Just as I was finishing my review of the beta version of Zend Server CE, Zend proudly announced the release of Zend Server and Zend Server Community Edition (CE). So I had to start all over again with a fresh installation of Zend Server CE 4.0.1. I was pleased to see that they fixed some of the quirks and bugs I had encountered in the beta version, but oddly enough they introduced some new ones too.
Zend has made quite a lot of noise about their latest products, namely Zend Server and Zend Server CE (Community Edition) and I felt tempted to try it out for myself.
According to Zend, the Zend Server Community Edition (CE) is a free Web Application Server that is simple to install and easy to use. Well, you are about to find out, if you continue reading. It is intended as a community-supported product via the Zend support forums, and updates will be made available periodically. Still according to Zend, the Zend Server CE should be ideal for developing and running non-critical PHP applications. Replace free with commercial, non-critical with business-critical and add some extra features in the mix and you have the Zend Server. Since I do not need a commercial webserver I decided to try out the community edition.
Ubuntu server
At home I usually tinker with virtual Ubuntu servers, so I installed a basic virtual Ubuntu server (8.04 LTS) with OpenSSH server as the only extra software package, no LAMP. I already posted an article on how to install a virtual Ubuntu server on Mac OS X using VirtualBox, so I will not repeat it here. I christened this server zsce and assigned the static IP-address 192.168.1.83 to it. I didn’t bother installing the linux guest additions for VirtualBox.
Zend Server CE doesn’t install a DBMS and the manual doesn’t mention it either, but I thought it made sense to install MySQL before attempting to install Zend Server CE.
sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client
You will be prompted to provide a root password for MySQL.
And now …
Installing Zend Server CE
I used the DEB installation method for installing Zend Server CE using aptitude. Installing on a Ubuntu server means using the command line only.
First you will have to add a repository to be able to download the Zend Server CE
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the following lines to the file:
# Zend Server CE
deb http://repos.zend.com/deb/ce ce non-free
Add Zend’s repository public key. If you did not use the sudo -s command earlier, like mentioned in the manual, you will get the following error:
johan@zsce:~$ sudo wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- |apt-key add -
--10:31:23-- http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key
=> `-'
Resolving repos.zend.com... 93.188.130.102
Connecting to repos.zend.com|93.188.130.102|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,673 (1.6K) [text/plain]
100%[========================================================>] 1,673 --.--K/s
10:31:24 (441.22 KB/s) - `-' saved [1673/1673]
gpg: no writable keyring found: eof
gpg: error reading `-': general error
gpg: import from `-' failed: general error
Lesson learned: follow the manual to the letter or place the sudo command before the apt-key command.
johan@zsce:~$ wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
--10:32:41-- http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key
=> `-'
Resolving repos.zend.com... 93.188.130.102
Connecting to repos.zend.com|93.188.130.102|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,673 (1.6K) [text/plain]
100%[========================================================>] 1,673 --.--K/s
10:32:41 (104.95 KB/s) - `-' saved [1673/1673]
To follow the manual more closely I now ran the sudo -s command, which makes me root.
johan@zsce:~$ sudo -s
[sudo] password for johan:
root@zsce:~#
Update the package repository info.
aptitude update
Install Zend Server CE. I copied most of the installation messages so you can see which packages are installed with Zend Server CE.
root@zsce:~# aptitude install zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libaio1 libapache2-mod-php5-zend-ce
libapr1 libaprutil1 libframework1-zend-ce libicu36 libmcrypt4 libmhash2 liboci-zend
libpng12-0 libpng3 libpq4 libpq5 libsqlite0 lighttpd-zend-ce openssl php-bcmath-zend-ce
php-bz2-zend-ce php-calendar-zend-ce php-ctype-zend-ce php-curl-zend-ce
php-data-cache-zend-ce php-debugger-zend-ce php-dev-zend-ce php-exif-zend-ce php-fcgi-zend-ce
php-ftp-zend-ce php-gd-zend-ce php-gettext-zend-ce php-imap-zend-ce php-intl-zend-ce
php-json-zend-ce php-ldap-zend-ce php-mcrypt-zend-ce php-mhash-zend-ce php-mime-magic-zend-ce
php-mysql-zend-ce php-mysqli-zend-ce php-oci8-zend-ce php-optimizer-plus-zend-ce
php-pdo-mysql-zend-ce php-pdo-oci-zend-ce php-pdo-pgsql-zend-ce php-pgsql-zend-ce
php-posix-zend-ce php-soap-zend-ce php-sockets-zend-ce php-sqlite-zend-ce php-tidy-zend-ce
php-tokenizer-zend-ce php-xmlreader-zend-ce php-xmlwriter-zend-ce php-xsl-zend-ce
php-zem-zend-ce php-zendutils-zend-ce php-zip-zend-ce php5-common-extensions-zend-ce sqlite
zend-base-ce zend-ce zend-ce-doc zend-extensions-ce zend-framework-ce zend-gui-ce
0 packages upgraded, 67 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
Need to get 48.5MB of archives. After unpacking 179MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y
...
