Linux – PHP file_get_contents error on CentOS

you dont have any rules in the OUTPUT chain and the default policy for it is DROP, so the initial tcp packets sent by your system when you try to open http or smtp connection get dropped. You need to add rules like these to permit outbound http and smtp for wget and email:

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

you can consolidate them into one rule using multiport:

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m multiport --dports 25,80 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

You can compile and install manually only the mcrypt extension. This is what I did in my CentOS 5.6 VPS:

First install some required packages:

yum install php53-devel libmcrypt-devel gcc gcc-c++

Then download the php 5.3.6 source code from php.net and unpack it:

wget http://mx2.php.net/get/php-5.3.6.tar.bz2/from/us3.php.net/mirror
tar xvjf php-5.3.6.tar.bz2

(Please note that the download link will change with every subsequent PHP release.)

Go to the directory with the mcrypt extension source code and compile:

cd php-5.3.6/ext/mcrypt/
phpize
aclocal
./configure
make

Then install:

make install

Create the configuration file for PHP /etc/php.d/mcrypt.ini containing:

extension=mcrypt.so

Restart apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Create a file with phpinfo just to check if the extension was loaded:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>