This is for those of you who love being on the bleeding edge of technology like me. This will be a brief introduction to installing Apache 2.4 and Facebook’s HHVM (Hip Hop Virtual Machine) in order to increase web application performance.
Apache 2.4 is the newest iteration of Apache’s web server with multiple performance improvements and Facebook’s HHVM is the new kid on the block that brings massive performance gains to PHP. HHVM achieves this by compiling PHP into bytecode, which is then translated into machine code by HHVM’s JIT (Just in Time) compiler. When using HHVM, this also gives the ability to use Facebook’s new statically typed language called HACK.
HHVM also works with most of PHP’s popular frameworks. If you work with popular enterprise level frameworks like Symfony 2, this can be an amazing asset.
First we need to prepare the install process by adding a few repositories for yum to use. Since CentOS 6.5 (as of the time of this post) doesn’t contain Apache 2.4 in their base or epel repositories, we need to look for another option. We could compile from source, however Remi Collet and Jan Kaluza from Red Hat have created a RHEL repo httpd24-epel that contains Apache 2.4 that is perfect for our needs. This repo installs Apache 2.4 in /opt. View why here.
For HHVM we have the same couple of options. We could either build it from source, or we can use Naresh Kumar’s wonderful repo called the Hop 5 Repo.
Using these repos is the best choice since we can manage our Apache 2.4 and HHVM installs with our package manager and not have to worry about future problems.
— PREPARATION —
Go to the repo directory
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
Add the Remi Repo
sudo wget http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/jkaluza/httpd24/epel-httpd24.repo
Add the Hop 5 Repo
sudo wget http://www.hop5.in/yum/el6/hop5.repo
— INSTALL PROCESS —
Install Apache 2.4
sudo yum install httpd24-httpd httpd24-httpd-devel httpd24-mod_ssl
This will place Apache 2.4 under /opt.
See why here
Install HHVM
sudo yum install hhvm
— CONFIGURATION PROCESS —
Configure Apache
This article uses a VHost and assumes you already know how to setup one for Apache, however a Virtual Host is not necessary for HHVM.
Edit httpd.conf
cd /opt/rh/httpd24/root/etc/conf
vim httpd.conf
Ensure this line is not commented out
IncludeOptional conf.d/*.conf
Configure a Virtual Host for Apache
Go to the Apache 2.4 config directory
cd /opt/rh/httpd24/root/etc/conf.d
Create a Virtual Host config file as root (if non existent)
vim httpd24-vhosts.conf
Add the following lines
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName hhvmtest.dev
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/hhvmtest
ErrorLog logs/hhvmtest.dev-error_log
CustomLog logs/hhvmtest.dev-access_log common
# where HHVM is running
# use either Proxy Pass or ProxyPassMatch
# ProxyPass routes all traffic to FastCGI
ProxyPass / fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/html/hhvmtest
# ProxyPassMatch regular expression routes only PHP files
ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/html/hhvmtest/$1
<Directory /var/www/html/hhvmtest> # relaxed permissions for testing
AllowOverride all
Options -MultiViews
Require all granted
<Directory>
</VirtualHost>
— TESTING —
Start HHVM as a server in FastCGI mode in the background (run as root or sudo it)
/usr/bin/hhvm --mode server -vServer.Port=9000 -vServer.Type=fastcgi &
Verify HHVM is running and PID
ps aux | grep hhvm
Start Apache
sudo service htttpd24-httpd start
Create Document Root
cd /opt/rh/httpd24/root/var/www/htmlmkdir hhvmtest
Create index.php
cd /opt/rh/httpd24/root/var/www/html/hhvmtestvim index.php
Add the following lines
<?hh echo 'test ';
$test = 2 + 2;
echo $test;
echo phpinfo();
Create index.hh
vim index.hh
Add the following lines
<?hh echo 'test ';
$test = 2 + 2;
echo $test;
echo phpinfo();
Now open your browser and go to
http://hhvmtest.dev/index.php
If everything goes correctly you should see the string
test 4 HipHop
Now open your browser and go to
http://hhvmtest.dev/index.hh
If everything goes correctly you should see the string
test 4 HipHop
When you output
phpinfo();
You should see the string 'HipHop'.
HHVM returns the string HipHop when you output phpinfo.
Also verify HHVM is working for php tags by changing in both index.php and index.hh
<?hh
to
<?php
If you want to run HHVM on system boot. Either create an init bash script or just add the above HHVM line to rc.local
Go to rc.local
cd /etc/rc.localvim rc.local
Add the following line to the bottom of rc.local
/usr/bin/hhvm --mode server -vServer.Port=9000 -vServer.Type=fastcgi &
That’s it enjoy! 😀