How to make Apache check if PHP file exists before passing it to PHP-FPM?

Question

I get the following error "No input file specified." instead of a file not found when I request a non-existent PHP file.

So is it possible to make Apache check if PHP file exists before passing it to the PHP-FPM server to avoid "No input file specified." error? or that error is normal/harmless?

This is how Apache is configured to handle PHP files:

<FilesMatch \.php$>
SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock.example|fcgi://localhost"
</FilesMatch>

Answer 1

I dislike using the RewriteEngine for that task. Here is the correct configuration to use a SetHandler directive, while checking that the PHP file actually exists :

<FilesMatch "\.(php|php[57]|phtml)$">
    <If "-f %{REQUEST_FILENAME}">
            SetHandler "proxy:fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000"
    </If>
</FilesMatch>

Source : PHP-FPM