Distro Sarge 3.1 Kernel 2.6.13

I am trying to have Apache2, MySQL and PHP4 working together, so far they are working independently but I am hitting a strange problem with PHP, I have downloaded into /var/www/tiki/ some php scripts that are necessary to install a CMS program "tikiwiki", the complete install is done with PHP scripts but PHP4 refuses to execute any of these scripts, displaying the contents instead. However PHP4 executes correctly another php script I have put in the same /var/www/tiki/ directory.

I have no idea what the problem could be. What should I be looking for?
All these scripts start with <? and end with ?>. They recommend PHP4.1+ and I have PHP4.4.x.
Permissions are the same for the scripts that are executed than the scripts displayed from the same directory.

Thank you for your help.

i had something similar on a windows box
but my problem was that IE displayed the php script correctly and firefox wanted to download the script

the problem was that i configured apache wrong
tried firefox --> firefox wanted to download script, because apache was wrong configured
after some configuration stuff apache runs correctly and firefox wanted to download the file
then i tried IE and it worked
but apache wanted to download

the problem was that firefox cached the website, so it wanted to dl it every time
clearing the firefox cache solved my problem

Thank you for the tip but the same procedure is used in both cases from the CLI:

rene@lt:/var/www/tiki$ php < mytest.php
is executed correctly

rene@lt:/var/www/tiki$ php < tiki-install.php
displays the contents of the script

running the scripts as root makes no difference.

I've just found that running the following command executes the script correctly:
rene@lt:~$ php < /var/www/tiki/tiki-install.php
but
rene@lt:/var/www/tiki$ php < tiki-install.php
still only displays the contents of the script

I've just found running the following command executes the script correctly:
rene@lt:~$ php < /var/www/tiki/tiki-install.php

but running the script as described above still only displays the contents.

Any comments welcome.

A couple of suggestions:

1. Try different PHP command line options (to either work around the problem, or
identify the problem so that you can correct it)

EXAMPLES:
php -f badscript.php
php -r badscript.php
php -l badscript.php

2. Please cut/paste the first couple of lines of one of the offending scripts;
perhaps that might help identify the problem.

Your .. PSM