I just recently had to do this so I thought I might as well share. There are a few threads already with some info, but it’s not entirely complete in my opinion.

Let’s get started.

1) First off, issue this command to check your pear/pecl config:

pecl config-show

This will show you your config. Now if your /tmp is mounted noexec, skip the following and jump to step 2) now.

My /tmp is mounted noexec and instead of messing with it, I just changed the config to a local writable directory.

Your config-show should have:

PEAR Installer cache directory cache_dir /tmp/pear/cache
PEAR Installer download download_dir /tmp/pear/cache
PEAR Installer temp directory temp_dir /tmp/pear/temp

Take note of the /tmp paths.

Type and execute:

pear config-set cache_dir /root/tmp/pear/cache
pear config-set download_dir /root/tmp/pear/cache
pear config-set temp_dir /root/tmp/pear/temp

Feel free to change the path to your own liking.

2) Now we will install pdo and pdo_mysql extensions.

Type and execute:

pecl install pdo
pecl install pdo_mysql


Now check your extensions directory to make sure they were installed. For my purposes they were in /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613.

You should see pdo.so and pdo_mysql.so there.

3)
Next you will need to re-compile PHP5. Before doing so, edit the configure file and add the following:

–enable-pdo=shared \
–with-pdo-mysql=shared \
–with-sqlite=shared \
–with-pdo-sqlite=shared \

Next recompile PHP with your method of choice.

4) Last step is to edit your /usr/local/lib/php.ini file.

Change your extension_dir to:

extension_dir = /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613

Change this path if yours is different.

Scroll down and add the following extensions:

extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so

Exit and save your php.ini.

5) Restart httpd and open up a phpinfo.php file. You should now see pdo/pdo_mysql entries.

TROUBLESHOOTING

A) If you are receiving the following warning/error:

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Invalid library (maybe not a PHP library) ‘pdo_mysql.so’ in Unknown on line 0

Try restarting mysqld first.