Error Start Apache "php value"

After updating my vps, I get the follow error:

Failed to start apache : Starting httpd: Syntax error on line 31 of /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf: Invalid command 'php_value', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration [FAILED]

Enable modules on PHP:

[PHP Modules] bz2 calendar Core ctype curl date dom ereg exif fileinfo filter ftp gd gettext gmp hash iconv imap intl ionCube Loader json libxml mbstring mcrypt mhash mysql mysqli openssl pcntl pcre PDO pdo_mysql pdo_sqlite Phar readline Reflection session shmop SimpleXML sockets SPL sqlite3 standard suhosin tokenizer wddx xml xmlreader xmlrpc xmlwriter xsl zip zlib [Zend Modules] the ionCube PHP Loader

Line relative to error:

php_value session.save_handler "files"

What does the error mean and how can I fix it?

I recently ran into this exact problem using Plesk 9.5 on CentOS.

I cannot say for sure whether it was caused by an update to Plesk, or not. The customer doesn't think any changes were made recently, but Apache failed to start with this error.

After an assesment of the system to ensure it wasn't due to a breach, I did some troubleshooting and determined that mod_php had been removed from the Apache config. After checking Plesk settings, every vhost on the box was using FastCGI and SuExec.

When using FastCGI and SuExec, you cannot change PHP directives in php.conf (FastCGI) and .htaccess (SuExec).

The customer had originally commented out the offending lines, but this broke session support for everything. The only way I was able to resolve it was to manually add mod_php back to httpd.conf.

Add the following line to the section with the other LoadModule's. Make sure the path (../modules/) matches the rest of the modules in there. Chances are good that it already exists on your system and was simply removed from the config during the update.

bash# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
LoadModule php5_module ../modules/libphp5.so

bash# apachectl restart

This caught me off guard, and I cannot say for sure it is the upgrade that caused the issue or whether this is the best fix. I am open for comment, but highly advise against commenting out the php directives in /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf as it will break stuff.

Invalid command 'php_value', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

The Apache httpd-2.4 can failed with above error if you by mistake configured it to use other mpm module than prefork (as only prefork mpm works fine with php on Linux (CentOs7/RHEL7). Correcting Apache httpd configuration to use prefork mpm will solve the issue.

1. /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/10-php.conf

   LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so

2. /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/00-mpm.conf

   LoadModule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so