I can't figure out how on earth one is supposed to remove php5 that was installed from source. I have looked all over, and there are examples using rpms but not for source. I tried make uninstall, nope. I looked through ./configure --help, tried php home page.

Php seems to have broken my apache server, which will no longer start. I compiled and recomplied and recompiled, both apache and php, but nothing at all has changed.

I just want php5 wiped off my hard drive. If I can get apache to work again after that, maybe I'll try php4.

what version of apache are you running? The thing is when compiling php you need to tell it which apache abi to use. If you don't specify which abi to use, php will configure with its own provided abi which is the abi for apache 1.X. If you're running apache 2.X then your compiled php module will not work. when you do the configure part of building php you tell it which abi to use with the --with-apxs2 flag.

ex.

./configure --with-apxs2=/path/to/apache/install/bin/apxs --other_option --other_option ...

now when you make and make install, the php module built will be compatible with the version of apache you're running.

You'll also need to add handlers in your httpd.conf file. The old handler of php-script won't work with php5. the new handler in httpd.conf will be php5-script.