PHP 4 won't take PHP.ini changes after Apache restart

Question

We have a very old PHP application that needs PHP 4 to run. We're decommissioning the old server and so I've built PHP 4 on the new server (Ubuntu 13.04 32 bit). When I did ./configure I made sure to do --with-config-file-path=/etc/php4/php.ini. I'm trying to enable error logging, but my changes to the php.ini don't seem to be taking hold.

Yes, the file exists and is owned by the Apache user

nick@server:/etc/php4$ ls
php.ini

Yes, I restarted Apache. And yes, it shows up in the phpinfo():

Configuration File (php.ini) Path   /etc/php4/php.ini

Does the --with-config-file-path only take hold at compilation time and thus in order to make changes I have to recompile? Or does it work the same as newer versions of PHP?

For example, in the php.ini I've turned off display_errors, but phpinfo() shows:

display_errors  On

Note that it shows On for both the local and master values for this server.

Also, I'm sorry for perpetuating PHP 4

My php.ini and screenshot of phpinfo to prove I'm not lying

Answer 1

--with-config-file-path expects a directory, not a filename. So with your confiuration PHP would look for /etc/php4/php.ini/php.ini.

Background: The reason for taking a path is that in fact PHP is looking for different files in order: First a SAPI specific file php-$SAPI.ini and then the generic php.ini. This allows i.e. using a different configuration on CLI where initial startup time matters more and other caching settings (apc etc.) are required.