ThoughtGlade - Custom PHP on Dreamhost with CakePHP

Custom PHP on Dreamhost with CakePHP

on 26/2/09

I'm building a stats app for a professor friend of mine, and the application needs a bit more resources than the Dreamhost default setup allows (30 seconds of execution, and 8MB of posted data). If you're looking for a way to use your own php.ini file with a CakePHP application you've got on Dreamhost, here's what ended up working for me. These steps are a variation of what you can find on the Dreamhost wiki, but they needed a little love before the .htaccess directives played nice with Cake's.

In any case, follow the instructions in the wiki - they're a good start.

Create a cgi-bin directory in your domain's root folder.
Copy the default php.ini into it: cp /etc/php5/php.ini $HOME/example.com/cgi-bin/php.ini

Create a file named php-wrapper.cgi in there as well, and fill it with:

#! /bin/sh
export PHPRC=/home/[username]/[domain]/cgi-bin
exec /dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi $*

Re-work permissions on the folder.

chmod 755 $HOME/example.com/cgi-bin
chmod 755 $HOME/example.com/cgi-bin/php-wrapper.cgi
chmod 640 $HOME/example.com/cgi-bin/php.ini

Here's where we divert from the canon and get it done with CakePHP. Rather than using the provided .htaccess changes, I modified the root .htaccess file like follows.

<IfModule mod_actions.c>
        Options +ExecCGI
        AddHandler php5-cgi .php
        Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php-wrapper.cgi
        Action php5-cgi /cgi-bin/php-wrapper.cgi
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteBase /

        RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
        RewriteRule .* - [L]

        RewriteRule    ^$ app/webroot/    [L]
        RewriteRule    (.*) app/webroot/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

I'm sure there's some settings you'll get in trouble for (memory limit 2GB, anyone?), so make sure you're not doing anything odd. Good luck.

Custom PHP on Dreamhost with CakePHP

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