Install with pecl to local dir on shared hosting - mongodb

Question

I'd like to install a PHP extension on a bluehost shared site; specifically the MongoDB driver. Since pecl is unable to write to the primary server directory that has all the installed extensions, I'd like to install the mongo.so file to a directory I specify under my home. The closest article I found on the web was:
http://www.site5.com/blog/programming/php/how-to-setup-your-own-php-pear-environment/20090624/
However, after following the steps when I use the "pecl install mongo" command, it still keeps trying to install to bluehost's central directory on the server.

Answer 1

According to my web host's technical support team, utilising the pecl installer attempts to install the extension server-wide rather than under your account only. My web host doesn't allow server-wide installations in their shared environment for security reasons and because they want to keep their fleet universally the same across the board. I suspect your host is the same.
However, they did suggest I download, configure and install the pecl package (pecl_http) in my account only (rather than server-wide) via the following manual process:
$ cd ~/
$ wget http://pecl.php.net/get/pecl_http
$ tar -zxvf pecl_http.tar.gz
$ cd pecl_http
$ phpize
$ ./configure --prefix=~/bin
$ make
$ make test
$ make install
A successful install will have created extname.so and put it into the
PHP extensions directory. You'll need to edit php.ini (in my case,
this was a copy of the standard php.ini file that I placed in the same
folder as the script using the extension) and add an
extension=extname.so line (in my case, extension=http.so) before you can use the extension.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.pecl.phpize.php
Note that the tilde character (~) in the above code refers to the home directory of the current user (e.g. /home/username on my host's server).
Issues you may run into
When using the tar command, a "cannot open: not a directory" error
appeared as pecl_http had been downloaded without a file extension.
This was easily corrected:
mv pecl_http pecl_http.tar.gz
When using the make install command, a "cp: cannot create regular
file...: Permission denied" errror appeared. I resolved this issue
by changing the ext_dir for pecl...
pecl config-set ext_dir /home/username/bin/extensions
...and re-running make install. I also had to copy the http.so extension to /home/username/bin/extensions and then reference that location in my php.ini file:
extension_dir = "/home/username/bin/extensions"

Answer 2

this sounds like you don't have root access to your server. if your need to compile anything you must be have root access permission to server, or maybe you must be one of the sudoers.