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unixODBC/PHP/Linux on S390/and PostgreSQL

This information was originally posted to the Linux-390 mailing list on February 9, 2001, by James Rivard.

Thanks to help from the list, especially Bernhard Kaindl, I now am able to use PHP with ODBC and the unixODBC driver manager to connect to a PostgreSQL database. My goal, once we get the correct version of DB2/Connect in house, is to use PHP/ODBC to connect to a remote DB2 database on OS/390.

Here are some notes to hopefully make life easier for someone else in the future:
  1. Install the RPM for Postgres if you want to use postgres. The binary RPM is fine. The build for unixODBC needs the postgres libraries in order to build the postgres odbc driver. The odbc driver included with the pg_odbc RPM will NOT work with PHP/unixODBC. (I tried. If you try to use it you get an error on the odbc_connect() about missing server name, port, etc... no matter what you put in odbc.ini.) If you are not using postgres, the unixodbc web site has information on other drivers. There is a section in the doc area for DB2.
  2. You do not have to touch Apache. unixODBC will be installed as a DSO module.
  3. Download the source for unixODBC from http://www.unixodbc.org. Build with the following commands, or whatever suits your needs. Note that the SuSE RPMs put some packages in libraries that are not included by the compiler by default so you need CFLAGS specified.
    cd ./unixODBC.x.x.x
    libtoolize --copy --force     (this will make the configure script recognize s390 as a host - thanks to Bernhard for this one)
    CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/include/mcal -I/usr/include \
    -I/usr/include/pgsql -I/usr/include/mysql"
    export CFLAGS
    ./configure
    make
    make install
    Note: I did not install Qt so the command line interface (odbcinst) was used to add drivers and DSNs (see http://www.unixodbc.org). The version of unixODBC I downloaded required Qt 2.2 or higher, which is later than what SuSE 7 shipped with. I downloaded the SRPM for such a version but the RPM on my SuSE system won't install it (major version <=3 error). From what I can gather I need a newer version of RPM or a patch. It wasn't worth the hassle to me just to get a GUI interface which I probably will seldom use anyways.
  4. Update odbcinst.ini and odbc.ini as indicated by the documentation. odbcinst.ini has information on the drivers you want to use and odbc.ini is where the DSNs are stored. These can be updated on "the fly" without taking down any services. I used the odbcinst command to make updates.
  5. PHP4 was used - since the default RPM install from the CDs does not include ODBC driver manager support, at least on SuSE, I needed to install the source RPM for PHP4. There is one on the SuSE CD2 or CD3, or you can download the latest from http://www.php.net/ or http://rpmfind.net/.
    1. If you get a file called number4.tar.gz copy it to php-4.x.x.x and untar it. It will update ./php-4.x.x.x/ext/bcmath and allow the bcmath functions to compile.
    2. Configure with the following (I ran "<?phpinfo()?>" from a PHP web page after the original PHP4 binaries were installed to get most of this info). The result will be the same as the binary install plus the unixODBC driver manager.
      CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/include/mcal -I/usr/include \
      -I/usr/include/pgsql -I/usr/include/mysql"
      LDFLAGS=
      CUSTOM_ODBC_LIBS="-L/usr/local/lib -lodbc"
      export CFLAGS LDFLAGS CUSTOM_ODBC_LIBS       
      ./configure --with-pgsql=/usr \
            --with-mysql=/usr \
            --with-gd=shared \
            --with-tiff-dir=/usr \
            --with-jpeg-dir=/usr \
            --with-png-dir=/usr \
            --with-ldap=yes \
            --with-imap=yes \
            --with-zlib=yes \
            --with-xml \
            --with-ttf \
            --with-mcal=/usr \
            --with-ftp \
            --with-ndbm \
            --with-gdbm \
            --with-snmp \
            --with-mm \
            --with-config-file-path=/etc/httpd \
            --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs \
            --with-exec-dir=/usr/lib/apache/bin \
            --enable-versioning \
            --enable-yp \
            --enable-trans-sid \
            --enable-inline-optimization \
            --enable-track-vars \
            --enable-magic-quotes \
            --enable-safe-mode \
            --enable-sysvsem \
            --enable-sysvshm \
            --enable-bcmath \
            --enable-calendar \
            --enable-ftp \
            --enable-memory-limit \
            --enable-wddx \
            --with-readline 
            --with-unixODBC=/usr/local
    3. Update php.ini (normally in /etc/httpd) to include:
      extension_dir = /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20001214
      extension = odbc.so
      ---thanks again to Bernhard for this one.
    4. You may need to update /etc/ld.so.conf and then run ldconfig so that some of the modules are found. Some libraries to add might include:
      /usr/local/lib/php
      /usr/lib/pgsql
      /usr/lib/mysql
    5. Update /etc/httpd/httpd.conf to include information on loading PHP4 modules. If you already installed the PHP4 binaries before compiling the source code, you won't have to do this. See the PHP INSTALL file for the statements (LoadModule, AddModule, AddType).
    6. Restart Apache.
  6. Configure the database and database security as needed and try running "odbc_connect()" from a .php web page.
Misc Notes:
 

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