How do I get linux server to use local PHP.ini in a shared environment?

Question

I'm on shared server environment (Dreamhost.com uses Linux/Debian).

I followed their instructions @ http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Advanced%5FPHP%5Fconfiguration on setting up a local PHP5 instance on my user account so that I could use APC (php5 accelerator)

A couple of caveats is that I dont have php5 installed on the root directory "/home/php5" as assumed by the instructions/install script

rather I have it in another directory "home/subdir-path/php5", so I had to change the script to address that.

I tried adding this dir to the env $PATH

but when I do phpinfo(), i see that it's not using the local php.ini settings =[

Any thoughts on how to remedy this is greatly appreciated.

==OR==

If someone could show me the right steps to setup a custom php5 instance, with fastcgi, and APC (php cache/accelerator) that'd be just as great.

Answer 1

symlink from the expected location to the location where php.ini really is