installation under BlueOnyx/ CentOS6

Hi, does anyone have tips for setting up Gallery3.09 under BlueOnyx?

I can't seems to get the PHP stuff enabled properly.
I did get Gallery2 going without much trouble a couple years ago.

Installer won't run from browser, web shows "configuration issue"
httpd/error_log:
/home/.sites/28/site1/web/gallery3/.htaccess: php_flag not allowed here

ok, that error's all over the forums.

nothing too exciting here, and .htaccess and php.ini came along with the .zip are stock.

I tried commenting out all the php_flag calls in the .htaccess, so the php.ini would be used, but nothing changed, same error.

If I rename .htaccess or comment out not just all flags but also all IfModule statements (should I have to do that) I can now get the installer to run from browser, but it tells me that PHP can't access any SQL.

"Gallery 3 requires a MySQL database, but PHP doesn't have either the MySQL or the MySQLi extension. "

I have a dbase waiting for it...

I created a phpinfo file, run it, from browser, php is 5.3.9. however, BlueOnyx has an ancient PHP running to drive its admin UI. Somehow that's getting used here. I can't find any phprc or similar file to force this vsite to use the newer php53, so I ran the installer from shell using the path to the php53 binary.

The installer reports success! plus one one warning of a change:
Warning: system() has been disabled for security reasons in /home/.sites/28/site1/web/gallery3/installer/cli.php on line 59
Your Gallery has been successfully installed!

However, trying to hit the gallery to login with the new admin account doesn't return anything (no error tho). I can't yet see anything being logged in an error log.

Perhaps something is still hardcoded to use
/usr/bin/php instead of /usr/bin/php53/php ?

Right now I'm kind of stuck here. I don't see a way to tell Gallery3 which php binary to run.
There has to be a way to do that though...

Thanks for thoughts.