PHP/FastCGI Init Script for Red Hat systems

Should work on RHEL, Fedora, CentOS. Tested on CentOS 5.

Note: Before running the init script you need to touch the pid file and change the ownership to the php user

# touch /var/run/phpfcgi.pid
# chown php:php /var/run/phpfcgi.pid

Save this file as /etc/init.d/phpfcgi

#!/bin/bash
#
# Startup script for the PHP FastCGI server.
#
# chkconfig: 345 85 15
# description: PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language
# processname: php
# config: /etc/php.ini

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

PHPFCGI="/usr/bin/php-cgi"
FCGIPORT="9000"
FCGIADDR="127.0.0.1"
FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS="127.0.0.1"
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=5
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=1000
ALLOWED_ENV="PATH USER"
PHPUSER=php
PIDFILE=/var/run/phpfcgi.pid

if [ -z "$PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" ]; then
  PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=5
fi

ALLOWED_ENV="$ALLOWED_ENV PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS"

case "$1" in
  start)
        PHPFCGI_START=$"Starting ${NAME} service: "
        echo -n $PHPFCGI_START

        # check for $PHPUSER, create if non-existent
        if [ -z "`id -u $PHPUSER 2> /dev/null`" ]; then
            useradd -s /sbin/nologin $PHPUSER
        fi

        # clean environment
        E=
        for i in $ALLOWED_ENV; do E="$E $i=${!i}"; done
        daemon --user $PHPUSER --pidfile $PIDFILE "env - $E $PHPFCGI -q -b $FCGIADDR:$FCGIPORT &> /dev/null &"

        pid=`pidof php-cgi`
        if [ -n "$pid" ]; then
            echo $pid > $PIDFILE
            success $PHPFCGI_START
        else
            failure $PHPFCGI_START
        fi
        echo
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping php-fcgi: "
        killproc -p $PIDFILE phpfcgi
        echo
        ;;
  status)
        status phpfcgi
        ;;
  restart)
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart}"
        exit 1
esac

exit 0

Ensure that the init script is executable:

# chmod +x /etc/init.d/phpfcgi

Now you should be able to stop, start, and restart PHP with the usual Red Hat commands:

# service phpfcgi start
# service phpfcgi stop
# chkconfig phpfcgi on