Apache is downloading php files instead of displaying them

Question

OS and server information:

• CentOS 6.4 (Final)
• Apache 2.2.15
• PHP 5.5.1

I previously had php 5.3.x installed but decided to upgr

Answer 1

I got this kind of problem. This is how I solve it. After installed Apache then I installed PHP using this command.

sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php

it executes correctly but I request .php file from Apache, it gives without executing the PHP script.

Then I check PHP is enabled.

$ cd /etc/apache2
$ ls -l mods-*/*php*

but it didn't show any results. I check installed PHP packages.

$ dpkg -l | grep php| awk '{print $2}' |tr "\n" " "

Different type of PHP versions installed to my computer. Then I remove some PHP packages from my previous list, using apt-get purge.

sudo apt-get purge libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-json

I reinstall PHP

sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mcrypt php-mysql

Verify that the PHP module is loaded

$ a2query -m php7.0

if not enabled with:

$ sudo a2enmod php7.0

Restart Apache server

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

Finally, I check PHP process on Apache

create an empty file

sudo vim /var/www/html/info.php

Add this content to info.php & save.

<?php
  phpinfo();
?>

Check on browser:

http://localhost/info.php

it shows correctly.I think this will help anyone.

Answer 2

I spent two days tracking this and found out that I was putting my PHP scripts in the wrong directory.

On my standard Ubuntu installation, I was putting the scripts in /var/www. They should have been in /var/www/html.

I just started PHP work, so I don't know if my solution relates to the version change you went through.

Answer 3

Please take a look at your addtype directives.

It looks to me like Apache is telling the browser that it's sending a document type of application/php for scripts with extensions like .php5. In fact Apache is supposed to tell the browser that the script is outputting text/html.

Please try this:

AddType text/html .php

Regarding the suggestion above that you should tell the browser that you are outputting a PHP script: It seemed like an unusual idea to me. I googled it and found that there is quite a bit of discussion about it on the web. Apparently there are cases where you might want to say that you are sending a PHP script (even though Apache is supposed to execute the script and emit text/html,) and there are also cases where the browser simply doesn't recognize that specific Mime Type.

Clearing your browser cache is always a good idea.

In case it's helpful here's a copy of my /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf file from a server running CentOS 5.9:

#        
# PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language which attempts to make it                                             
# easy for developers to write dynamically generated webpages.                                                  
#
<IfModule prefork.c>
  LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
</IfModule>
<IfModule worker.c>
  LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5-zts.so
</IfModule>

#
# Cause the PHP interpreter to handle files with a .php extension.
#
AddHandler php5-script .php
AddType text/html .php

#
# Add index.php to the list of files that will be served as directory
# indexes.
#
DirectoryIndex index.php

#
# Uncomment the following line to allow PHP to pretty-print .phps
# files as PHP source code:
#
#AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Answer 4

After struggling a lot I finally solved the problem.

If you are prompted to download a .php file instead of executing it, then here is the perfect solution: I assume that you have installed PHP5 already and still getting this error.

$ sudo su
$ a2enmod php5

This is it.

But If you are still getting the error :

Config file php5.conf not properly enabled: /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf is a real file, not touching it

then do the following:

Turns out files shouldn't be stored in mods-enabled, but should rather be stored in mods-available. A symlink should then be created in mods-enabled pointing to the file stored in mods-available.

First remove the original:

$ mv /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf /etc/apache2/mods-available/

Then create the symbolic link:

$ ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.conf /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf

I hope your problem is solved.

Answer 5

I previously has a similar issue, after upgrading from 5.3 to 5.4. But my setup looks a little bit different as that I'm running Debian and using fcgid to server the PHP pages, and not the PHP5 apache/cgi module. So after I upgraded, it also installed php5_cgi, which collided with my fcgid setup, and would not execute PHP files anymore.

I had to disable the Apache Module and restart Apache

a2dismod php5_cgi
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Once the php5_cgi module was out of the way, fcgid was able to serve PHP pages again.

Answer 6

If none of the above works,

try commenting out the line

SetHandler ....

and restart apache using

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

It should work!