How To: Disable suexec in Plesk

Today we had to install php4 as CGI on the Plesk server, But plesk comes with php5 and suexec enabled. So in order to run php4 we need to disable suexec disabled as php4 pages were showing “internal server error”

So here is what you need to do.

find suexec on the server

# whereis suexec

Result

suexec: /usr/sbin/suexec /usr/sbin/suexec.saved_by_psa /usr/share/man/man8/suexec.8.gz

Then rename the suexec binary and that will disable suexec.

# mv /usr/sbin/suexec /usr/sbin/suexec_old

Restart httpd

service httpd restart

Thats all you can check your phpinfo for php4 as “phpinfo.php4″ file on the server. Please note the extension for file will be .php4 as apache needs to reconginze which files should be executed as php4. This article does not include steps for how to install php4 as CGI on plesk based server.