Accessing MS SQL Server from Ubuntu with PHP/Apache

[Chanchao]

I'm  currently trying to configure things so I can use an MS SQL (or
MSDE) database with PHP.  I note that the 'FreeTDS' client is in the
supported repositories. Most PHP 'how-to' guides I find talk about
compiling FreeTDS manually, and even compiling PHP5 with particular
options.

Is anyone reading this who got this to work on Ubuntu, and did it
require (re)compiling things?  Or just apt-get php and freetds and
updating some configuration files?

I'm not having any luck so far. 

Cheers,
Chanchao