Migrating Configuration Files

The global configuration file, php3.ini, has changed its name to php.ini.

For the Apache configuration file, there are slightly more changes. The MIME types recognized by the PHP module have changed.

application/x-httpd-php3        -->    application/x-httpd-php
application/x-httpd-php3-source -->    application/x-httpd-php-source

You can make your configuration files work with both versions of PHP (depending on which one is currently compiled into the server), using the following syntax:

AddType  application/x-httpd-php3        .php3
AddType  application/x-httpd-php3-source .php3s

AddType  application/x-httpd-php         .php
AddType  application/x-httpd-php-source  .phps

In addition, the PHP directive names for Apache have changed.

Starting with PHP 4.0, there are only four Apache directives that relate to PHP:

php_value [PHP directive name] [value]
php_flag [PHP directive name] [On|Off]
php_admin_value [PHP directive name] [value]
php_admin_flag [PHP directive name] [On|Off]

There are two differences between the Admin values and the non admin values:

• Admin values (or flags) can only appear in the server-wide Apache configuration files (e.g., httpd.conf).

• Standard values (or flags) cannot control certain PHP directives, for example: safe mode (if you could override safe mode settings in .htaccess files, it would defeat safe mode's purpose). In contrast, Admin values can modify the value of any PHP directive.

To make the transition process easier, PHP 4 is bundled with scripts that automatically convert your Apache configuration and .htaccess files to work with both PHP 3 and PHP 4. These scripts do NOT convert the mime type lines! You have to convert these yourself.

To convert your Apache configuration files, run the apconf-conv.sh script (available in the scripts/apache/ directory). For example:

~/php4/scripts/apache:#  ./apconf-conv.sh /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf

Your original configuration file will be saved in httpd.conf.orig.

To convert your .htaccess files, run the aphtaccess-conv.sh script (available in the scripts/apache/ directory as well):

~/php4/scripts/apache:#  find / -name .htaccess -exec ./aphtaccess-conv.sh {} \;

Likewise, your old .htaccess files will be saved with an .orig prefix.

The conversion scripts require awk to be installed.