php.ini: which one?

I moved from my old apache to nginx and php 5.3.10. And when I tried to modify php.ini to suit my needs, I found there are 3 of them:

$ locate php.ini

/etc/php5/cgi/php.ini
/etc/php5/cli/php.ini
/etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

Which one should I edit?

Solution 1:

Generally speaking, the cli/php.ini file is used when the PHP binary is called from the command-line.
You can check that running php --ini from the command-line.

fpm/php.ini will be used when PHP is run as FPM -- which is the case with an nginx installation.
And you can check that calling phpinfo() from a php page served by your webserver.

cgi/php.ini, in your situation, will most likely not be used.

Using two distinct php.ini files (one for CLI, and the other one to serve pages from your webserver) is done quite often, and has one main advantages : it allows you to have different configuration values in each case.

Typically, in the php.ini file that's used by the web-server, you'll specify a rather short max_execution_time : web pages should be served fast, and if a page needs more than a few dozen seconds (30 seconds, by default), it's probably because of a bug -- and the page's generation should be stopped.
On the other hand, you can have pretty long scripts launched from your crontab (or by hand), which means the php.ini file that will be used is the one in cli/. For those scripts, you'll specify a much longer max_execution_time in cli/php.ini than you did in fpm/php.ini.

max_execution_time is a common example ; you could do the same with several other configuration directives, of course.

Solution 2:

Although Pascal's answer was detailed and informative it failed to mention some key information in the assumption that everyone knows how to use phpinfo()

For those that don't:

Navigate to your webservers root folder such as /var/www/

Within this folder create a text file called info.php

Edit the file and type phpinfo()

Navigate to the file such as: http://www.example.com/info.php

Here you will see the php.ini path under Loaded Configuration File:

Make sure you delete info.php when you are done.

Solution 3:

It really depends on the situation, for me its in fpm as I'm using PHP5-FPM. A solution to your problem could be a universal php.ini and then using a symbolic link created like:

ln -s /etc/php5/php.ini php.ini

Then any modifications you make will be in one general .ini file. This is probably not really the best solution though, you might want to look into modifying some configuration so that you literally use one file, on one location. Not multiple locations hacked together.

Solution 4:

You can find what is the php.ini file used:

• By add phpinfo() in a php page and display the page (like the picture under)
• From the shell, enter: php -i

Next, you can find the information in the Loaded Configuration file (so here it's /user/local/etc/php/php.ini)

Sometimes, you have indicated (none), in this case you just have to put your custom php.ini that you can find here: http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=blob;f=php.ini-production;hb=HEAD

I hope this answer will help.