Fastcgi (Fcgid) and php.ini per user

[wheelerc]

Just a heads up - easyapache comments out

AddHandler php5-fastcgi .php

from .htaccess when it's done upgrading. Just noticed this a week ago and haven't had the time to play around with it (well, except using find and replace..).

If anyone know a workaround to this "feature" let me know.

Thank you for this - I just upgraded using EasyApache and spent a long time checking file permissions and other settings trying to figure out why custom php.ini files with FastCGI had stopped working.. I didn't notice that AddHandler line had been commented out.

Why does EasyApache do this? It would be good to have an options to tell it not to (or if there is one, please let me know where it is...)

What would be really nice is a solution where we can use PHP with FastCGI but have it read php.ini files in the same way that SuPHP does, so we can just put the php.ini file in the document root, rather than having to edit .htaccess, and create and set permissions on files in the cgi-bin folder, which is hard to explain to customers.

[internetfab]

There are two solutions that we've used for this. One is easy, the other is more complicated

1. The easy way
If you're using php 5.3+, let users use the .user.ini file instead. It's default in 5.3+ and they can set their specific settings there using the normal php.ini syntax. Observe that not all ini settings can be set this way (check php.net which).
If you're using 5.2 or earlier you need to install an extension from PECL (htscanner) which acts in more or less the same way. We've configured it to read .php52.ini files instead of .user.ini since it doesn't have the same syntax. It uses the php_flag / php_value syntax like .htaccess does.
PECL :: Package :: htscanner

2. The hard way
Make use of cPanels apache include system to set addhandlers through an include file that gets included directly in httpd.conf. This way they're retained even after easyapache is run. Link to docs: Changes Contained within a VirtualHost Directive

[ikillbill]

Hello internetfab
could you more elaborate on how to fix easyapache commenting out entries on .htaccess?

we use PHP 5.3 +FASTCGI+CentOS6

[internetfab]

Hello internetfab
could you more elaborate on how to fix easyapache commenting out entries on .htaccess?

we use PHP 5.3 +FASTCGI+CentOS6

There's so apparent way to stop easyapache from commenting out entries in .htaccess.
However, if YOU are the one adding entries to your customers .htaccess file, for example AddHandler entries, then you should put them in the virtual host instead.

You can keep changes to virtual hosts several ways, one of them is to put them like described in this document:
Changes Contained within a VirtualHost Directive

As an example:
Customer Domain: cpaneltest.com
Customer Username: cpanelte
You're running apache 2.x and it's for non ssl

Create a conf file:

/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/cpanelte/cpaneltest.com/fastcgi.conf

Put your AddHandler entries there:

AddHandler php5-fastcgi .php

Then run:

/scripts/verify_vhost_includes

After that I usually run

/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl -t

and last a restart of apache.

[cPanelKenneth]

The behavior occurs when you change the PHP handler and is not dependent upon EasyApache. To influence which .htaccess files are examined and updated, please change the value of the following tweak setting:

Depth to recurse for .htaccess checks

[internetfab]

The behavior occurs when you change the PHP handler and is not dependent upon EasyApache. To influence which .htaccess files are examined and updated, please change the value of the following tweak setting:

Depth to recurse for .htaccess checks

Unless this has been fixed lately, it occurred even though PHP handler wasn't changed. As you can see I'm referring to a custom handle

php5-fastcgi

which lets the user / admin set up php.ini files for the virtual host in fcgid mode. This one gets commented when running easyapache.

Would you please elaborate upon the .htaccess check tweak setting and how that would help in this case?

[cPanelKenneth]

Sure, here's how it is described in our documentation (http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/vie...weakSettings):

Depth to recurse for .htaccess checks
This item allows you to specify the maximum number of directories deep to look for .htaccess files, relative to the home directory.
For example, if your user's home directory were /home/user, and this value were set to 2, the following directories would be searched for .htaccess files:
/home/user/
/home/user/directory1/
/home/user/directory1/directory2/
While the following directory would not be searched:
/home/user/directory1/directory2/directory3/
Warning: Entering a value higher than 100 can degrade your server's performance.

(Note: after reading the above it seems that description could use some help. It provides little information on how this setting is used.)

The setting is used by the /usr/local/cpanel/bin/rebuild_phpconf utility, which is called whenever you change the PHP handler in WHM. rebuild_phpconf calls /usr/local/cpanel/bin/update_php_mime_types with the value stipulated in tweak settings for htaccess recursion as a parameter.

In the context of EasyApache, EasyApache assumes the PHP handler has changed. Thus it too calls update_php_mime_types with the htaccess recursion setting as a parameter.

[goodmove]

Unless this has been fixed lately, it occurred even though PHP handler wasn't changed. As you can see I'm referring to a custom handle

php5-fastcgi

which lets the user / admin set up php.ini files for the virtual host in fcgid mode. This one gets commented when running easyapache.

This should solve the issue of easyapache commenting out the custom PHP handlers created by the user or the server admin:

touch /var/cpanel/easy_skip_update_php_mime_types