multi php.ini files in my system

Question

I have Linux Ubuntu 10.10 and when i run the below in a terminal:

php -i | grep php.ini

I got the loaded Configuration File => /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

While if I use phpinfo() in the browser it will be:

Loaded Configuration File /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Which means that there are different ini files according to php_sapi_name!!

now the question is how can i set the same php.ini for all user agents (browser, cli, etc) without copying the same file to different locations!?

Answer 1

I don't think setting all the different php contexts to use the same config is a good idea in the first place but if you really want to, you could just have one php.ini and all the others be symbolic links.

I don't think there is a way to change php's behavior as to which file it will include without at the very least recompiling it.

Answer 2

sometimes you can have more than one php.ini to manage different interfaces or websites for example you can have different php.ini for each website you host on your server by setting PHPINIDir in your virtualhost as below

<VirtualHost 10.24.11.2:80>
ServerName foo.com
ServerAlias www.foo.com
PHPINIDir /var/www/html/foo
</VirtualHost>

however, if you like to make only one php.ini for all interfaces, the only way is to use symlinks as below:
ln -s /etc/php5/cli/php.ini /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini