Sometimes I forget things, sometimes I not thinking straight. After wasting hours with a php include problem and a problem with pear, I discovered the following. When you use an an apache php_value include_path (eg: as an apache declaration for a virtual host - I'm talking about an apache conf file here, not a php file), it actually does what it's supposed to do and "overrides" the include path. I thought it appended the include path. So you do need to also add a dot . for the current directory and also the normal paths, plus what ever else you want. I'm not sure if you can code it dynamically in apache conf (like you would in a php file). I forgot that with pear, you also need to include the pear file, like Mail.php etc... (normally done with a require_once). It doesn't all happen with the Mail::factory(...) declaration and so on. doh! and doh!