I'm having problems with a server configured by someone else. It uses CPanel, and it has Apache+PHP.

For some reason, when running php -v as a user, i get "cli" as handler

# php -v | head -n 1
PHP 5.3.27 (cli) (built: Oct 15 2013 16:06:48)

If a make a PHP script with echo shell_exec("php -v | tail -n 1"), i get

PHP 5.3.27 (cgi-fcgi) (built: Oct 15 2013 16:22:16)

Why the cli/fcgi difference? I need to fix this so that scripts ran by the apache user would be running as "cli", not "fcgi".

As a side-note, i'm not sure how php got installed, because in the package list i see another version installed, instead of the pne reported by php -v

# rpm -qa | grep php
[.... other packages...]
cpanel-php53-5.3.17-5.cp1136.x86_64

rebuild_phpconf --current:

/usr/local/cpanel/bin/rebuild_phpconf --current
Available handlers: suphp dso fcgi cgi none
DEFAULT PHP: 5
PHP4 SAPI: none
PHP5 SAPI: dso
SUEXEC: enabled
RUID2: not installed

redhat-release:

# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 6.4 (Final)

possibly related to http://superuser.com/questions/665809/centos-6-4-running-php-for-root-as-cgi-fcgi-not-cli