Hello Friends,

I am little confused. A customer of mine have requested me to install GD as one of his PHP scripts needs it but I am unable to find any info about GD. The client told me that it is related to graphics, he thinks. But he is also not sure.

So can u gurus please tell me that:
1) What is GD and is it safe to install it ?

2) How can I easily install it on a linux server running Cpanel ?

3) Will this installation cause any downtime or need server rebooting ?

Thankyou for the help :-)

Hi Smily,

You can find the GD site at http://www.boutell.com/gd/ . It's for manipulating and creating graphics on the fly on the server.

I have used it, and it's a great package to have, but I have never installed it myself so I can't address that issue. I doubt you would have to reboot the server for it though, but I could easily be wrong there.

If you have PHP installed, you might very well already have GD compiled into PHP. Have a look at your PHP info and see if there are any references in there to GD. If there are, you and your customer are probably already good to go.

Good luck.


Craig

Originally posted by smily
Hello Friends,

I am little confused. A customer of mine have requested me to install GD as one of his PHP scripts needs it but I am unable to find any info about GD. The client told me that it is related to graphics, he thinks. But he is also not sure.

So can u gurus please tell me that:
1) What is GD and is it safe to install it ?

2) How can I easily install it on a linux server running Cpanel ?

3) Will this installation cause any downtime or need server rebooting ?

Thankyou for the help :-)

As noted by Green_Leader, it is related to creating graphics and he gave you the URL to it.

as for the other questions:
2) run /scripts/easyapache for a quick automated way to install it
3) no - just a restart of httpd.

-David

Google is your friend.

Originally posted by clockwork
Google is your friend.

Indeed.

-David

If you are planning to simply use it with PHP then I'd advise installing PHP 4.3.0 as they have now built in GD support without the need for a seperate version (in fact more functions are available with the inbuilt one than an external one).

Thank you very much Green_Leader, thedavid, clockwork and Rich2k for the help you fine people have provided.

I have PHP version 4.2.3 installed on my server but I noticed that GD is listed in the RPM section of my server and when I use cpanel to update server software, it says this:
Loading rpm update cache...
gd is up to date
Loading rpm update cache...
gd-devel is up to date
Loading rpm update cache...
gd-progs is up to date

By looking at above I believe that I have latest version of GD already installed on my server or isn't it ?

If it is really the GD we are talking about then why my customer says that its not installed and why his script which was working on old server not working on this one ?

Can u guys tell me how can I check that GD is installed ok and the GD stuff shown by my server is the one we all are talking about :-)?

Thanks again for the help. I really appreciate it.

Originally posted by smily
Thank you very much Green_Leader, thedavid, clockwork and Rich2k for the help you fine people have provided.

I have PHP version 4.2.3 installed on my server but I noticed that GD is listed in the RPM section of my server and when I use cpanel to update server software, it says this:
Loading rpm update cache...
gd is up to date
Loading rpm update cache...
gd-devel is up to date
Loading rpm update cache...
gd-progs is up to date

By looking at above I believe that I have latest version of GD already installed on my server or isn't it ?

If it is really the GD we are talking about then why my customer says that its not installed and why his script which was working on old server not working on this one ?

Can u guys tell me how can I check that GD is installed ok and the GD stuff shown by my server is the one we all are talking about :-)?

Thanks again for the help. I really appreciate it.

Hello,

I'm not sure but that may just mean that the libraries are installed, not necessarily that it's compiled into php.

To really find out, place this in a text file called test.php or whatever you want to call it. Then put it in the web directory and view it in your browser:

<? phpinfo(); ?>

That will make it show all of the variables and if GD is installed.

If it's not, the very very easiest way to get it installed is to run the script /scripts/easyapache and choose the option that says something like "GD+mcrypt+otherstuffhere". That script will recompile apache, php, and install GD for you properly.

Then just check again with the code above.

-David

Try running this to see if GD is installed

$phpext = get_loaded_extensions();
if (in_array ("gd", $phpext)){
echo ("Installed");
}
else {
echo ("Not Installed");
}

Thank you guys for helping again. I will try both of your ideas to get this problem solved.

I really appreciate your help. Please do let me know if I can help you back somehow ;-)

Thank you.