PHP Versions

The minimum version of PHP varies according to the product and version, though in general use the latest version of PHP where possible.

(warning) It is strongly recommended to use a version of PHP that is not EOL (currently 7.4 or later).

COmanage ProductPHP VersionNotes
COmanage DirectoryPHP 5.2.8 through 5.6.x
COmanage Match v1.1.0 and laterPHP 8.0.2 or later
COmanage Match v1.0.0PHP 7.4 or later
  • CakePHP requires PHP 7.2, but its dependencies effectively require PHP 7.4
  • Doctrine DBAL requires PHP 7.1
  • Otherwise Match code runs under PHP 7.0.x
COmanage Registry v4.1.0 or later (for v4.x)PHP 7.1 or later
COmanage Registry v2.0.0 through v4.0.2PHP 5.4 or later
  • Versions of PHP 7 prior to 7.0.10 may cause segmentation faults under Apache
  • PHP 7.1 and 7.2 are supported starting with COmanage Registry v3.1.0
  • PHP 8 is supported starting with COmanage Registry v4.0.2
  • Installations with more than a thousand or so CO Person records should consider using PHP 7 or later, which features improved memory utilization
  • The LDAP Source Plugin requires PHP 5.6 or later
  • The Password Authenticator Plugin requires PHP 5.5 or later
COmanage Registry v1.0.x and earlierPHP 5.2.8 through 5.6.x
COmanage Registry PE v5.0.0 MR1 or laterPHP 8.0.2 or later

PHP 5.4.0 Enables Strict Error Reporting

As of PHP 5.4.0, PHP ships by default with strict logging enabled. As of CakePHP 2.0.5, this will cause failures during setup. This can be disabled in php.ini by setting

error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_STRICT

PHP Build Options

Various PHP build options may be required, depending on which products and features are required.

PHP FunctionalityRequired?Build OptionDebian Package1RHEL Package2
An appropriate database option

Match: Postgres only

Registry: MySQL or Postgres

Registry PE: MySQL or Postgres

eg --with-pgsql --with-pdo-pgsql or --with-mysql --with-pdo-mysql3php*-pgsql or php*-mysqlphp-pgsql or php-mysql
GD2Registry: To make use of QR codes exposed for enrollment flow starting points

--with-gd

Since 7.4 replace "--with-gd" by "--enable-gd"

php*-gdphp-gd
LDAP

Directory: Required

Registry: In order to use any LDAP based plugin (including the LDAP Provisioning Plugin, LDAP Identifier Validator Plugin, or LDAP Source Plugin)

--with-ldap

php*-ldapphp-ldap
OpenSSL

Match: Required

Registry: Required

--with-openssl

Enabled by defaultphp-openssl
mbstring

Registry: For multi-byte string support in data normalization

Registry PE: Required

--enable-mbstring

php*-mbstringphp-mbstring
XSLRegistry: Required--with-xslphp*-xslphp-xsl
Internationalization Functions

Match: Required

Registry PE: Required

--enable-intlphp*-intlphp-intl
Process Control

Registry PE: Required

--enable-pcntlEnabled by defaultphp-pcntl
SimpleXML

Registry PE: Required

Enabled by defaultphp-xmlphp-xml

Notes

1Debian packages use the PHP version number (eg: 5 or 7.0) in place of the *.

2Not all packages are available in the default repos.

3Both regular and PDO are required, with the former used by ADOdB and the latter used by CakePHP.

PCRE Bug May Cause Problems

There are known issues with earlier versions of the PCRE library that will cause COmanage Registry to be unable to set up its database tables. Version 6.6 and earlier are known to have problems, while versions 8.02 and later are known to work. You can check the version that PHP was built against by running this command:

php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep PCRE

If you are using an old version of PCRE, you'll first need to install a more recent version. Be sure to configure it with the --enable-utf8 --enable-unicode-properties flags. You'll then need to rebuild PHP against the newer version of the PCRE library.

Alternately, you may be able to rebuild PHP using its own internal copy of PCRE. As of PHP v5.3.3, PCRE 8.02 or later is included by default.

Testing PHP Database Connectivity

If PHP is not built correctly for database connectivity, subsequent steps may throw errors like

Error: Database connection "Mysql" is missing, or could not be created.

You can test for this with php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep pdo:

$ php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep pdo
pdo_mysql
pdo_mysql.default_socket => /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock => /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
pdo_sqlite

If the PDO libraries show correctly but the error still occurs, you may be trying to connect via the default socket (ie: "localhost") instead of TCP (ie: "127.0.0.1"), and the PDO libraries may not be able to find the default socket.

For the following tests to succeed, a database server must already be available with the example database (test in the example) and user (registry_user in the example) created.

To test if PHP was built with support for MySQL create a file mysql-test.php with contents similar to

<?php
mysql_connect("localhost", "registry_user", "a password goes here") or die(mysql_error());
echo "Connected to MySQL<br/>";
?>

To test if PHP was built with support for PostgreSQL create a file postgreSQL-test.php with contents

<?php
pg_connect("host=localhost dbname=test user=registry_user password=password") or die(pg_last_error());
echo "Connected to PostgreSQL<br/>";
?>

Either run the command line php tool on the file or serve it from your webserver and make sure that the script can connect to your database server.

Be sure to remove your test file after testing so it is not exposed on your web server.

Configuration Suggestions

As for all production PHP installations, display_errors should be set to Off in your php.ini.

Next Step

COmanage Installation - Web Server