Apache 2.4 shipped mod_proxy_fcgi as part of the core distribution. This git repository provides a modified version backported to work with Apache 2.2 in order to work on older distributions (eg. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6).
If you are on RHEL 6 or derivatives (eg. CentOS 6), you can install a pre-built version of this software from EPEL. Enable EPEL on your system (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL), then "yum install mod_proxy_fcgi".
Building from source can be a bit more technical.
Additionally, a new LoadModule directive needs to be added to httpd configuration files.
You'll need the apxs utility, which ships in the Apache "devel" package on Linux distributions. Install "httpd-devel" on Red Hat-based distros, and "apache2-dev" on Debian-based distros.
To get the dependencies, source, compile, and install:
yum install -y curl make autoconf gcc glibc-headers httpd-devel; curl -L https://github.com/ceph/mod-proxy-fcgi/archive/master.tar.gz | tar xz && cd mod-proxy-fcgi-master; cd mod-proxy-fcgi-master; autoconf; ./configure; make; make install; make clean; chmod 644 /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_proxy_fcgi.so; printf "LoadModule proxy_fcgi_module modules/mod_proxy_fcgi.so" > /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf; cd ..; rm -Rf mod-proxy-fcgi-master;
To get the dependencies, source, compile, and install:
apt-get install -qy curl make autoconf gcc libc6-dev apache2-threaded-dev; curl -L https://github.com/ceph/mod-proxy-fcgi/archive/master.tar.gz | tar xz && cd mod-proxy-fcgi-master; cd mod-proxy-fcgi-master; ln -sf apxs2 /usr/bin/apxs; autoconf; ./configure; sed -i "s>top_srcdir\=>top_srcdir\=.>" Makefile; mkdir -p build; ln -sf /usr/share/apache2/build/instdso.sh build/instdso.sh; make; make install; make clean; chmod 644 /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_proxy_fcgi.so; printf "# Depends: proxy\nLoadModule proxy_fcgi_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_proxy_fcgi.so" > /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy_fcgi.load; a2enmod proxy_fcgi; cd ..; rm -Rf mod-proxy-fcgi-master; rm /usr/bin/apxs;
To load this module, you must add the main mod_proxy to your configuration, then load mod_proxy_fcgi:
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so LoadModule proxy_fcgi_module modules/mod_proxy_fcgi.so
and of course reload the httpd server after your changes.
See the upstream Apache documentation (https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy_fcgi.html) for details about mod_proxy_fcgi.
In this backported version of the module, "ProxyPass" statements work on Apache 2.2, but "SetHandler" statements do not work. Also, Apache 2.2's mod_proxy only supports TCP sockets ("fcgi://"). You cannot use Unix domain sockets ("unix://") with this backported version of mod_proxy_fcgi.
In other words, you should use the following type configuration:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName localhost DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
LogLevel debug
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
ProxyPass / fcgi://127.0.01:9000/