Sriram Natarajan's Weblog: Do more with Web Server

• Apache is configured to run in pre-fork model
• PHP is loaded as a module (mod_php5) within Apache (pre-fork) MPM.
• Apache (worker) MPM model is not supported with PHP.

This particular scenario will work great for majority of users.

However, if you are one of those minority folks, who is interested in running PHP as CGI say with Apache 2.2 (worker) MPM, then here is what you need to do :

Configure Apache Server to start in worker (MPM) mode. This should provide you with better performance. This is how you can run Apache 2.2 in worker mode within OpenSolaris.

sriramn@opensolaris:~$ svcadm disable -s http:apache22

Now to get PHP scripts working again, here is what I did :

Copy PHP CGI script to the Apache's cgi-bin directory

sriramn@opensolaris:~$ pfexec cp /usr/php/bin/php-cgi  /var/apache2/2.2/cgi-bin/

sriramn@opensolaris:~$ pfexec chown webservd:webservd /var/apache2/2.2/cgi-bin/php-cgi

Now, you might want to create a file under /etc/apache2/2.2/conf.d/php-cgi.conf with the below content

#Create a alias for every location where you want to keep your PHP script.
ScriptAlias /contents/ "/var/www/contents/"
ScriptAlias /drupal/  "/var/www/drupal/"
AddHandler  php-cgi  .php
Action          php-cgi  /cgi-bin/php-cgi
<Directory /var/www/contents/>    
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/drupal/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

(updated above content to reflect the feedback received from Jeff's comments to my earlier blog. Thanks a lot, Jeff.)

# Create the Alias for every php application that you want to deploy

Alias /phpapp /var/www/contents/

Alias /drupal /var/www/drupal/

ScriptAlias /php-cgi /usr/php/5.2/bin/php-cgi

<⁞Directory /usr/php/5.2/bin/>
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all
</Directory>

<Location "/phpapp">
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all
 AddHandler php-cgi .php
 Action php-cgi /php-cgi
</Location>

<Location "/drupal">
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all
 AddHandler php-cgi .php
 Action php-cgi /php-cgi
</Location>

Finally, you will need to restart the server to allow this above configuration to be loaded. Now, server should be ready to process any php files as 'cgi' script under /var/www/contents directory

Hope you find this useful.