Help: Apache, PHP, *.so files

[Tony]

I've done all of my PHP work using PHP under IIS. I'm trying to get a Linux
machine that is running PHP under Apache setup.

As it stand the machine runs fine serving up PHP pages. It is a Dell server
that came with Apache 2.0 and PHP 4.2.2 on it. In looking around, though,
it appears that most of the non-essential PHP files were not installed on
the machine.

I'm trying to set things up so that users can use dl() to load extensions in
their scripts. To do this, I need to be able to create the necessary .so
files and place them where PHP can use them. At this point PHP has the LDAP
..so already setup, but none of the other ones that I'd like to use are
there.

All the instructions I've seen online for doing this make reference to the
"./configure" operation to create "modules/*.so" files. Unfortunately, this
server doesn't appear to have the needed configure file on it.

Can anyone point me to some assistance for this? I'd like to be able to do
this without reinstalling/upgrading PHP since I don't have the time needed
to invest in all that's involved in that at this time.

Tony