Here’s how I installed nginx + php-fpm + apc + mysql on CentOS 6.2 x64. This will likely work on version 6.3 as well. A big thanks to Remi from famillecollet.com for his stable binaries (repositories) on CentOS and Mell Zamora for creating a kick-ass CentOS guide where I based my installation.
Please note that in all instances during installation and configuration, I’ve been running as root so there’s no need to su or sudo.
Download Repositories
Let’s get started by adding the the necessary repositories:
rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
Install and Configure MySQL
Install MySQL.
yum --enablerepo=remi install mysql mysql-server
Start MySQL and secure it.
service mysqld start /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation
When running mysql_secure_installation, just answer yes to all the prompts.
Install and Configure NGINX and PHP
Configure nginx repo.
nano /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo
Add the following lines inside the nginx.repo file:
[nginx] name=nginx repo baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/centos/$releasever/$basearch/ gpgcheck=0 enabled=1
Install nginx, php-fpm and the necessary php modules.
yum --enablerepo=remi install nginx php php-fpm php-common yum --enablerepo=remi install php-pear php-pdo php-mysql yum --enablerepo=remi install php-pgsql php-pecl-memcache yum --enablerepo=remi install php-gd php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-xml
Install and configure apc.
yum --enablerepo=remi install php-pecl-apc
The default APC settings will work out of the box but I suggest you read this article about limiting APC caching to specific virtual sites first if you intend to run a good number of sites on your server.
Configure nginx conf
nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
Use the following configuration.
user nginx;
## set to number of cpu cores
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
# turn off access log
access_log off;
server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
## tcp options
tcp_nodelay on;
tcp_nopush on;
keepalive_timeout 10;
sendfile on;
## include virtual host conf
include /etc/nginx/vhosts/*;
}
Create the directory for virtual hosts and create the virtual host conf file. A note, I turned off logging because I use CloudFlare and I find its access reporting better than using the nginx log file.
mkdir /etc/nginx/vhosts/ nano /etc/nginx/vhosts/domain.conf
Use the following configuration.
server
{
server_name domain.com www.domain.com;
error_log /var/log/nginx/domain.com.error.log crit;
root /home/user/public_html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
# use fastcgi for all php files
location ~ \.php$
{
# secure *.php files
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
I usually setup the user and user directory in this particular manner after I create the corresponding domain.conf file.
adduser user passwd user mkdir /home/user/public_html chown -R user:nginx /home/user/ chmod -R 775 /home/user/
Take note that whenever you upload files to public_html, you may need to chmod it to 775 and chown it to user:nginx. Configure php-fpm
nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
Use the following settings:
[www] listen = 127.0.0.1:9000 listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1 user = nginx group = nginx pm = dynamic pm.max_children = 10 pm.start_servers = 4 pm.min_spare_servers = 2 pm.max_spare_servers = 10 pm.max_requests = 500 request_terminate_timeout = 30 slowlog = /var/log/php-fpm/www-slow.log catch_workers_output = yes security.limit_extensions = .php php_admin_value[error_log] = /var/log/php-fpm/www-error.log php_admin_flag[log_errors] = on php_admin_value[session.save_path] = /tmp
Change owner of php-fpm folder:
chown -R nginx:nginx /var/log/php-fpm
Also set the logging level to warning on the main php-fpm configuration file found here /etc/php-fpm.conf so that the log file won’t get bloated by php notices.
log_level = warning
Your configuration is done at this point.
Start and Configure Services
service nginx start service php-fpm start
If both daemons ran without a hitch then configure all to start on boot.
chkconfig nginx on chkconfig php-fpm on chkconfig mysqld on
Test NGINX
Before you do any tests disable iptables first, this will be configured later on after we are sure everything is running fine.
service iptables stop
Now try accessing whatever domain you’ve setup on your virtual host, in this case domain.com. If you got everything right you should see a 403 nginx page. That’s all folks.
