PHP not running scripts, downloading them instead

Question

I know, a very typical problem, but I run out of ideas. Yes, the module is installed:

# aptitude search libapache2-mod-php5
i   libapache2-mod-php5                                                         - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (Apache 2 module)                       
p   libapache2-mod-php5filter                                                   - server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (apache 2 filter module)

and enabled:

# ls -l /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2011-08-31 13:49 /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf -> ../mods-available/php5.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2011-08-31 13:49 /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.load -> ../mods-available/php5.load

# cat /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
  AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml .php3 .php5
  AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
</IfModule>

# cat /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.load
LoadModule php5_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/libphp5.so

Apache claims PHP is lodade:

# apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_MODULES
Loaded Modules:
 core_module (static)
 log_config_module (static)
 logio_module (static)
 mpm_prefork_module (static)
 http_module (static)
 so_module (static)
 alias_module (shared)
 auth_basic_module (shared)
 authn_file_module (shared)
 authz_default_module (shared)
 authz_groupfile_module (shared)
 authz_host_module (shared)
 authz_user_module (shared)
 autoindex_module (shared)
 cgi_module (shared)
 deflate_module (shared)
 dir_module (shared)
 env_module (shared)
 mime_module (shared)
 negotiation_module (shared)
 php5_module (shared)
 proxy_module (shared)
 proxy_html_module (shared)
 proxy_http_module (shared)
 rewrite_module (shared)
 setenvif_module (shared)
 status_module (shared)
Syntax OK

There's no .htaccess in the document root and the 404 shows PHP as present:

Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny13 with Suhosin-Patch proxy_html/3.0.0 Server at wiki.example.com Port 80

The logs shows no errors.

Any ideas what else to check?

Answer 1

First, make sure your apache config is loading it, eg:

LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

Then, make sure Apache knows to interpret .php files, eg

AddType text/html .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

EDIT

You mention the error logs contain no errors. What is the status code of the requests to the .php scripts? (200, 500,etc)

In your php.ini file, check the settings for log_errors, display_errors, and error_log. If errors are logging, they will be in the location specified by error_log. I think this the default behavior (logging, not displaying to screen).

If your app needs MySQL, make sure you installed the php5-mysql package too. Same for any other needed module.

Answer 2

You cannot have PHP and Passenger in the same location at the same time using the handler modules (each request is only "handled" once, and in this case, Passenger is handling the request). If you must serve PHP from your rails app for some reason, you need to either make a specific Location or Directory and disable Passenger in that location like so:

<Directory /var/www/php/goes/here>
   PassengerEnabled off
</Directory>

or

<Location /php/goes/here>
   PassengerEnabled off
</Location>

More here in the official docs

It looks like turning off PassengerEnabled does not enable DirectoryIndex, so you may need to manually rewrite from ^/php/goes/here/$ to /php/goes/here/index.php

Also, it looks like using PassengerHighPerformance prevents you from turning it off.

Or, switch to using libapache2-mod-php5filter and fiddle with it until apache gets it to run as an output filter after passenger handles the request and outputs php code.

Answer 3

I'm not sure what went wrong because as I was fixing things, Chrome kept on showing me a download of the PHP file. It still does, while other browsers shows the PHP being executed. Is Chrome using some cache? Anyway, since I asked the question, the only missing part was installing php5-mysql.