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tlathm

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 103  

Beowulf and PHP install

I'm testing a new install of beowulf of a headless server for LAMP stuff. One of the many reasons I want to use beowulf is because it has PHP 7.3 which is what I want.

As per instructions I've found here, I initially installed the current ascii 2.1, changed my sources to beowulf, and upgraded everything. All that went pretty well. For my initial install I installed as little as possible.

I'm about to install PHP but I'm confused as to the fact that there are packages named as, for example, just "php" as well as others using a name with the 7.3 suffix such as "php7.3", and I'm unclear as to which I should be specifying there. It appears that installing the former (without the 7.3 suffix) does in fact pull in the appropriate package with the 7.3 suffix, but directly installing the package with the 7.3 suffix, does NOT install the one without it.

Any clarification would be appreciated. My inclination is to install the ones without the suffix and to let it pull in what it needs, but I'd like to understand what's actually going on there.

Thanks!
Tom

Last edited by tlathm (2019-12-31 00:04:07)

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 286  

Re: Beowulf and PHP install

Investigate the concept of meta-packages.

PS: in aptitude you can get a description of the selected/highlighted package by pressing Enter.

HTH!

tlathm

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 103  

Re: Beowulf and PHP install

Investigate the concept of meta-packages.

PS: in aptitude you can get a description of the selected/highlighted package by pressing Enter.

HTH!

As far as what you describe in aptitude, this is a headless install with no GUI at all. I'm assuming that you're saying that, for example, "php" is a meta package that will pull in php7.3, and again, I'm assuming I probably want to install the php meta package. Having said that, I'm not sure I understand how that would differ from installing php7.3 directly.

Tom

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 286  

Re: Beowulf and PHP install

Aptitude is the cli package manager. I'm assuming you log in to this headless machine via ssh, right? As root, do:

apt-get update && apt install aptitude

Starting it is simple: type in apti then press the tab key for completion, hit the Enter key and it runs. Use the / key to instigate a search, n cycles through the results and q quits the program.

As for the meta-package thing, did you do a Google search? I did, this is one of the top links it came up with:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/66257/w … -a-package

tlathm

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 103  

Re: Beowulf and PHP install

I actually did understand what meta packages are, for example I use the linux-image-amd64 to install my kernel. I think what had me a bit confused was around the versions reported for them in this case, but I understand that now. That is, that the specific version of php that actually gets installed will be based on the version of php7.3 pulled in by the php meta package. Sorry for the confusion.

I'll look into installing aptitude, thought I'm not sure I'll need it. It appear I can get the information I need about packages with commands like "apt-cache show" etc.

Thanks!
Tom