How to know for sure if FastCGI is being used to r

Question

I have a hosted site and I'm having trouble configuring Joomla (running Joomla + php + mySQL on IIS7 + win server 2008). I have a similar configuration running on a local machine (Joomla + php + mySQL on IIS7 + vista x64), so I was at least able to follow instructions showed in various tutorials on how to set this up.

This symptom with the hosted site is that I can't turn on any SEO settings in Joomla (not even the first setting, "Search Engine Friendly URLs"). I get either 404 (file not found) or the URL appears correctly rewritten but it's always the home page's content that is displayed. I had a similar issue on my home machine and it turns out to have been because I wasn't using FastCGI to host php, so I decided to investigate that on the hosted site.

Anyway, I noticed in the web.config file of the directory hosting joomla on the hosted site the following line:

<add name="Plesk_Handler_3522909676" path="*.php" verb="*" modules="IsapiModule" scriptProcessor="c:\program files (x86)\parallels\plesk\additional\pleskphp5\php5isapi.dll" resourceType="Either" />

From past experience, I know that php has some issues when not running under fastCGI. I noticed the web.config in the root folder used the following line instead:

<add name="Plesk_Handler_0286090609" path="*.php" verb="*" modules="CgiModule" scriptProcessor="c:\program files (x86)\parallels\plesk\additional\pleskphp5\php-cgi.exe" resourceType="Either" /> 

I copied that in the web.config in the joomla directory, and got different behavior... but still not working. If I load a .php file in the joomla directory that runs phpInfo(), under Server API it says CGI/FastCGI . Is that positive confirmation that FastCGI is being used? Why does the handler in the web config point to modules="CgiModule" instead of modules="FastCgiModule" (I'm not even sure that exists, but I just find the mention of CgiModule suspicious).

It's a hosted site, so as far as I know I don't have access to ApplicationHost.config file...

Answer 1

You should see a referenced to it from

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Server API = CGI/FastCGI

Answer 2

Here's a simple test:

1. Create a phpinfo.php file with

 <?php phpinfo(); ?> 

inside;

2. Request http://yoursite.com/phpinfo.php/foobar?foo=bar

3. Check the output of phpinfo and look for _SERVER["REQUEST_URI"].

If this variable is missing, then CGI is used. If the variable is present and correctly set to /phpinfo.php/foobar?foo=bar, then either ISAPI or FastCGI is used. Look near the top of the output for Server API; it should be set to either ISAPI (which means ISAPI is being used) or CGI/FastCGI (which means FastCGI is being used, since we already ruled out CGI).

Answer 3

Unfortunately, the checking \_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] didn't work for me. Using CGI or FastCGI, it always displayed /phpinfo.php/foobar?foo=bar.

Neither did seeing if Server API = CGI/FastCGI was set - that only tells you what interfaces the compiled version of php supports, not what is being used. However, I found another method that may work more reliably.

Plonk a file in place called phpinfo.php containing the text: <? php phpinfo(); ?>

Check for the variable \_ENV["REDIRECT_HANDLER"]:
If it is set to php5-fastcgi (or something else fastcgi-ish) the request most probably went through FastCGI. If it is set to application/x-httpd-php (or I assume something other than the above), you are using CGI.

However, a surefire way is by running a little test. You need the ab (Apache Bench) tool for this.
Both with and without CGI, run this from another machine:

ab -c 100 -n 1000 http://yourdomain.com/path/phpinfo.php

Check the line Time taken for tests:. On my box at least, accessing my VPS over a 1.3Mbps ADSL connection, FastCGI completely maxed it out, while with CGI was only able to fill half of it.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

You can use (on centos) apachectl -M, you'll show what modules are enabled:

apachectl -M:

file_cache_module (shared) mem_cache_module (shared) version_module (shared) fastcgi_module (shared)

Answer 5

This worked for me.

/**
 * return phpinfo() results as an array
 *
 * @credit http://php.net/manual/en/function.phpinfo.php#106862
 * @param void
 * @return array
 */
function phpinfo_array(){
    ob_start();
    phpinfo();
    $info_arr = array();
    $info_lines = explode("\n", strip_tags(ob_get_clean(), '<tr><td><h2>'));
    $cat = 'general';
    foreach($info_lines as $line){
        preg_match('/<h2>(.*)<\/h2>/', $line, $title) ? $cat = preg_replace('/\s+/', '_', strtolower(trim($title[1]))) : null;
        if(preg_match('/<tr><td[^>]+>([^<]*)<\/td><td[^>]+>([^<]*)<\/td><\/tr>/', $line, $val)){
            $subcat = preg_replace('/\s+/', '_', strtolower(trim($val[1])));
            $info_arr[$cat][$subcat] = $val[2];
        } elseif(preg_match('/<tr><td[^>]+>([^<]*)<\/td><td[^>]+>([^<]*)<\/td><td[^>]+>([^<]*)<\/td><\/tr>/', $line, $val)){
            $subcat = preg_replace('/\s+/', '_', strtolower(trim($val[1])));
            $info_arr[$cat][$subcat] = array('local' => $val[2], 'master' => $val[3]);
        }
    }
    return $info_arr;
}


// output proper response code
$phpinfo = phpinfo_array();
$configure = (@isset($phpinfo['general']['configure_command'])) ?: null;

// properly account for FastCGI
if ($configure && preg_match('/--enable-fastcgi/', $configure)){
    // fastcgi response
    header('Status: 403 Access is forbidden');
} else {
    // http response
    header('HTTP/1.0 403 Access is forbidden');
}

Answer 6

Make sure things are set up initially to where the script fails completely when fastcgi isn't running. Then you'll know, when it works, that fastcgi daemon is the reason.