Switching PHP to CGI mode for a specific folder.

Recently, I came across an issue: phpMyAdmin was complaining about the absence of the mcrypt module in PHP. The strange thing was that when I ran php -m in the console, the mcrypt module was present:

php -m |grep mcrypt

I scratched my head for a moment, and then it dawned on me that there were two installations of PHP on the server, both were built from source. Interestingly, the mcrypt module was only present in one of them, and the Apache module was only in the other.

The situation was quite absurd, but it’s precisely what prompted me to create this post on how to configure PHP to work in CGI mode for a specific folder, using phpMyAdmin as an example.

To achieve this, you need to edit the configuration file with the following lines:

ScriptAlias /php/ /usr/bin/

<Directory /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/>  
  AddHandler php-cgi-handler .php  
  Action php-cgi-handler /php/php-cgi  
</Directory>

Instead of phpMyAdmin, it could be a website folder.