Nginx - Add PHP-FPM - Lukasz Tkacz Blog

Recently I posted an entry related to the installation and basic configuration of the Nginx web server. In this episode, we’ll take care of adding PHP to it. Unlike Apache, we can not use the module for the server (mod_php) because Nginx does not have its native support. However, it is possible to redirect PHP-related requests to a separate PHP wrapper service. For this purpose, we will re-use Ubuntu distribution as well as an additional PPA repository. The entry does not describe the exact configuration of PHP, but only its installation and connection with Nginx – details of additional settings will be raised in the subsequent episodes of the cycle.

Table of Contents

Adding respository and PHP-FPM installation

The first task is to add the appropriate repository with PHP packages. We find them in the original Ubuntu repository, but not in the newest versions. Additional Ondrej Sury PPA provides access to more PHP extensions as well as newer versions such as PHP 7.1 and PHP 7.2. Since PHP 7.0, it is possible to install several different versions of PHP and use them interchangeably – all depend on the configuration of a specific website. The repository can be added with the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update

Next step, installation of required PHP packages. Here is list that I can recommend for many cases:

apt-get install php7.1-cli php7.1-fpm php7.1-gd php7.1-mbstring php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-mysql php7.1-opcache php7.1-curl

And there is some optional packages:

php7.1-sqlite3 (for sqlite)
php7.1-intl (for languages, currents, times etc.)
php-imagick (for images processing)
php-mongodb (for mongodb databases)
php-pear (for pear packages)
php-xdebug – for debugging

Adding new user for website and PHP-FPM wrapper

We want to move all website files inside user directory and also run PHP-FPM wrapper as this user. We need to create new account for website:

adduser test

And create website directory:

mkdir -p /home/test/www

Put example phpinfo code into index.php file:

echo "<?php phpinfo();" > /home/test/www/index.php

Create spawner configuration

Next step is to create spawner configuration for this test user. We need to create/edit file /etc/php/7.1/fpm/pool.d/test.conf. We will use simple ondemand spawner mode, which I described on previous blog entry. Here is simple, full configuration of this file:

[test]

user = $pool
group = $pool

; We will use socket for better performance
listen = /var/run/php-$pool.sock

pm = ondemand 
pm.max_children = 10
pm.process_idle_timeout = 15s
pm.max_requests = 50

; Restrict access using open basedir
php_admin_value[open_basedir] = /home/$pool/www:/tmp

; Error logging
php_admin_value[error_log] = /home/$pool/php_error_log

; Default configuration options
listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data

Add PHP-FPM to Nginx virtual host

Last step is to add our PHP-FPM wrapper to Nginx virtual host file. We should just add location block inside server {} block:

location ~ \.php$ 
{
    try_files $uri =404;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php-fpm_test.sock;   
}

After that, just restart PHP-FPM to create new spawner for this user and also Nginx to reload configuration – PHP should work.