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PHP 8.4.1/8.5.0 (binary only)⚓︎

"PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is
especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML."

Available Binaries⚓︎

The package provides:

Binary Location Size Description
php /usr/bin/php ~18 MB PHP CLI (Command Line Interface)
php-cgi /usr/bin/php-cgi ~18 MB PHP CGI for web servers
php-fpm /usr/sbin/php-fpm ~18 MB PHP FastCGI Process Manager

All binaries are stripped and dynamically linked against uClibc.

Configuration Files⚓︎

  • /etc/default.php/php.cfg - Freetz-NG package configuration
  • /etc/default.php/php.ini - PHP runtime configuration
  • /etc/default.php/php_config.def - Default configuration template
  • /etc/init.d/rc.php - Init script

Available Extensions⚓︎

The package includes the following compiled-in extensions: Core, curl, dom, fileinfo, ftp, hash, iconv, json, libxml, mbstring, opcache, pcre, pdo, session, simplexml, sockets, spl, sqlite3, standard, xml, xmlreader, xmlwriter, zlib

Core Extensions⚓︎

  • Core - PHP core functionality
  • date - Date and time functions
  • pcre - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE2)
  • reflection - Reflection API
  • spl - Standard PHP Library
  • standard - Standard PHP functions

String & Data Processing⚓︎

  • ctype - Character type checking
  • filter - Data filtering and validation
  • hash - Hashing functions (MD5, SHA, etc.)
  • iconv - Character set conversion (GNU libiconv)
  • json - JSON encoding/decoding
  • mbstring - Multi-byte string functions

XML Processing⚓︎

  • libxml - libXML2 support with HTML5 parser
  • dom - DOM XML manipulation with RelaxNG support
  • simplexml - SimpleXML interface
  • xml - XML parser
  • xmlreader - XMLReader streaming parser
  • xmlwriter - XMLWriter streaming writer

Web & Network⚓︎

  • curl - Client URL library
  • ftp - FTP protocol support
  • session - Session handling
  • sockets - Low-level socket functions

Database⚓︎

  • pdo - PHP Data Objects (PDO)
  • pdo_sqlite - PDO driver for SQLite 3.x
  • sqlite3 - SQLite3 extension

File & System⚓︎

  • fileinfo - File information (magic number detection)
  • posix - POSIX functions
  • exif - EXIF image metadata

Process Control⚓︎

  • pcntl - Process Control functions
  • sysvsem - System V semaphores
  • sysvshm - System V shared memory
  • sysvmsg - System V message queues

Performance⚓︎

  • opcache - Zend OPcache for bytecode caching
  • zlib - Compression functions

Other⚓︎

  • random - Random number generation (CSPRNG)
  • tokenizer - PHP tokenizer

Configuration Options⚓︎

When building PHP, you can enable/disable the following options via make menuconfig:

Binary Selection⚓︎

  • CLI - Command-line interpreter (php)
  • CGI - CGI binary (php-cgi)
  • FPM - FastCGI Process Manager (php-fpm)

Extension Options⚓︎

  • CURL - Enables HTTP/HTTPS/FTP client functionality (libcurl.so.4)
  • EXIF - Enable EXIF support
  • FILEINFO - Enable file information support
  • FILTER - Enable filter extension
  • FTP - Enable FTP support
  • GD - Enables image manipulation and creation (libgd.so.3, requires libpng, libjpeg, libfreetype)
  • GETTEXT - Enables internationalization and localization (libintl.so.8)
  • ICONV - Enables character set conversion (uses uClibc built-in or libiconv.so.2)
  • LIBICONV - Use GNU libiconv instead of uClibc iconv
  • LIBXML - Enables XML parsing and manipulation (libxml2.so.16, required for DOM, SimpleXML, etc.)
  • MBSTRING - Enables multi-byte string functions (libonig.so.5 for regex support)
  • MYSQLI - Enables MySQL/MariaDB database access (libmysqlclient.so or libmariadb.so)
  • OPCACHE - Enable OPcache bytecode cache
  • OPENSSL - Enables cryptography and SSL/TLS (libssl.so.3, libcrypto.so.3)
  • PCNTL - Enable process control functions
  • PDO - Enable PHP Data Objects
  • PDO_SQLITE - Enables SQLite database access via PDO (libsqlite3.so.3)
  • SESSION - Enable session handling
  • SIMPLEXML - Enables simplified XML parsing (requires libxml2.so.16)
  • SOCKETS - Enable socket functions
  • SQLITE3 - Enables SQLite3 database access (libsqlite3.so.3)
  • SYSVIPC - Enable System V IPC support (semaphores, shared memory, messages)
  • TOKENIZER - Enable tokenizer
  • ZLIB - Enables zlib compression/decompression (libz.so.1)
  • ZIP - Enables ZIP archive handling (built-in with zlib support)

