli=/usr/bin/mysql_config enabled you will soon find yourself staring at:

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/usr/local/src/php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c: In function 'zif_mysqli_stmt_bind_param':
/usr/local/src/php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c:145: error: 'gptr' undeclared (first use in this function)
/usr/local/src/php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c:145: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
/usr/local/src/php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c:145: error: for each function it appears in.)
/usr/local/src/php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c: In function 'zif_mysqli_stmt_execute':
/usr/local/src/php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c:601: error: 'gptr' undeclared (first use in this function) 

To fix this, either upgrade to 5.2.4, or if you’re left with no choice such as myself edit php-5.1.4/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c and replace all occurrances of gptr with char*

That ought to get you through the rest of the compilation provided that you’ve got the rest of your setup correct.