Installing Apache2 and PHP5 using mod_fcgid

All this time I used to use Apache with prefork method (apache2-mpm-prefork) combined with PHP5 module (libapache2-mod-php5). Until the day my web server choking out of resources because lots of users accessing. Apache with PHP module consumes a lot of memory because each request is handled by one process.

When I was googling, I found that Apache2 using worker is more efficient and less resource consuming because one process can handle many request (by using multithreading). 

But heck, when I tried to install apache2-mpm-worker, my Ubuntu start whining about wanting to uninstall my libapache2-mod-php5. I found out that PHP5 module is not compatible with multithreading version of Apache. It only want the prefork version.

I was googling again, and I find that with worker version of Apache, PHP must be used in CGI form. Dang! I have bad experience with GCI version of PHP. But things have changed, now there is FCGI that much better handling CGI applications. Also by using this version of PHP, Apache will be less loaded because it will only handles static elements (html pages, images, css, etc). All PHP requests will be handled by PHP itself.

And then we turn on the FCGI module:

$ sudo a2enmod fcgid

PHP5 Installation
Then we install PHP5 packages. These are what I used to have in my web servers. You can add or remove the packages you want:

$ sudo apt-get install php5-cgi php5-curl php5-gd php5-ldap php5-mysql php5-mysqli php5-sqlite php5-xsl

Apache Configuration
Now you edit the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/default, and then put these text below on the part after "NameVirtualHost" and before <Virtualhost>:

<Directory /var/www>
AddHandler fcgid-script .php
FCGIWrapper /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5 .php
</Directory>

And then put ExecCGI to each <Directory>.
Example:

Options ExecCGI Indexes

Now you can just restart your new Apache:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

You can test it out by using phpinfo().

The above was about Ubuntu. And what files need to be changed on CentOS5?

• /etc/sysconfig/httpd -- uncomment "HTTPD=/usr/sbin/httpd.worker"
• /etc/httpd/conf.d/swtune.conf (or conf/htttpd.conf) -- revise performance settings in the <IfModule worker.c> section
• /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf -- make sure it's off
• /etc/httpd/conf.d/fcgid.conf -- just check it's presence
• /etc/httpd/vhosts/pre.ini (or the above file) -- revise FastCGI parameters
• /etc/httpd/vhosts/drupal.inc and /etc/httpd/vhosts/bt-ssl.inc -- comment out "Include vhosts/php.inc", uncomment "AddHandler fcgi-script .php", enable "Options +ExecCGI" 

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Attachments

mod_fastcgi-2.4.6.tar.gz

mod_fastcgi-2.4.6.tar.gz 97.88 KB