This can take a while depending on your connection.
...
Setting up sqlite (2.8.17-4build1) ...
Setting up zend-extensions-ce (4.0.0-1+b60) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zend-gui-ce:
zend-gui-ce depends on lighttpd-zend-ce; however:
Package lighttpd-zend-ce is not configured yet.
zend-gui-ce depends on php-fcgi-zend-ce; however:
Package php-fcgi-zend-ce is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing zend-gui-ce (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up zend-framework-ce (1.7.8+b34) ...
Setting up zend-ce-doc (4.0.10+b20) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zend-ce:
zend-ce depends on zend-gui-ce; however:
Package zend-gui-ce is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing zend-ce (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
lighttpd-zend-ce
php-fcgi-zend-ce
zend-gui-ce
zend-ce
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:
Setting up lighttpd-zend-ce (1.4.18-1+b56) ...
Setting up php-fcgi-zend-ce (5.2.9+b36) ...
Setting up zend-gui-ce (4.0.16+b150) ...
Site zendserver_gui.conf installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.
* Reloading web server config apache2
Setting up zend-ce (4.0.0-1+b60) ...
* Stopping web server apache2
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
httpd (no pid file) not running
...done.
Starting ZendServer 4.0.0 ..
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 7700
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
[08.04.2009 10:44:59 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[08.04.2009 10:44:59 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.
ZendServer started...
This is a bug they fixed. In the beta version the installation stopped after ‘E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)’. I then had to run the installation command again to get to the message ‘ZendServer started…’.
If you want to get rid of the ‘Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name… ‘, just add a servername to the Apache configuration file.
vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
ServerName zsce
Restart all Zend Server Community Edition daemons.
root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
Stopping ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 8359
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
Check the Zend Server Community Edition status
root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh status
[08.04.2009 10:04:54 SYSTEM] Apache is running.
[08.04.2009 10:48:54 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[08.04.2009 10:48:54 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.
Hurray!
Browsing, using Firefox, to https://192.168.1.83:10082 I got ‘Secure Connection Failed’ error; ‘192.168.1.83:10082 uses an invalid security certificate …’. So confirm the exception and you will get a prompt to provide a password for Zend Server CE.
Post-installation steps
Adding the
Finding the
root@zsce:~# updatedb
root@zsce:~# locate zendctl
/usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh
By the way, the location is also mentioned in the manual. Just showing off. 
root@zsce:~# vi /etc/profile
and add the following lines to the end of the file:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/zend/bin
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/zend/lib
In order for the changes to take effect, run the following command:
root@zsce:~# source /etc/profile
I decided to install the extra extensions.
root@zsce:~# aptitude install php5-extra-extensions-zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...The following NEW packages will be installed:
libgif4 libgmp3c2 libltdl3 libming0 libmssql-zend odbcinst1debian1 php-fileinfo-zend-ce
php-gmp-zend-ce php-imagick-zend-ce php-mbstring-zend-ce php-memcache-zend-ce
php-ming-zend-ce php-mssql-zend-ce php-odbc-zend-ce php-pcntl-zend-ce php-shmop-zend-ce
php-sysvmsg-zend-ce php-sysvsem-zend-ce php-sysvshm-zend-ce php-wddx-zend-ce
php-xmlrpc-zend-ce php5-extra-extensions-zend-ce php5-unix-extensions-zend-ce unixodbc
0 packages upgraded, 24 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
Need to get 4311kB of archives. After unpacking 10.4MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y
and also phpMyAdmin.
root@zsce:~# aptitude install phpmyadmin-zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
Setting up phpmyadmin (4:2.11.3-1ubuntu1.1) ...
