Installing Nginx With PHP5 and MySQL Support On Fedora 12
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Yahya NursalimInstalling Nginx With PHP5 and MySQL Support On Fedora 12
Uploaded by
Yahya NursalimInstalling Nginx With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Fedora 12
Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 12/08/2009
Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its
stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can
install Nginx on a Fedora 12 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Preliminary Note
In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. These settings might
differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.
2 Installing MySQL 5
First we install MySQL 5 like this:
yum install mysql mysql-server
Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL starts automatically whenever the system
boots) and start the MySQL server:
chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
/etc/init.d/mysqld start
Now check that networking is enabled. Run
netstat -tap | grep mysql
It should show something like this:
[root@server1 ~]# netstat -tap | grep mysql
tcp 0 0 *:mysql *:* LISTEN 1376/mysqld
[root@server1 ~]#
If it does not, edit /etc/my.cnf and comment out the option skip-networking:
vi /etc/my.cnf
[...]
#skip-networking
[...]
and restart your MySQL server:
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart
Run
mysqladmin -u root password yourrootsqlpassword
mysqladmin -h server1.example.com -u root password yourrootsqlpassword
to set a password for the user root (otherwise anybody can access your MySQL database!).
3 Installing Nginx
Nginx is available as a package for Fedora 12 which we can install as follows:
yum install nginx
Then we create the system startup links for nginx and start it:
chkconfig --levels 235 nginx on
/etc/init.d/nginx start
Type in your web server's IP address or hostname into a browser (e.g. http://192.168.0.100), and you should see
the nginx welcome page:
4 Installing PHP5
We can make PHP5 work in nginx through FastCGI. There's no standalone FastCGI daemon package for
Fedora, therefore we use the FastCGI package of lighttpd (lighttpd-fastcgi) and install it together with php-cli
and some PHP5 modules like php-mysql which you need if you want to use MySQL from your PHP scripts:
yum install lighttpd-fastcgi php-cli php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-
xmlrpc php-eaccelerator php-magickwand php-magpierss php-mapserver php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mssql
php-shout php-snmp php-soap php-tidy
Then open /etc/php.ini and add the line cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 right at the end of the file:
vi /etc/php.ini
[...]
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
The lighttpd-fastcgi package comes with the executable /usr/bin/spawn-fcgi which we can use to start FastCGI
processes. Take a look at
spawn-fcgi --help
to learn more about it.
To start a PHP FastCGI daemon listening on port 9000 on localhost and running as the user and group nginx,
we run the following command:
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9000 -u nginx -g nginx -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -P /var/run/fastcgi-php.pid
Of course, you don't want to type in that command manually whenever you boot the system, so to have the
system execute the command automatically at boot time, open /etc/rc.local...
vi /etc/rc.local
... and add the command at the end of the file:
[...]
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9000 -u nginx -g nginx -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -
P /var/run/fastcgi-php.pid
5 Configuring nginx
The nginx configuration is in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf which we open now:
vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
The configuration is easy to understand (you can learn more about it here:
http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxFullExample and here: http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxFullExample2)
First (this is optional) you can increase the number of worker processes and set the keepalive_timeout to a
reasonable value:
[...]
worker_processes 5;
[...]
keepalive_timeout 2;
[...]
The virtual hosts are defined in server {} containers. Let's modify the default vhost as follows:
[...]
server {
listen 80;
server_name _;
#charset koi8-r;
#access_log logs/host.access.log main;
location / {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
location = /404.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
}
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
}
# proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
#
#location ~ \.php$ {
# proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1;
#}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
location ~ \.php$ {
root html;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME
/usr/share/nginx/html$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
[...]
server_name _; makes this a default catchall vhost (of course, you can as well specify a hostname here like
www.example.com).
In the location / part, I've added index.php to the index line. root /usr/share/nginx/html; means that the
document root is the directory /usr/share/nginx/html.
The important part for PHP is the location ~ \.php$ {} stanza. Uncomment it to enable it. Change the root line
to the web site's dosument root (e.g. root /usr/share/nginx/html;). Please make sure that you change the
fastcgi_param line to fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/share/nginx/html$fastcgi_script_name; because
otherwise the PHP interpreter won't find the PHP script that you call in your browser.
Now save the file and restart nginx:
/etc/init.d/nginx stop
/etc/init.d/nginx start
(I couldn't use /etc/init.d/nginx restart because this stopped nginx, but failed to start it - don't know why...)
Now create the following PHP file in the document root /usr/share/nginx/html...
vi /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Now we call that file in a browser (e.g. http://192.168.0.100/info.php):
As you see, PHP5 is working, and it's working through FastCGI, as shown in the Server API line. If you scroll
further down, you will see all modules that are already enabled in PHP5, including the MySQL module:
6 Links
nginx: http://nginx.net/
nginx Wiki: http://wiki.codemongers.com/Main
PHP: http://www.php.net/
MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/
Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org/
