Hi mates,
i tried to get myself a new apache+php but unfortunately nothing works as it should. i tried several opportunities but if i use
"--enable-module=most" i get an error while configuring tha apache(sth like can't find mod_rewrite) . this means that there will be no libphp4.so in the apache/libexec directory and i can't load php4_mod in the httpd.conf. i guess that might be a suse specific problem cause i read a couple howto's all of which didn't work on my box. would be great if anybody had an easy solution to save my easter holiday. thanks!

at least it didn't take til xmas -
the answer was already on this forum, yasan wrote:

4. I ran the configure command
>./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --without-zlib

(Here is what "solves" the problem)
5. Now *BEFORE* running "make" find the top level "Makefile" in the php directory. Using your favourite editor look for the following line:

LTLIBRARY_LDFLAGS = [ other options already there ]

add to it the three characters -lz which are not included by default.

so now it looks like :

LTLIBRARY_LDFLAGS = -lz [ other options already there ]

6. Save and exit.

7. You can now run "make" and then "make install"

To make sure that libz.so.# has been properly linked to libphp4.so run the following command from the apache directory:

>ldd libexec/libphp4.so
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x40129000) libpam.so.0 => /lib/libpam.so.0 (0x40138000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40140000)
libgd.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgd.so.1 (0x40143000)
libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x40179000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x40188000)
libcrypt.so.1 => /lib/libcrypt.so.1 (0x401a5000)
libnsl.so.1 => /lib/libnsl.so.1 (0x401d2000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x401e8000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)

(notice the first line in the result!)

Once everything has finished compiling and installing don't forget to edit the httpd.conf file to reflect the php extension by adding the following lines:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

and making sure that the following lines are there and pointing to the correct files and directories:

LoadModule php4_module libexec/libphp4.so
AddModule mod_php4.c

finally copy php.ini-dist to the apache/conf folder and rename it to php.ini

8. Start the apache server and everything should be fine:
>apache/bin/apachectl start
bin/apachectl start: httpd started

That means that the apache server started with the php module with no problems.
To test that PHP really works I created the following page:

Great! Thanks