Lighttpd not installed, skipping
invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/lighttpd not found.
Setting up phpmyadmin-zend-ce (4.0.0-1+b17) ...
...
I selected lighttpd as webserver for phpMyAdmin when prompted, this isn’t mentioned in the manual, but it produced a message stating that lighttpd is not installed. I ignored it and phpMyAdmin seems to be correctly installed and working. When you have ServerSpy installed in your Firefox browser you will notice that phpMyAdmin uses lighttpd as webserver. Strange, but it works, just keep going.
When I tried to access phpMyAdmin via my browser (still using my MacBook) I got the following message:
“For security reasons, the link to the phpMyAdmin interface from Zend Server is locked for remote access and is only accessible from localhost. “
Great, I am running Zend Server CE on a command line only linux server and must access phpMyAdmin from the localhost. Zend Server CE is also supposed to be for development environments, so where’s the harm in accessing phpMyAdmin from another computer? Despite being my first encounter with lighttpd it took me only a couple of minutes to figure out how to fix this, without RTFM. I added the IP-address of my home network (192.168.1) to the lighttpd configuration file.
vi /usr/local/zend/gui/lighttpd/etc/lighttpd.conf...
$HTTP["remoteip"] !~ "127.0.0.1" {
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/phpmyadmin/" {
url.access-deny = ( "192.168.1" )
server.errorfile-prefix = "//usr/local/zend/gui/lighttpd/share/lighttpd-custom-errors/errorcode-"
}
}
...
Restart all Zend Server Community Edition daemons.
root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
Stopping ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 8359
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
Don’t ask me to explain the change to the lighttpd config file, my first attempt to fix it worked. Hurray!
Now we get to the point were they included some new bugs.
I wanted to install the Dojo toolkit and the Zend Framework extras. But compared to the beta version the manual now contains some typos which will prevent you from installing them.
From the manual for version 4.0.1:
aptitude install framework-zend-dojo-ce
resulted in
Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "framework-zend-dojo-ce"
and
aptitude install framework-zend-extras-ce
resulted in
Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "framework-zend-extras-ce"
A quick search in the manual for the beta version revealed that the correct way to install the packages is:
aptitude install zend-framework-dojo-ce
and
aptitude install zend-framework-extras-ce
This way the packages installed without errors. Since I have never used the Dojo toolkit and the Zend framework I didn’t test them.
I did not install any other packages, so I do not know if there are more typos.
Tests
This is just a review about the installation of the community edition of the Zend Server. No tests, no benchmarks, no security audit, … Well, as it was installed separately, I did test the database connection to MySQL using the following 3 database extensions: MySQL, MySQLi and PDO.
I created a database (testdb), with 1 table (names) containing 2 fields (id and name), inserted some records using phpMyAdmin and tested the connection to the database and retrieval of the data using PHP-scripts.
The first 2, MySQL and MySQLi, worked flawlessly, but this was not the case for PDO. The following error was displayed in the browser, when testing PDO on Zend Server CE:
Error: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2)
The solution for this problem (via Google) was to include socket information in the DSN (Database Source Name) as you can see in the script below. I never encountered this problem when using the default LAMP installation on Ubuntu or CentOS.
unix_socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock',
'testusr', 'testpwd');
$sql = 'SELECT * FROM names';
foreach ($dbc->query($sql) as $row) {
echo $row['id'] . '. ' . $row['name'] . "
\n";
}
} catch (PDOException $e) {
echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage() . "
";
}
$dbc = null;
?>
Test PECL installation:
root@zsce:~# pecl list-all
All packages [Channel pecl.php.net]:
====================================
Package Latest Local
pecl/APC 3.1.2 Alternative PHP Cache
pecl/memcache 2.2.5 memcached extension
pecl/hidef 0.1.1 Constants for real
pecl/memcached 0.1.5 PHP extension for interfacing with memcached via libmemcached library
pecl/spidermonkey 0.1.2 JavaScript engine for PHP
pecl/selinux 0.2.1 SELinux binding for PHP script language
pecl/bloomy 0.1.0 Extension implementing a Bloom filter
OK
Test documentation. The following chapters on the locally installed help for the Dashboard (https://192.168.1.83:10082/ZendServer/help/zend_server.htm#dashboard.htm) returned not found errors (404).