Build Notes⚓︎

Library Dependencies⚓︎

PHP 8.4.1 has the following library dependencies:

Core Libraries (always required):
- libxml2.so.16 - XML parsing (with HTML5 support)
- libpcre2-8.so - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
- libonig.so.5 - Oniguruma regex library (for mbstring)
- libintl.so.8 - Gettext internationalization
- libz.so.1 - Zlib compression ⚠️ Warning: Required by Dropbear SSH. If externalized, Dropbear must be added to /mod/etc/external.pkg to prevent boot issues.

Optional Libraries (enabled via menuconfig):
- libcurl.so.4 - HTTP/HTTPS/FTP client (CURL extension)
- libgd.so.3 - Image manipulation (GD extension)
- Requires: libpng.so, libjpeg.so, libfreetype.so
- libiconv.so.2 - Character set conversion (ICONV extension, alternative to uClibc)
- libsqlite3.so.3 - SQLite database (SQLite3 and PDO_SQLITE extensions)
- libssl.so.3 & libcrypto.so.3 - Cryptography and SSL/TLS (OpenSSL extension)
- libmysqlclient.so or libmariadb.so - MySQL/MariaDB (MySQLi extension)

All libraries can be externalized to save space in the main firmware image. See the "External processing" section in make menuconfig.

libxml2 Dependency⚓︎

PHP 8.4.1 requires a full-featured libxml2 build with the following changes:

  1. HTML5 Parser Support: The FREETZ_LIB_libxml2_WITH_HTML option is automatically selected when PHP is enabled.

  2. RelaxNG Support: The libxml2 package has been rebuilt with --with-minimum=no instead of --with-minimum=yes to enable:

  3. RelaxNG validation (xmlRelaxNGValidateDoc)
  4. Schema validation support
  5. Full XML feature set

This increases libxml2 size slightly but provides full XML/HTML processing capabilities required by PHP 8.4's DOM extension.

GNU libiconv⚓︎

When using the LIBICONV option, the package depends on GNU libiconv for character conversion instead of uClibc's built-in iconv. This provides better compatibility and more character set support.

External Processing⚓︎

PHP and its dependency libraries can be externalized to save flash space (approximately 20-25 MB for binaries + 4 MB for libraries).

Configuration: make menuconfig → Advanced options → External processing → External files → php

Build Information⚓︎

  • Toolchain: GCC 13.4.0
  • C Library: uClibc 1.0.55 (NPTL)
  • Interpreter: /usr/lib/freetz/ld-uClibc.so.1
  • Linking: Dynamic (requires shared libraries)

Memory usage⚓︎

It works, but it needs a lot of memory, so a swap file is advisable
(about 32 MB will do in most cases).

-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root       5036004 Apr 25 18:41 php-cgi

VmPeak:    10740 kB
VmSize:    10740 kB The size of the virtual memory allocated to the process
VmRSS:      3068 kB The amount of memory mapped in RAM ( instead of swapped out )

This is why fast-CGI is
better too: instead of loading the PHP binary over and over again it
stays in memory, also giving the system the opportunity to swap out
unused parts of it.

Another thing is that php.ini will use valuable flash space and is
quite big. A solution is to make a symbolic link to an USB storage
device:

cp /tmp/flash/php.ini /var/media/ftp/uFlash/hiawatha/php.ini
rm /tmp/flash/php.ini
ln -s /var/media/ftp/uFlash/hiawatha/php.ini /tmp/flash/php.ini
modsave