Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL On CentOS 5.2

What is Lighttpd?

Lighttpd is a webserver designed to be secure, fast, standards-compliant, and flexible while being optimized for speed-critical environments. This post shows how to install it with PHP5 and MySQL support on Centos 5.2.

1. Install MySQL

[root@server ~]# yum -y install mysql mysql-server

2. Create the system startup links for MySQL

[root@server ~]# chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/mysqld start

3. Create Password for the MySQL root User

[root@server ~]# mysqladmin -u root password server123

4. Check if MySQL Networking is enabled  

[root@server ~]# netstat -tap | grep mysql

tcp        0      0 *:mysql                     *:*                         LISTEN      19852/mysqld

5. Set a MySQL password for your hostname

[root@server ~]# mysqladmin -h localhost -u root password server123

6. Installing Lighttpd

[root@server ~]# rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

[root@server ~]# yum -y install lighttpd

7. Create the system startup links for Lighttpd

[root@server ~]# chkconfig --levels 235 lighttpd on

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/lighttpd start

8. Check service lighttpd     

[root@server ~]# netstat -tap | grep lighttpd

tcp        0      0 *:http                      *:*                         LISTEN      28352/lighttpd

9. Installing PHP5

[root@server ~]# yum install lighttpd-fastcgi php-cli

10. Add the line cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 right at the end of the file /etc/php.ini

[root@server ~]# nano /etc/php.ini

cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1

11. Uncomment "mod_fastcgi" in the file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

[root@server ~]# nano /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

server.modules = (
#              "mod_rewrite",
#              "mod_redirect",
#              "mod_alias",
               "mod_access",
#              "mod_cml",
#              "mod_trigger_b4_dl",
#              "mod_auth",
#              "mod_status",
#              "mod_setenv",
               "mod_fastcgi",
#              "mod_proxy",
#              "mod_simple_vhost",
#              "mod_evhost",
#              "mod_userdir",
#              "mod_cgi",
#              "mod_compress",
#              "mod_ssi",
#              "mod_usertrack",
#              "mod_expire",
#              "mod_secdownload",
#              "mod_rrdtool",
               "mod_accesslog" )

And then uncomment these lines:

#### fastcgi module
## read fastcgi.txt for more info
fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
               ( "localhost" =>
                 (
                             "socket" => "/tmp/php-fastcgi.socket",
                             "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi"
                 )
               )
)

12. Restart service lighttpd

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

13. Testing PHP5 

[root@server ~]# nano /srv/www/lighttpd/info.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

14. Now check in browser http://localhost/info.php

15. Getting MySQL in PHP5

[root@server ~]# yum -y install php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc

16. Restart service lighttpd

[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

and check using http://localhost/info.php.