How to Install Gearman on Ubuntu 14.04

Similar to our guide on installing Gearman on Ubuntu 12.04, this guide will get you all set up and running with Gearman on Ubuntu 14.04.

In case you don’t know, Gearman is a task runner and a job server that allows you to parallelize tasks easily and run different workers in different languages smoothly.

Below we will describe and lay out the necessary steps to getting Gearman installed.

In Ubuntu 14.04, python-software-properties were replaced by software-properties-common. We will go ahead and install this along with a useful Gearman PPA.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gearman-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

Next, we install the job server and the tools for Gearman. Once again, the beauty of the apt-get command makes this painless and easy.

sudo apt-get install gearman-job-server libgearman-dev
sudo apt-get upgrade

Now, in case you don’t have it, we need to install PECL and then use it to install Gearman.

sudo apt-get install php-pear
sudo apt-get install php5-dev
sudo pecl install gearman

The last step is to let PHP know to use the gearman.so extension when it runs. There are two php.ini files that generally need to be updated. The first is the CLI version and the other is the Apache version.

For the CLI php.ini (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)

Open your php.ini in your favorite text editor.

sudo vim /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Add the following line in the “Dynamic Extensions” section of your php.ini.

extension=gearman.so

For the Apache-based php.ini (/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini)

Open your php.ini in your favorite text editor. Please note this is a different file than the one we just covered.

sudo vim /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Add the “Dynamic Extension” again in this file.

extension=gearman.so

Restart Apache:

sudo service apache2 restart

Gearman also offers examples you can use to test and verify your Gearman installation.

That was easy, huh?! If you have any problems or any additions, subtractions, or modifications, please let us know in the comments below.