"How the sausage is made" tour of apache/php/mysql interaction

Question

I am having trouble understanding how apache/php/mysql stack works on a low level (including interaction with the browser). Is there a good description somewhere (a book, a website, etc) that will walk me through the whole path and explaining how starting with a browser reqesting a url, http requests is being sent, how apache talks to php, how php talks to mysql (persistant and non-persistant connections), etc, etc. I want to understand what waits for what in this chain, where timeouts are handled, how long sockets are opened and closed. A book, an article maybe? There is a lot of documentation on each individual component, but I can't find a "walkthrough".

The explanations I se so far are very high-level: look, here's a happy cow, it goes to Bovine University, look - it's all shrink wrapped on the supermarket shelf. What I need is the sausage farm/slaughterhouse/truck/factory tour, starting with cow insemenation :)

[update] To this day I have not found a better way to learn about these things other than reading the source.

Answer 1

PHP and MySQL by example has a pretty basic picture of the process, which I think you probably already understand.

Getting more in-depth than that picture though is a pretty long discussion. Ironically, you can read the book I just linked for a pretty good description. If you have more specific questions, I recommend opening new questions for them. Enjoy!

Answer 2

I have found a site that has, at least in part, contents from the book Advanced PHP Programming by George Schlossnagle.

The site is located at: http://php.find-info.ru/php/016/toc.html. Specifically, the section on The PHP Request Life Cycle contains a lot of the nitty-gritty details, including some source code and diagrams.

DISCLAIMER: IANAL, but considering that the book is still listed on Amazon, its possible the content linked to above breaks all sorts of codes, rules and/or laws. Its not my intention to proliferate or condone illegal or pirated materials, so if that be the case, please remove said links.