Yesterday I got several error messages when accessing my forum. It was the providers limitation of simultaneous cgi processes. Currently we are allowed to run 6 cgi's at the same time and we use the PERL-version (but everything is prepared to upgrade to PHPv6.0). It's the first time I get these errors.

How are your experiences? How many users can be online with this limitation? We have got around 15reg and 10-20anon users on the online screen (>500 registred users) during the day. Do I have to think about upgrading to a more performant web-hosting package?

btw: will the step to PHP change anything with the limitation?

That was definitely one of the disadvantages of the perl version. Every time a script was loaded, perl had to be loaded to process it. So, if you have that 6 process limitation that could very easily be reached if 6+ users were trying to run a script at the same time.

The php version won't have this problem as long as you aren't running it in cgi mode. Normally php is just parsed, so you just have webserver processes.

Hey, that's great news! Finally there's a big advantage for me after switching to PHP (just at the right time).

> running it in cgi mode
how can I find out in which mode it is running?

If it's in cgi-mode then any php files need to be set to executable just like your perl scripts. You would also see a path to php at the top in any php files, like #!/usr/bin/php. They'd also need to be in a directory that allowed execution, like a cgi-bin.

If not then your php files will work with standard read or read/write permissions just like html files.

So they aren't running in cgi mode. Thanks for the info and the good news

Argh. They run in cgi mode

Just found out that my provider runs PHP in cgi mode. Now that means I still have this 6 process limitation.

Another problem, I can't call my old PERL scripts from PHP. Thats unbelivable! The PHP function virtual() does not work at my providers server (because of the cgi-mode). Maybe I have to change some pages back to SSI. Is it possible to include a PHP script (for example newposts.php) from a shtml file? If not, I'm lost and really disappointed from that PHP stuff, thought there were at least some improvements

Is there a setting in the php.ini file to turn CGI-Mode on or off?

I think I answered my own question:
[] ; cgi.force_redirect is necessary to provide security running PHP as a CGI under
; most web servers. Left undefined, PHP turns this on by default. You can
; turn it off here AT YOUR OWN RISK
; **You CAN safely turn this off for IIS, in fact, you MUST.**
; cgi.force_redirect = 1
cgi.force_redirect = 0

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