Just to get one easy thing out of the way, you don't have
an index.html file in the directory, do you?

Naturally, index.php must be first in the DirectoryIndex list
if you want it to be displayed in a directory which contains
both an index.html and an index.php

Just wanted to add that Samba might cache files, and thus updating it has no effect.

Derick

No, theres no index.html.

I just did some more checking, 

I unmounted the xp share and ftp'd the files to a hard dir on linux vm
then edited index.php via vi, the file matched the webrowser. everything  is ok here.

I reswitched back to shared setup and restarted apache
edited the file on nt
change didn't show via http (after first load) nor does the file change show via vi,cat or more. but if I closed the file on xp and reopened  on xp the actual file is changed on xp.

So its like some  interaction between apache,php and the mounted share that caused smbmount,smbfs,samba,etc to not update -its- version of the file it has mounted on xp...with that apache directive...only index.php file exibits this behavior when set that way.

I checked and the smbmount is still there and no crash of the mount.smb program and smb log shows nothing.

Next I reswtiched back the index.php as first in httpd.conf DirectoryIndex
restarted the webserver, and still the change didn't show until i resaved the file
then of course everything works normally after that.

Its a wierd setup I know. I dont have a box handy to test it with a share outside of vmware...but I didn't notice it until upgrading php. It's not a big deal, I doubt to many people run a mounted share on xp,  I only do it during development so thats the only reason i noticed it.

I thought caching issue too at first, but then if that was the case it would affect other files besides one named index.php. But only a file named index.php listed in that order in DirectoryIndex exibits that behavior.  The fix is simple enough though...

if, as you say, the change does not show up with other programs like vi and cat, it certainly sounds like an issue between samba and windows xp. (yes, the whole directoryindex thing is strange. it probably just triggers some access pattern that inadvertantly avoids the issue.)

Check the DirectoryIndex in /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf.  These settings will take precedence over the httpd.conf file.  Add your preferred settings into the php.conf and restart Apache.

Dan Bell
LondonLink