PHP¶

Introduction¶

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed primarily for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language.

Versions¶

Release types¶

Each release branch of PHP is fully supported for two years beginning with its initial stable release. We provide different point releases and apply security updates on a regular basis.

Standard version¶

If you don’t select a certain version, our default will be used. We decided to default to version 8.3, which is considered to be stable by the developers.

Show available versions¶

Use uberspace tools version list php to show all selectable versions:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools version list php
- 8.1
- 8.2
- 8.3
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Change version¶

You can select the PHP version with uberspace tools version use php <version>. You can choose between release branches:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools version use php 8.3
Selected PHP version 8.3
The new configuration is adapted immediately. Patch updates will be applied automatically.
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Selected version¶

You can check the selected version by executing uberspace tools version show php on the command line:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools version show php
Using 'PHP' version: '8.2'
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Update policy¶

We update all versions on a regular basis. Once the security support ends, the branch reaches its end of life, is no longer supported and will be removed from our servers.

Branch	State	Security Support Until
8.0	Deprecated	26 Nov 2023
8.1	Active support	31 Dec 2025
8.2	Active support	31 Dec 2026
8.3	Active support	31 Dec 2027

Note

About one month before the EOL date we will notify users, who have set the specific version in their Uberspace, by email about the deprecation. Shortly after the EOL date we will migrate accounts using the outdated version to the next supported version.

For about one month after the EOL date, the expired EOL version can still be manually switched back to give you time updating your software. The expired version will be completely removed one month after EOL date.

Connection to webserver¶

We use the PHP FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) to connect the PHP interpreter to the webserver. Every user has its own PHP-FPM instance. You can check the configuration in /opt/uberspace/etc/$USER/php-fpm.conf.

If you have configured your own proxy by using a custom port or backend you can still use your PHP-FPM instance on the socket /run/php-fpm-$USER.sock

How to publish¶

Put your PHP files into your DocumentRoot. The file extension should be .php. For security reasons we don’t parse PHP code in every file.

Configuration¶

Provided configuration¶

We use a standard php.ini configuration with minimal modifications to fit the needs of popular software:

realpath_cache_ttl = 300
max_execution_time = 90
max_input_time = 600
max_input_vars = 1500
memory_limit = 256M
date.timezone = Europe/Berlin

We also set the timezone so error logs have the correct times.

Own configuration¶

There are two configuration directories for php.ini files in your uberspace account: ~/etc/php.d and ~/etc/php.early.d. In most cases, you will only need ~/etc/php.d, but some applications require their directives to be at the start of the configuration. Only in those cases will you need ~/etc/php.early.d.

~/etc/php.d¶

This is the default directory for php.ini files. Any files inside this directory will be loaded additonally to the existing, global configuration and will overwrite the default values.

~/etc/php.early.d¶

If your application requires its directives to be loaded before the rest of the configuration, create the ~/etc/php.early.d directory. Then put these directives into a .ini file and place it there.

Tip

You need to reload PHP whenever you change your configuration files: uberspace tools restart php checks your configuration for sanity and restarts your PHP instance.

You can adjust configuration directives for all modes: PHP_INI_SYSTEM, PHP_INI_USER, PHP_INI_PERDIR and PHP_INI_ALL. Put as many directives as you want into these files.

Example¶

In the configuration we set timezone to Europe/Berlin. Let’s say you want to set the timezone directive to UTC: Create a file ~/etc/php.d/timezone.ini with your new settings and reload your configuration.

When there is an error in your configuration, uberspace tools restart php tells you what to do. In this case we won’t reload your configuration to make sure the invalid configuration does not break your PHP setup.

In this case fix the value and run uberspace tools restart php again.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ php -i | grep date.timezone
date.timezone => Europe/Berlin => Europe/Berlin
[isabell@stardust ~]$ echo "date.timezone = UTC" > ~/etc/php.d/timezone.ini
[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools restart php
Your php configuration has been loaded.
[isabell@stardust ~]$ php -i | grep date.timezone
date.timezone => UTC => UTC

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cat ~/etc/php.d/timezone.ini
date.timezone = idontexist
[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools restart php
Your php configuration is invalid an cannot be loaded. Please examine the following output.

PHP Warning:  Unknown: Invalid date.timezone value 'idontexist', we selected the timezone 'UTC' for now. in Unknown on line 0

Provided modules¶

We provide the following modules: apcu, bcmath, bz2, calendar, Core, ctype, curl, date, dba, decimal, dom, exif, fileinfo, filter, ftp, gd, gettext, gmp, gnupg, hash, iconv, igbinary, imagick, imap, intl, json, ldap, libxml, mailparse, mbstring, mcrypt, mongodb, msgpack, mysqli, mysqlnd, openssl, pcntl, pcre, PDO, pdo_mysql, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, pgsql, phalcon, Phar, posix, psr, readline, redis, Reflection, restrictdocroot, session, shmop, SimpleXML, soap, sockets, sodium, SPL, sqlite3, standard, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, tidy, tokenizer, xml, xmlreader, xmlrpc, xmlwriter, xsl, yaml, Zend OPcache, zip, zlib.

Package Manager¶

Every host comes with a preinstalled version of Composer. This tool enables dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update/remove) them for you.

Composer may use several sources to look for packages. These sources are called repositories. The default repository is Packagist.

Tip

Refer to the Composer Basic Usage guide for further information. Almost all common PHP projects support Composer nowdays and provide an example installation command.

Update policy¶

We only provide a single version of composer and update it on a regular basis.

Popular software¶

Check out the ⚛️ Uberlab for guides!

Debugging¶

If you want to debug your PHP application, the errorlog is a good place to start.
Make sure your application is compatible with the selected PHP version.