Tricky php.ini settings
There are several ways PHP settings can be adjusted. The 2 most common are in the Apache config file, or usually, the php.ini file.
Typically you can use phpinfo(); to get the php settings. This is extremely useful as it also shows EXACTLY which php.ini file is being used to pull its configuration from.
I recently ran in to a particularly frustrating situation trying to adjust the settings. I had already grep’ed throughall the Apache config files and knew there were no php configuration settings hidden in there. So, I knew it was pulling its config from the php file. In the past it has been a simple matter to adjust the value in the ini file and then reload Apache (this causes php to reload). Well, this time it wasn’t working. No matter how many times I killed Apache’s processes and restarted it, it was STILL pulling the old values.
I was really about to lose my mind when I ran the phpinfo via the php cli, and it showed my new correct values! Arggg!!!
After a shamefully long amount of time trying to figure this out, I FINALLY found the solution. Well, unbeknownst to me, this server was using something call php-fpm. Php-fpm is a FastCGI Process Manager, which is an alternative to PHP FastCGI (which if was being used would have also hung me up). This basically spawns php in a separate service to allow it to work faster. Well, since php is basically its own process, you have to restart the php-fpm service to get Apache’s PHP to reload the config file!
[root@myserver php53]# /etc/init.d/php-fpm restart
Gracefully shutting down php-fpm . done
Starting php-fpm done
And bam, I finally got the new settings to load! Note, if you’re using the standard FastCGI module you’d use php-fastcgi restart instead.
I feel silly for not knowing about this php-fpm process before… but I’m used to Apache just calling php directly itself. This was a set up I had not dealt with before, so it was time for me to learn something new.
Happy PHP’ing folks!