Running PHP from CDROM or USB using Stunnix Advanced Web Server

Stunnix Advanced Web Server allows the running of php-based sites off cdrom, DVD or USB on Windows, MacOS X (v10.2 and above, PPC and Intel) and Linux. PHP sites will run the same way off CD or DVD on any of these platforms. No installation of PHP onto the user's computer is needed - the php interpreter and all modules run directly off CDROM or USB.

PHP that ships with SAWS for all supported OSes, already have MySQL, SQLite and GD extensions. This means one can access MySQL and SQLite databases running off CDROM from PHP scripts. A SAWS demo CD contains sample PHP scripts for accessing MySQL and SQLite running off CD, and shows some famous PHP applications too - including PhpBB2, Joomla and phpMyAdmin. Also php loaders for code encoded by Zend and IonCube encoders are shipped with the implementations of PHP for SAWS for all platforms, meaning that you can ship only encoded PHP scripts and they'll work on all platforms. PHP versions 4.3.11 and 5.1.2 and 5.2.10 are available for running off CDROM with SAWS.

All PHP scripts that run off CDROM are executed under Apache's mod_php. This means the PHP interpreter is already present inside the Web Server process, so no time is spent starting the interpreter. A commandline version of the CGI interpreter is also included with the SAWS implementations of PHP.

The recommended location for cross-platform PHP code on CDROM is /extensions/engines-noarch-custom/php (for custom extensions that are not available publically or for modified versions of extensions available publically) and /extensions/engines-noarch-standard/php (for vanilla versions of publically available extensions). Placing non-standard cross-platform extensions to these directories will save space on the media off which SAWS runs.

We will be glad to add support for PHP extension if it's currently not available in the PHP that ships with SAWS. Just contact us and we'll discuss details.

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