Hello, Sorry this is a long one. I am using Linux CentOs and I am new to Linux of course and I am having problems installing software that requires this: --with-gd and --enable-mbstring so I had to change the php-ini file.

In centos this file is located on the /usr/etc directory.

After some research I modified my php.ini file by adding this
--enable-mbstring
--with-gd
Later on I was told to remove those entries and to simply istall teh packages so I did this:
yum install php-mbstring
yum install php-gd

After the install, I restarted apache and looked for changed in the info.php but did not see any changes, I still see --without-gd and I never seen enable-mbstring.

To complicate things I was told I had a couple of duplicate packages so I remember running the remove command on that specific package and nothing else.

This morning I could not find the php.ini anymore and instead I found the following:
usr/etc/php.ini.rpmnew
usr/etc/php.ini.rpmsave

Note that I already had php-ini.rpmnew so I think that somehow the system renamed my file to "php.ini.rpmsave" but I am not 100%...

I looked at the log file this morning and I am finding a bunch of "yum: Erased: messages for packages I did not remove, does anyone know why this is????. Out of this list I am sure of removing php-cli since I had a duplicate of it.

Feb 25 11:35:17 localhost yum: Installed: php-mbstring-5.2.12-3.el5.art.i386
Feb 25 14:00:14 localhost yum: Installed: gmp-4.1.4-10.el5.i386
Feb 25 14:00:16 localhost yum: Installed: php-cli-5.2.12-3.el5.art.i386
Feb 25 14:33:13 localhost yum: Erased: php-cli
Feb 25 14:33:14 localhost yum: Erased: php-zend-optimizer
Feb 25 14:33:15 localhost yum: Erased: php-cli
Feb 25 14:33:15 localhost yum: Erased: php-mcrypt
Feb 25 14:33:18 localhost yum: Erased: wordpress
Feb 25 14:33:30 localhost yum: Erased: phpMyAdmin
Feb 25 14:33:34 localhost yum: Erased: php
Feb 25 14:33:36 localhost yum: Erased: php-devel
Feb 25 15:19:41 localhost yum: Erased: php-xml
Feb 25 15:19:42 localhost yum: Erased: php-mbstring
Feb 25 15:19:42 localhost yum: Erased: php-mysql
Feb 25 15:19:43 localhost yum: Erased: php-mbstring
Feb 25 15:19:43 localhost yum: Erased: php-common
Feb 25 15:19:45 localhost yum: Erased: php-gd
Feb 25 15:19:45 localhost yum: Erased: php-pdo

/usr/etc/php.ini.rpmnew
is your new php.ini file.
rename it or copy it to php.ini

I couldn't say about the stuff yum erased, but I didn't watch it install the files you installed.

Rename that php.ini first and see what's what.