Edit php.ini with .htaccess

Question

I'm slowly getting back into PHP, and now I run into a problem, I want to install some web software on our host and I need to have either the latest Zend (which they don't have) or IonCube on the server and IonCube requires enable_dl to be on in the php.ini. Now a colleague of mine thinks I can update this via an .htaccess file on the server. So I created a s.htaccess on my machine as Windows doesn't like emptiness before the file extension. So I added the line php_flag enable_dl On to the file uploaded it and renamed the file to just .htaccess on the server. When I refresh the file is gone, when I keep it as s.htaccess it's fine but my php info still shows it as Off.

What n00b mistake am I making?

Answer 1

The documentation says that this can only be set in the php.ini (not in .htaccess). You can see this by looking at the table where it says "PHP_INI_SYSTEM", which means - "Entry can be set in php.ini or httpd.conf".

Answer 2

Unix way to hide files is prepending it with a dot. The file is there, but it's just hidden. Your ftp-software should have a setting for showing hidden files. IIRC you can rename the file to .htaccess through cmd in windows. The .htaccess only has effect in the current dir and sub directories. This might also be (because of security) one of those settings that is only setable through php.ini