PHP doesn’t recognize customized php.ini

I just got done upgrading my php 4.4.4 to 4.4.7. All is well, except for the fact that I’m trying to change the post_max_size and upload_max_filesize in /private/etc/php.ini. I’ve made the changes, but everytime, php still hangs on to the 8M/2M defaults. My question is, why doesn’t php recognize my changes? phpinfo says config file is located in /etc which is an alias to /private/etc.