Technical requirements for Revive Adserver

Revive Adserver is a web application written in the PHP programming language. It supports both the MySQL and PostgreSQL database systems.

Please make sure to review these technical requirements before attempting to install Revive Adserver or to update from an earlier version (including any version of OpenX Source).

Web server requirements

  • Any web server using FastCGI (Apache, nginx, IIS 7+, lighttpd, etc.) or Apache with mod_php
  • For Revive Adserver v4.2 to v5.2.1: PHP 7.0.8 or higher. but not PHP8
  • For Revive Adserver v5.3.0 and above: PHP 7.2.5 or later, up to PHP 8.0.x.
  • For Revive Adserver v5.4.0 and above: PHP 7.2.5 or later, up to PHP 8.1.x.
    Support for the upcoming PHP 8.2 is planned for a future release of Revive Adserver.
  • Required PHP extensions: mbstring, mysqli and/or pgsql, pcre, xml, zip, zlib
  • Suggested PHP extensions: curl, gd, intl, opcache, openssl

Apache .htaccess files are used to deny access to library and configuration folders by default. If another web server is being used (or .htaccess file support is disabled) additional configuration might be necessary to secure the installation. Please consult your webmaster or hosting company support department or study our page on How to secure your Revive Adserver installation.

Some of the functionality of the Revive Adserver software uses cookies, for example for frequency capping, or conversion tracking. Modern browsers will require that the ad server runs on a secure address (starting with https) with valid certificates in order to be able to create or update these cookies.

Database server requirements:

  • MySQL 4.1+, or
  • PostgreSQL 8.1+

Please review the important notes below about support for some specific version of MySQL.

Important notes about MySQL versions

  • Revive Adserver v5.3.0 and higher (released September 2021) offers support for MySQL 8.
  • Do not attempt to install any version of Revive Adserver older than v5.3.0 with MySQL 8.

Important note about older versions of PHP and MySQL/PostgreSQL

Although ancient versions of PHP, MySQL and PostgreSQL might be supported, we strongly recommend using the most recent versions, if possible.

Starting with Revive Adserver 5.3.0, the legacy mysql extension, which was moved to pecl, is no longer supported.

Developer notes

The Revive Adserver developers run a continuous integration process involving on-commit and nightly builds with complete unit and integration testing.

Our continuous integration tool is currently running the unit / integration test suite of Revive Adserver with any combination of PHP 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1 and MySQL 5.7 or Postgres 13. The latest development versions of PHP are tested as well, to ensure forward compatibility and in order to prevent new regressions from being accidentally introduced.