- Administration Interface/Administration/Passwords
- Tasks/Working with Zend Server
Review
Bugs / quirks / annoyances / missing / typos / remarks:
- Missing: MySQL
- Missing: PHP CLI. My mistake, it is present.
- Typos (?): names of the packages Dojo and extras for Zend Framework are spelled wrong in the manual
- Documentation: when to install your DBMS, what webserver to choose when installing phpMyAdmin, how to allow access to phpMyAdmin from outside localhost, the relationship between lighttpd and Apache, …
- Bug: PDO, doesn’t work without including socket info in the DSN
- Installation takes more time and effort than a default Ubuntu or Centos LAMP installation.
- The installation of phpMyAdmin reported lighttpd not installed.
- Bug: some broken links in the locally installed help
I can understand Zend not including MySQL in the installation, because not everyone uses MySQL and if they did include it, people would start complaining why PostgreSQL isn’t included. So, it’s no big deal. It would be a good idea though to include in the installation manual when you are supposed to install your DBMS. Most likely this will be before installing Zend Server, but it wouldn’t hurt mentioning this.
It isn’t that difficult to install Zend Server CE, but it takes more time and work than a default LAMP installation on Ubuntu.
Documentation is still a bit lacking: when to install your database (before seems logical to me), installation of phpMyAdmin (which webserver to choose, how to allow access from another computer), more information on the relationship between lighttpd and Apache … I am not asking for a complete manual on lighttpd and Apache here, it’s just the first time I am confronted with lighttpd (among other stuff) … or is all that supposed to be common knowledge.
Actually, I find it impressive. It’s quite an achievement to offer a product like this and making it free for home/development/non-critical use. No less than 5 installation methods: 1 for Microsoft Windows, 1 for Mac OS X and 3 for Linux (tarball, RPM and DEB). The list of software and packages is extensive, but I might not be the right person to appreciate all of this. I’ve never used a debugger, caching, … and I don’t know why they install 2 webservers (lighttpd and Apache) instead of just one. This is why I stick to reviewing the installation procedure. Let’s be honest; the list of bugs, remarks, … will not take a long time fixing.
Why would you use Zend Server CE ?
Speaking for myself, from a professional and personal perspective, I see no use for Zend Server CE in the near future. This may sound quite harsh, but let me explain.
At work we have a mixed server environment, Windows and Linux (CentOS, Scientific Linux) servers. I do not see us replacing the current webserver setups with Zend Server (CE). Although I do see that a mixed server environment might be the ideal place to use Zend Server; resulting in identical setups for your Windows and Linux webservers, which would make it possible to move sites easily. Especially if you start from a clean slate or want to restart with a clean slate. But this will require a lot of work and I don’t see it happen any time soon. It’s also no use to develop on Zend Server CE when you do not use Zend Server in your production environment.
I am also not impressed with the argument that Zend Server uses a very recent version of PHP (5.2.9) compared to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (5.2.4) and CentOS / RHEL / SL (5.1.6). You choose an environment and you stick with it for a while and since security updates and bug fixes are backported I do not see a problem with this approach. I do admit that RHEL’s approach feels a bit like the other extreme compared to Zend Server.
It’s very unlikely that shared hosting sites will move en masse to Zend Server in the near future. So when I develop my personal site at home on a Zend Server CE installation and then upload my site to my webhost, there is a risk that there will be errors due to different PHP versions or different installed components, modules and packages. This is asking for trouble; you should always keep your development environment identical (or as identical as possible) to your production environment. The same goes if you work as an independent contractor. Of course, if Zend Server gains a lot of momentum this situation might change in the years to come, but I feel no need to be an early adopter.
I do not feel like I have wasted my time installing Zend Server CE even as I have no intention of using it in the near future. It made me realize that there are some areas where my knowledge is lacking: debuggers, caching, Zend Framework, lighttpd, … So my list of interesting things to study just got a bit longer.
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