It's not hugely difficult to build PHP for the chumby, although it looks like the standard PHP source distribution really isn't properly built for cross-compilation.

From Chumby Industries' "teach-a-man-to-fish-department":

Basically, put together an ARM9 toolchain as shown on the wiki, download and unpack the source to PHP from php.net, then

# ./configure --disable-all --build=i386-linux --host=arm-linux --prefix=/usr/arm-linux --enable-fastcgi --enable-discard-path --enable-force-cgi-redirect

It appears their configuration doesn't actually target the architecture correctly, so you'll have to edit the MakeFile to set CC to "arm-linux-gcc" instead of just "gcc"

Then:

# make
# sudo make install

At this point, you should have the PHP binaries sitting at /usr/arm-linux/bin.  First thing to do is strip them to make them smaller:

arm-linux-strip /usr/arm-linux/bin/php /usr/arm-linux/php-cgi

They should end up a little over 2MB.

You'd then copy the php-cgi binary to a dongle, then edit the lighttpd.conf file per the instructions on the page you linked to let lighty know where the php-cgi binary is located.

Note that this builds a very basic PHP with no optional modules - if you want them, you'll need to build their library dependencies separately for ARM (libxml2 being the most necessary) and then reconfigure and rebuild PHP with each of the modules enabled and disabled as you wish.

Here's what I get on my chumby:

chumby:/mnt/usb# ./php -v
PHP 5.2.5 (cli) (built: Dec 18 2007 14:43:07) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies
chumby:/mnt/usb# ./php-cgi -v
PHP 5.2.5 (cgi-fcgi) (built: Dec 18 2007 14:42:53)
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies
chumby:/mnt/usb#

When you get it done all the way, please feel welcome to post more complete instructions on the wiki, perhaps linked from the lighttpd instructions.

Well, thanks to Duane's help, it's going well:

Over the weekend i'll work some more on it (it needs to be able to find the php.ini, and i'd like to have some of the standard modules)

When i'm done i'll post instructions and binaries for those interested..

Any Lick, This one will be SWEET

I downloaded the tool chain and compiled the latest PHP (5.2.5), posted the Chumby binaries here

http://www.vrtisworks.com/cmsms/index.p … ource-code

Nick

this rocks! thanks for posting the compiled binaries. Question -- what's the difference between the PHP-CGI binary and the PHP binary? Thanks.

Hi,

I would like to thank for this PHP related discussion. I am looking for Chumby developers mailing list instead of the forum like maemo-developers mailing list. I don't know but I don't like the forum way of discussion. Is there any chumby developers mailing list?

Apart from this, I am going to get my chumby by tomorrow in Bangalore, India. I am already working on project, where I have already cross-compiled PHP5, d-bus, GTK+, Xserver, lighttpd, perl etc under scratchbox for ARM9.

I was looking for some good developement environment like openembedded or sbox which really eases the pain of cross-compilation. I feel that this needs to be addressed first.

First thing I am planning for is to create sbox based development environment for chumby, and due to this I was looking for chumby-developers mailing list, instead of forum way...If any ML exists, where original chumby developers are also part of, then please notify me, as it helps to speed up the development. Thanx.

Recently there is also PHP-DBus bindings project was started by Tobias, which is in very much initial stage, and I think PHP-DBus bindings can also be useful with chumby too.

---Trilok Soni

Hi there,

I started trying this out and so far it works pretty well. One question: how do I get http authentication to work? I used to do a "http://user:password@address/" in my Ap server, but does not seem to work ligth lighttpd.

Thanks,
Jose

I haven't actually enabled authentication, but i think the process would be something like:
1. ensure hat mod_auth.la and mod_auth.so are in the /mnt/usb/lighty/lib folder (or wherever you lighttpd lib folder is)
2. update your lighttpd.conf file to include mod_auth in your server.modules and set the mod_auth settings:

server.modules = ("mod_accesslog", "mod_auth", "mod_fastcgi")
auth.backend = "htpasswd_"
auth.backend.htpasswd.userfile = "/mnt/usb/lighty/.htpasswd"

notes:
-the documentation had an underscore in "htpasswd_"... i'm not sure if it's needed, so try it with and without.
-the documentation (and my info above) seems to indicate that lighttpd will apply the authentication to the entire site, that than doing something like apache, where you can put unique .htaccess/.htpasswd files in individual directories.
-the .htpasswd file can be created using the tools from apache.  you'll need to do something like:
  htpasswd -c -m .htpasswd user
Then copy the .htpasswd file to location in the lighttpd.conf file.  "-c" creates the file, "-m" specifies md5 encryption.
You can find more info on htpasswd here http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/programs/htpasswd.html

**note to mods: this and the previous notes from Josep don't really relate to php... they probably ought to be moved to a "mod_auth" thread.**

I think that the problem comes from the firmware version. the gnu toolchain isn't the same since the 1.7 firmware. I'm not a linux user so if anybody can build PHP for 1.7.1 firmware, it'll help me a lot, and also be useful for other people...
Thanks

Edit : I build PHP 5.2.5 for the 1.7.1 firmware (with GCC 4.3.2) and now it works perfectly. If anybody is interested I can give you the php files (php and php-cgi).
PS : I tried to build PHP 5.3 but i had more than 1 hundred errors !!! I don't know why.

anybody else able to compile this?
i'm in a bit of a rush and the toolchain isn't working on my osx
(trying to get ubuntu setup on another computer just to build php-cgi )

sounds like a plan, i've got VMware Fusion already
will give it a go
also. if i want to compile php-cgi
is that already in the standard php download?