Change Default Config Settings for PHP?

Question

When setting up php on a new Unix-based server, are there any default PHP settings that you will always change? Any that you will always consider changing based on the particular environment?

Answer 1

A default installation of PHP on a UNIX server pretty much works out of the box. Much of the configuration depends on your desired usage of the server.

Here's what I do:

• Change upload_max_filesize from the default value (2M) to something higher.
• Install and enable the modules that I use most often:
  • php5-gd
  • php5-cli
  • php5-suhosin
  • php5-curl

But again: most of the configuration is dependent on what you use the server for, which makes it hard to provide a simple answer to this question.

Answer 2

Disabling magic quotes is one of the first things that I do. It does nothing but cause problems and introduce a false sense of security. I'm clueless to why its on by default.

Answer 3

There isn't something that I always change. Actually, there's rarely anything I change, for any given installation.

If it's my own for-development-and-play-server, I probably max out the permissions to do anything, but when deploying a server for something specific, I want to have the PHP as strict as possible, without affecting the functionality of the scripts too much.