Disabled PHP for Single Directory with HTACCESS (PHP-FPM)

Question

I want to disable the parsing of PHP files in a specific directory, and found out how to do that here. The problem is that my server uses PHP-FPM, and I get Invalid command 'php_flag', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration when I try to use php_flag in my httpd.conf file.

How can I disable parsing of PHP files in a given web-accessible directory with an htaccess/httpd.conf file that is located above web root on a server using PHP-FPM?

Nick · Answer 1 · 2018-01-07T06:37:18.903

Since Fedora 27 switched to php-fpm recently, I, too, ran into this problem. Unfortunately, the old ways of doing things with mod_php do not apply to php-fpm.

I did find another question here that definitely seemed more relevant:

Apache: Disable php in a directory

The gist of it was was to use a <directory> and <filesmatch> block in your config file, and use SetHandler ! for every directory you didn't want PHP code interpreted.

e.g.:

<Directory "/path/to/no/phpfiles">
<Files "*.*">
SetHandler !
</Files>
</Directory>

This is tested and working on Fedora 27, PHP-FPM 7.1.12.

Unlike using the fpm configs directly, this technique works recursively, so placing it at the top level of a tree of stuff you don't want PHP interpreting works as expected.

I disable .htaccess files in my configurations, but this technique should still work. However, <directory> is not valid inside a .htaccess file. Hopefully just removing it, and leaving:

<Files "*.*">
SetHandler !
</Files>

Should be sufficient.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 07 '15 at 05:15

How can I disable parsing of PHP files in a given web-accessible directory with an htaccess/httpd.conf file that is located above web root on a server using PHP-FPM?

You can't persay the way you're trying it without mod_php (which you don't want) which is why you're getting that error. PHP-FPM is not an Apache module. It runs independent of Apache. That's actually it's purpose to be used on heavily loaded sites and it can control all the PHP processes.

One way you might be able to achieve this is to specify the exact path you want to run PHP, in your virtualhost file with the Directory directive. Instead of just having the PHP handler stuff, enclose it with the Directory directive with the actual path you want it to run. Here is an example.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html/
    ErrorLog /var/www/example.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/example.com/access.log combined

    <Directory /path/to/php/only/folder/>
    #then you PHP handler stuff
    <IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
        AddType application/x-httpd-fastphp5 .php
        Action application/x-httpd-fastphp5 /php5-fcgi
        Alias /php5-fcgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi_example.com
        FastCgiExternalServer /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi_example.com -socket /var/run/php5-fpm_example.com.sock -pass-header Authorization
    </IfModule>
     </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Then restart Apache. This should limit it to that directory. You might have to remove the php handler info from the other config so it's not overwritten.

Note I have not tested this solution.

Disabled PHP for Single Directory with HTACCESS (PHP-FPM)

2 Answers2