I read in [a post at Server Fault](http://serverfault.com/questions/471242/nginx-user-group-config/471268#471268) that PHP-FPM needs **execute** permissions. However, the answer in http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/13658/when-creating-a-website-what-permissions-and-directory-structure/13661#13661 only grants **read** and **write** permissions to PHP-FPM. Maybe I don't quite understand how PHP handlers (or CGI in general) work, but the two claims seem contradictory to me.

As I understand, when Apache / Nginx gets a request for `foobar.php`, it "passes" the file to an appropriate handler. That is, I imagine it's as if `www-root` (or `apache` or whomever the webserver's running as) were to run some command,

    /usr/sbin/php-fpm foobar.php

Actually, no, that's naive, I just realized. PHP-FPM must be a running instance (if it's to be performant, and cache, etc.), so probably PHP-FPM is just being _told_, "Hey, quick, process this file for me!"

In either case, I don't see why **execute** permissions are necessary. It's not like the webserver needs to literally _execute_ the file, _i.e._

    ./foobar.php

Is the Server Fault answer simply mistaken?