The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Smallest possible Www + PHP + MysQL package?

Smallest possible Www + PHP + MysQL package?

Joel moving to LAMP is a happy coincidence since I was wondering how to build the smallest possible package to run MySQL-bound PHP apps. EasyPHP http://www.easyphp.org) comes at 10MB for Apache.

For the WWW part, I just came accross the free and very small-footprint Abyss Web Server (http://www.aprelium.com) which ran some PHP and Perl apps in CGI with no problem, but I need to find out how to keep just the bare minimum from the C:\PHP and C:\MYSQL parts.

Has anybody tried this route, and came up with something smaller? Thx :-)

Frederic Faure
Friday, December 26, 2003

Just curious, but why is a few meg of disk space important?

For a really small system you could install one of the Unix variants without a GUI. You can get a very small and very fast system with something like command line FreeBSD, Apache and modules for PHP/Perl/Python, and one of the databases (Mysql or Postgres). There's no need for X windows on a web/db server.

Tom Hathaway
Friday, December 26, 2003

Be careful with licensing issues distributing MySQL.

Friday, December 26, 2003

thttpd is my favorite small web server. I don't know about PHP, but I know it can handle CGI executables.

Dan Maas
Friday, December 26, 2003

how about a server written in php itself? comes in at around 650k with all modules and whatnot.
http://nanoweb.si.kz
and instead of mysql, why not sqlite? it's built in to php 5 and only requires one .dll for php4.

as for a bare php, all you really need on windows is...
php.exe (cli or cgi)
php4ts.dll
iconv.dll

so i have an app that looks like this....
c:\\myapp\php
php-cgi.exe
php-cli.exe
php4ts.dll
iconv.dll
php_sqlite.dll
php.ini
c:\myapp\nanoweb
nanoweb.php
supporting files....
c:\myapp
nanostart.bat

nanoweb.php runs off php-cli.exe
my webscripts use php-cgi.exe
i load the php_sqlite.dll for a database.
comes in around 5 mb.

josheli
Saturday, December 27, 2003

Size may not matter once the program is already on the hard-disk, but it may matter a lot if lots of users download the program.

Bandwith is expensive.

MX
Saturday, December 27, 2003

[plugmode]
badblue is also a very tiny PHP server... probably easier to configure for PHP than abyss. if used as a pure PHP server, it is also free. the core executable is < 100K.
[/plugmode]

dir at badblue com
Saturday, December 27, 2003

The 10 mb matters for the same reason that it matters for software written to jvm or dotnet. The download sucks. Yes hard drive is cheap, getting it to the hard drive takes time and money. Not a problem to corporate environs, but anyone trying to write desktop apps for sale to large numbers of individuals will have to have a demo available, and nobody wants to mail cd's.

.Net is not attractive to desktop developers for this reason, nor is Java for the same reason, plus the UI sucks (yes, still!) VB6 and Delphi really rocked for this type of app.

Mike
Saturday, December 27, 2003

I am using Abyss Web Server since 2002 and I recommend it. It's rock solid and is very small (the installer is less that 150KB). I wonder how they can put all these features in a so small .exe!

I think it is now available for all major platforms (Win32, Linux, MacOS X and even FreeBSD).

John S.
Saturday, December 27, 2003

Thx everyone!

Tom Hathaway >> Just curious, but why is a few meg of disk space important?

Because 1. as others have pointed out, hard disk space is cheap, but bandwith isn't, and 2. This is for non-techies, so anything beyong clicking on an EXE will prove to be too complicated. Trust me :-)

Unknow >> Be careful with licensing issues distributing MySQL.

Thx :-)

>> thttpd is my favorite small web server. I don't know about PHP, but I know it can handle CGI executables.

Awesome :-) Couldn't find the binary for Windows on that page (only source), but it must be available somewhere.

josheli >> how about a server written in php itself? comes in at around 650k with all modules and whatnot.

Another goodie :-) BTW, the !nanoweb_2.1.1+php431.exe installer doesn't prompt the user where to install the files (forced to C:\NANOWEB and C:\PHP). I happened to already have PHP installed under C:\PHP... You might want to ask users :-)

>> as for a bare php, all you really need on windows is...

Great :-)

dir at badblue com >> badblue is also a very tiny PHP server...

I'll check it out too, although, according to the online doc, PHP must be fetched and installed separately. I'd rather package the whole thing in a single EXE with Inno or NSIS.

John S. >> I am using Abyss Web Server since 2002 and I recommend it. It's rock solid and is very small (the installer is less that 150KB)

Yup, looks real nice :-)

Damn them virusES
Saturday, December 27, 2003