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php

    1: Credits:
    2: Ben Mansell, Stephen Landamore, Daniel Silverstone, Shane Caraveo
    3: 
    4: Building PHP
    5: ------------
    6: 
    7: You must add '--enable-fastcgi' to the configure command on Linux or
    8: OSX based systems to get fastcgi support in the php-cgi binary.  You
    9: also must not use '--enable-discard-path'.
   10: 
   11: Running the FastCGI PHP module
   12: ------------------------------
   13: 
   14: There are two ways to run the resulting 'php' binary after the fastcgi
   15: version has been built:
   16: 
   17: 1) Configure your web server to run the PHP binary itself.
   18: 
   19: This is the simplest method, obviously you will have to configure your
   20: web server appropriately. Some web servers may also not support this method,
   21: or may not be as efficient.
   22: 
   23: 2) Run PHP separately from the web server.
   24: 
   25: In this setup, PHP is started as a separate process entirely from the web
   26: server. It will listen on a socket for new FastCGI requests, and deliver
   27: PHP pages as appropriate. This is the recommended way of running PHP-FastCGI.
   28: To run this way, you must start the PHP binary running by giving it an IP
   29: and a port number to listen to on the command line, e.g.:
   30: 
   31:     ./php -b 127.0.0.1:8002
   32: 
   33: The above line is the recommended way of running FastCGI.  You usually
   34: want the FastCGI server to provide services to the localhost, not
   35: everyone on the Internet.
   36: 
   37: If your web server sits on a remote host, you can make FastCGI listen
   38: on all interfaces:
   39: 
   40:     ./php -b :8002
   41:     ./php -b "*:8002"
   42: 
   43: Note that hostnames are not supported.
   44: 
   45: You must also configure your web server to connect to the appropriate port
   46: in order to talk to the PHP FastCGI process.
   47: 
   48: The advantage of running PHP in this way is that it entirely separates the
   49: web server and PHP process, so that one cannot disrupt the other. It also
   50: allows PHP to be on an entirely separate machine from the web server if need
   51: be, you could even have several web servers utilising the same running PHP
   52: process if required!
   53: 
   54: 
   55: Using FastCGI PHP with Apache
   56: =============================
   57: 
   58: First of all, you may well ask 'Why?'. After all, Apache already has mod_php.
   59: However, there are advantages to running PHP with FastCGI. Separating the
   60: PHP code from the web server removes 'bloat' from the main server, and should
   61: improve the performance of non-PHP requests. Secondly, having one permanent
   62: PHP process as opposed to one per apache process means that shared resources
   63: like persistent database connections are used more efficiently.
   64: 
   65: First of all, make sure that the FastCGI module is enabled. You should have
   66: a line in your config like:
   67: 
   68:     LoadModule fastcgi_module /usr/lib/apache/2.0/mod_fastcgi.so
   69: 
   70: Don't load mod_php, by the way. Make sure it is commented out!
   71: 
   72:     #LoadModule php5_module /usr/lib/apache/2.0/libphp5.so
   73: 
   74: Now, we'll create a fcgi-bin directory, just like you would do with normal
   75: CGI scripts. You'll need to create a directory somewhere to store your
   76: FastCGI binaries. We'll use /space/fcgi-bin/ for this example. Remember to
   77: copy the FastCGI-PHP binary in there. (named 'php-cgi')  This sets up
   78: php to run under mod_fastcgi as a dynamic server.
   79: 
   80:     ScriptAlias /fcgi-bin/ /space/fcgi-bin/
   81:     <Location /fcgi-bin/>
   82:         Options ExecCGI
   83:         SetHandler fastcgi-script
   84:     </Location>
   85: 
   86: To setup a specific static configuration for php, you have to use
   87: the FastCgiServer configuration for mod_fastcgi.  For this, do not
   88: use the above configuration, but rather the following.
   89: (see mod_fastcgi docs for more configuration information):
   90: 
   91:     Alias /fcgi-bin/ /space/fcgi-bin/
   92:     FastCgiServer /path/to/php-cgi -processes 5
   93: 
   94: For either of the above configurations,  we need to tell Apache to 
   95: use the FastCGI binary /fcgi-bin/php to deliver PHP pages. 
   96: All that is needed is:
   97: 
   98:     AddType application/x-httpd-fastphp .php
   99:     Action application/x-httpd-fastphp /fcgi-bin/php-cgi
  100: 
  101: Now, if you restart Apache, php pages should now be delivered!
  102: 
  103: Using FastCGI PHP with IIS or iPlanet
  104: =====================================
  105: 
  106: FastCGI server plugins are available at www.caraveo.com/fastcgi/
  107: Documentation on these are sparse.  iPlanet is not very tested,
  108: and no makefile exists yet for unix based iPlanet servers.
  109: 
  110: 
  111: Security
  112: --------
  113: 
  114: Be sure to run the php binary as an appropriate userid. Also, firewall out
  115: the port that PHP is listening on. In addition, you can set the environment
  116: variable FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS to control who can connect to the FastCGI.
  117: Set it to a comma separated list of IP addresses, e.g.:
  118: 
  119: export FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS=199.170.183.28,199.170.183.71
  120: 
  121: 
  122: Tuning
  123: ------
  124: 
  125: There are a few tuning parameters that can be tweaked to control the
  126: performance of FastCGI PHP. The following are environment variables that can
  127: be set before running the PHP binary:
  128: 
  129: PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN  (default value: 0)
  130: 
  131: This controls how many child processes the PHP process spawns. When the
  132: fastcgi starts, it creates a number of child processes which handle one
  133: page request at a time. Value 0 means that PHP willnot start additional
  134: processes and main process will handle FastCGI requests by itself. Note that
  135: this process may die (because of PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS) and it willnot
  136: respawned automatic. Values 1 and above force PHP start additioanl processes
  137: those will handle requests. The main process will restart children in case of
  138: their death. So by default, you will be able to handle 1 concurrent PHP page
  139: requests. Further requests will be queued. Increasing this number will allow
  140: for better concurrency, especially if you have pages that take a significant
  141: time to create, or supply a lot of data (e.g. downloading huge files via PHP).
  142: On the other hand, having more processes running will use more RAM, and letting
  143: too many PHP pages be generated concurrently will mean that each request will
  144: be slow.
  145: 
  146: PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS (default value: 500)
  147: 
  148: This controls how many requests each child process will handle before
  149: exitting. When one process exits, another will be created. This tuning is
  150: necessary because several PHP functions are known to have memory leaks. If the
  151: PHP processes were left around forever, they would be become very inefficient.