Hi all,
I’m getting really confused – the docs on FastCGI seem a little skimpy, and other resources are how various people may have made it work, and I haven’t managed to get a configuration that works yet.
My objective is to run a particular PHP site as a particular user, for security reasons. My understanding is that I can’t use SuExec for mod_php, so I have to use CGI or FastCGI, of which FastCGI is faster 
It seems that FastCgiExternalServer keeps everything nicely separated, so that’s the choice I’m going with at the moment.
Now is the point at which I get lost, because there are so many different configs thrown up by google.
Some use Alias directives, some use AddType and Action directives; some use real-looking paths for the first argument to FastCgiExternalServer and others don’t.
I’m pretty sure I got to a point where everything worked, except that a url with no path didn’t return index.php – the DirectoryIndex directive appeared to have no effect, and php tried to run with no content.
Unfortunately I don’t have that config working at the moment; I’ve hacked around a bit aimlessly and lost track – and anyway, I should really replicate it without client details before posting a config on here.
So what I guess I’m asking for is a simple config that works, of which I can ask explanations of the bits I don’t understand – I think that’s the real problem with all the bits I’ve found, is that there are minimal explanations of _why_ a particular directive is used, and why.
I’ll try to get an experimental config up a bit later (hometime here now).
Oh – the other thing is I need to support this in a Name based VirtualHost – and only one. The other sites should continue to work on mod_php, if that’s possible.
I’m running Debian Lenny (Apache 2.2.9, PHP 5.2.6).
That’s probably a big fail for ‘Asking smart questions’ – sorry 
Hopefully I’ll be more coherent tomorrow, but I figured I’d take advantage of my timezone difference from most of the world by getting this out there now
Thanks,
Richard
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