How to fetch ./configure parameters used at last time?

Question

I am upgrading LAMP stack on customer's server and need to ./configure mysql and apache with exact last settings they were compiled with last time. Where do I get these? PHP configure string can be got by php -i. What about others?

Answer 1

Was the decompressed source directory kept around? If so, the configure flags would typically be in config.status or config.log.

This differs slightly depending on the software and whether or not autoconf was used.

Answer 2

Depending on how long ago they were compiled, the command line entries used may still be in your shell's history. Under bash, you search back in the history via the following procedure:

1. ctrl-r starts the reverse-search function on the history
2. Start typing part of the command you want to search for (e.g. "configure")
3. Press ctrl-r again if you need to search farther back past the first result
4. Hit enter to execute command line once you've found it (right arrow typically brings back the prompt with the found command string without actually executing it)

Not to be all evangelical, but it's generally really bad idea to be compiling a lot of software yourself rather than using the packages provided by your distro.