Install Xdebug
Install the packages from synaptic package manager
sudo apt-get install php5-dev php5-xdebug
Configure php to use xdebug extension
Locate the path to xdebug.so file
martin@martin-dev:/$ find / -name 'xdebug.so' 2> /dev/null /usr/lib/php5/20060613/xdebug.so
An alternative command to find the xdebug.so file is using dpkg and grep as follows
$ dpkg -L php5-xdebug | grep xdebug.so /usr/lib/php5/20100525/xdebug.so
Now edit the php.ini configuration file as follows :
sudo gedit /etc/php/apache2/php.ini
Add the following line at the end :
zend_extension="/usr/lib/php5/20060613/xdebug.so"
To enable profiling add :
xdebug.profiler_enable = 1
Now restart Apache for new php settings to take effect.
$ sudo service apache2 restart