For the last few weeks getting fastcgi and suexec to run on apache without having our sites in /var/www has been something of my holy grail. Here’s how I did it.
- I downgraded PHP to 5.2 using this procedure. While this might not be necessary I cannot say for certain that the rest will work with PHP 5.3
- Install the required packages
sudo apt-get install apache2-suexec-common libapache2-mod-fcgid php5-cgi- Enable the necessary modules
sudo a2enmod fcgid suexec alias- Disable the old php module
sudo a2dismod php5- Change the suexec configuration file to correspond to your sites
cd /etc/apache2/suexec
sudo nano www-data
change the first line to the root of your sites (i.e. /home)- navigate to the user’s home directory and create the php-fastcgi directory
cd /home/\[username\]
sudo -u \[username\] mkdir php-fastcgi- Create the wrapper file
cd php-fastcgi
sudo -u \[username\] nano wrapper
Enter the following lines:
#!/bin/sh
#PHPRC="/usr/local/etc"
#export PHPRC
#PHP\_FCGI\_CHILDREN=8
#export PHP\_FCGI\_CHILDREN
#PHP\_FCGI\_MAX\_REQUESTS=5000
#export PHP\_FCGI\_MAX\_REQUESTS
exec /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5- Make sure the file is executable
sudo chmod +x wrapper- Edit the sites’ configuration file
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
sudo nano \[sitefile\]
Add the following lines
SuexecUserGroup \[username\] \[username\]ScriptAlias /php-fastcgi/ /home/\[username\]/php-fastcgi/
FCGIWrapper /home/\[username\]/php-fastcgi/wrapper .php
AddHandler fcgid-script .php
Options ExecCGI Indexes- Restart Apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restartThis should take care of it. You should now have fastcgi and suexec processing your php files for both better speed and better security than the alternatives. In addition, you can repeat this process for any sites you have located on the server.