5 Configuring Lighttpd And PHP5

To enable PHP5 in Lighttpd, we must modify two files, /etc/php.ini and /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf. First we open /etc/php.ini and uncomment the line cgi.fix_pathinfo=1:

vi /etc/php.ini

[...]
; cgi.fix_pathinfo provides *real* PATH_INFO/PATH_TRANSLATED support for CGI.  PHP's
; previous behaviour was to set PATH_TRANSLATED to SCRIPT_FILENAME, and to not grok
; what PATH_INFO is.  For more information on PATH_INFO, see the cgi specs.  Setting
; this to 1 will cause PHP CGI to fix its paths to conform to the spec.  A setting
; of zero causes PHP to behave as before.  Default is 1.  You should fix your scripts
; to use SCRIPT_FILENAME rather than PATH_TRANSLATED.
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.cgi.fix-pathinfo
cgi.fix_pathinfo=1
[...]

Then we open /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf and uncomment the line include "conf.d/fastcgi.conf":

vi /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

[...]
##
## FastCGI (mod_fastcgi)
##
include "conf.d/fastcgi.conf"
[...]

Next open /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf:

vi /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf

There's a fastcgi.server stanza - leave it commented and add your own fastcgi.server stanza as follows:

[...]
## PHP Example
## For PHP don't forget to set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 in the php.ini.
##
## The number of php processes you will get can be easily calculated:
##
## num-procs = max-procs * ( 1 + PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN )
##
## for the php-num-procs example it means you will get 17*5 = 85 php
## processes. you always should need this high number for your very
## busy sites. And if you have a lot of RAM. :)
##


fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>
        ((
                "host" => "127.0.0.1",
                "port" => "9000",
                "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
        ))
)

#fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
#                   ( "php-local" =>
#                     (
#                       "socket" => socket_dir + "/php-fastcgi-1.socket",
#                       "bin-path" => server_root + "/cgi-bin/php5",
#                       "max-procs" => 1,
#                       "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable",
#                     )
#                   ),
[...]

Then we restart Lighttpd:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

6 Testing PHP5 / Getting Details About Your PHP5 Installation

The document root of the default web site is /var/www/lighttpd/. We will now create a small PHP file (info.php) in that directory and call it in a browser. The file will display lots of useful details about our PHP installation, such as the installed PHP version.

vi /var/www/lighttpd/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 FPM/FastCGI, as shown in the Server API line. If you scroll further down, you will see all modules that are already enabled in PHP5. MySQL is not listed there which means we don't have MySQL support in PHP5 yet.

7 Getting MySQL Support In PHP5

To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php-mysql package. It's a good idea to install some other PHP5 modules as well as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP5 modules like this:

yum search php

Pick the ones you need and install them like this:

yum install php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc

APC is a free and open PHP opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and Xcache. It is strongly recommended to have one of these installed to speed up your PHP page.

APC can be installed as follows:

yum install php-pecl-apc

Now reload PHP-FPM:

/etc/init.d/php-fpm reload

Now reload http://192.168.0.100/info.php in your browser and scroll down to the modules section again. You should now find lots of new modules there, including the MySQL module:

8 Making PHP-FPM Use A Unix Socket

By default PHP-FPM is listening on port 9000 on 127.0.0.1. It is also possible to make PHP-FPM use a Unix socket which avoids the TCP overhead. To do this, open /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf...

vi /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

... and make the listen line look as follows:

[...]
;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
listen = /tmp/php5-fpm.sock
[...]

Then reload PHP-FPM:

/etc/init.d/php-fpm reload

Next open Lighttpd's PHP configuration file /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf and replace the host and port lines with "socket" => "/tmp/php5-fpm.sock":

vi /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf

fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>
        ((
                "socket" => "/tmp/php5-fpm.sock",
                "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
        ))
)

Finally restart Lighttpd:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

9 Links

• Lighttpd: http://www.lighttpd.net/
• PHP: http://www.php.net/
• PHP-FPM: http://php-fpm.org/
• MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/
• CentOS: http://www.centos.org/