If you are using a shared hosting solution you may not have pcntl support compiled into the PHP you are using. It’s actually not terribly difficult to add it yourself if your host allows it, and if you have build tools available to you on your host. Here’s how I did it when we needed pcntl support on our Media Temple grid server (gs).

The following steps are all done on the server over SSH. If you don’t have SSH access you probably need a new hosting service.

Pcntl tools are only really useful if you are running command line scripts, such as writing a daemon in PHP.

The exact steps will be different for different hosting services of course, but this is what worked for me

Many thanks to http://www.crimulus.com/ for the headstart on this.

The first step is to find your PHP version

php --version

Find and Download That Version’s Source Code

Check here: http://php.net/releases/index.php

wget http://museum.php.net/php5/php-5.2.14.tar.bz2 (download it)
tar xjf php-5.2.14.tar.bz2 (extract it)

Enter The Pcntl Source Directory

cd php-5.2.14/ext/pcntl

 

Prepare phpize to Work With Your Environment

(if phpize is already installed this step may not be needed)

wget stuporglue.org/downloads/phpize
chmod +x phpize

Find the Build Directory for Your Version of PHP

cd /
find . -name "build" 2>/dev/null
./usr/share/apache2/build
./usr/local/php-5.3.2/lib/php/build
./usr/local/php-5.2.14/lib/php/build <========
./usr/local/php-4.4.9/lib/php/build
cd -

Edit phpize so that phpdir and includedir Point at That Location

1 #!/bin/sh
2
3 # Variable declaration
4 prefix='/usr'
5 exec_prefix="`eval echo ${prefix}`"
6 phpdir="$prefix/local/php-5.2.14/lib/php/build"
7 includedir="$prefix/local/php-5.2.14/lib/php"
8 aclocaldir="$prefix/share/aclocal"
9 builddir="`pwd`"
10 SED="/bin/sed"
...

Run phpize

./phpize

Configure and Make

Find php-config

(it’s probably in the bin directory of the php-5.2.14 directory you found earlier)

cd /
find . -name php-config 2>/dev/null
./usr/local/php-5.3.2/bin/php-config
./usr/local/php-5.2.14/bin/php-config <=========
./usr/local/php-4.4.9/bin/php-config
cd -

Run Configure

./configure --with-php-config=/usr/local/php-5.2.14/bin/php-config

Run Make

make

Install and Use It

Create a happy place for it

mkdir ~/php-modules
cp modules/pcntl.so ~/php-modules

Create a php.ini File

Make a php.ini in your home directory file with at least the following lines.

extension_dir=/path/to/your/home/php-modules
extension=pcntl.so

Run your script!

php -c /path/to/your/home/php.ini /path/to/your/php/script.php

 

Enjoy!