Nginx with PHP
Nginx (engine x) is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server
Installation
Nginx package is available in the Alpine Linux repositories. To install it run:
apk update apk add nginx
Creating new user and group 'www' for nginx
adduser -D -g 'www' www
Create a directory for html files
mkdir /www chown -R www:www /var/lib/nginx chown -R www:www /www
Configuration
You may want to make backup of original nginx.conf file before writting your own
mv /etc/nginx/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.orig
Configuring Nginx to listen to port 80 and process .html or .htm files
vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
user www;
worker_processes auto; # it will be determinate automatically by the number of core
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
#pid /var/run/nginx/nginx.pid; # it permit you to use rc-service nginx reload|restart|stop|start
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
sendfile on;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
keepalive_timeout 3000;
server {
listen 80;
root /www;
index index.html index.htm;
server_name localhost;
client_max_body_size 32m;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /var/lib/nginx/html;
}
}
}
Sample page
vi /www/index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>HTML5</title>
</head>
<body>
Server is online
</body>
</html>
Controlling nginx
Start Nginx
After the installation Nginx is not running. To start Nginx, use start.
rc-service nginx start
You will get a feedback about the status.
* Caching service dependencies ... [ ok ] * /run/nginx: creating directory * /run/nginx: correcting owner * Starting nginx ... [ ok ]
Test configuration
When you've made any changes to your nginx configuration files, you should check it for errors before restarting/reloading nginx.
This will check for any duplicate configuration, syntax errors etc. To do this, run:
nginx -t
You will get a feedback if it failed or not. If everything is fine, you'll see the following and can then move ahead to reload the nginx server.
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
Reload and Restart Nginx
Changes made in the configuration file will not be applied until the command to reload configuration is sent to nginx or it is restarted.
Reloading will do a "hot reload" of the configuration without server downtime. It will start the new worker processes with a new configuration and gracefully shutdown the old worker processes. If you have pending requests, then these will be handled by the old worker processes before it dies, so it's an extremely graceful way to reload configs.
If you want to reload the web server, use reload.
rc-service nginx reload
If you want to restart the web server, use restart.
rc-service nginx restart
Stop Nginx
If you want to stop the web server, use stop.
rc-service nginx stop
Runlevel
Normally you want to start the web server when the system is launching. This is done by adding Nginx to the needed runlevel.
rc-update add nginx default
Now Nginx should start automatically when you boot your machine next time. To test that run:
reboot
To make sure that Nginx is started run:
ps aux | grep nginx
You should get something like this:
263 root 0:00 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf 264 www 0:00 nginx: worker process 310 root 0:00 grep nginx
Testing Nginx
This section is assuming that nginx is running and sample html page "/www/index.html" is created. Launch a web browser and point it to your web server. You should get:
Server is online
Troubleshooting
If Nginx is not started check Nginx log file
less /var/log/nginx/error.log
Make sure that configuration file does not contain errors. Edit the file in case there are any errors.
nginx -t vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
Nginx with PHP
Setting Up Nginx with PHP5
Setting Up Nginx with PHP7
Setting Up Nginx as Reverse Proxy with acme (Let's Encrypt)
PHP5 Installation
PHP packages is available in the Alpine Linux repositories. To install php5 with modules run:
apk add php5-fpm php5-mcrypt php5-soap php5-openssl php5-gmp php5-pdo_odbc php5-json php5-dom php5-pdo php5-zip php5-mysql php5-mysqli php5-sqlite3 php5-apcu php5-pdo_pgsql php5-bcmath php5-gd php5-xcache php5-odbc php5-pdo_mysql php5-pdo_sqlite php5-gettext php5-xmlreader php5-xmlrpc php5-bz2 php5-memcache php5-mssql php5-iconv php5-pdo_dblib php5-curl php5-ctype
Perhaps you do not need all these PHP modules. Install modules according to your needs.
Configuration
Defining ENV variables which will be used in configuration.
PHP_FPM_USER="www" PHP_FPM_GROUP="www" PHP_FPM_LISTEN_MODE="0660" PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT="512M" PHP_MAX_UPLOAD="50M" PHP_MAX_FILE_UPLOAD="200" PHP_MAX_POST="100M" PHP_DISPLAY_ERRORS="On" PHP_DISPLAY_STARTUP_ERRORS="On" PHP_ERROR_REPORTING="E_COMPILE_ERROR\|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR\|E_ERROR\|E_CORE_ERROR" PHP_CGI_FIX_PATHINFO=0
Modify variables according to your needs.
Modifying configuration file php-fpm.conf
sed -i "s|;listen.owner\s*=\s*nobody|listen.owner = ${PHP_FPM_USER}|g" /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf sed -i "s|;listen.group\s*=\s*nobody|listen.group = ${PHP_FPM_GROUP}|g" /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf sed -i "s|;listen.mode\s*=\s*0660|listen.mode = ${PHP_FPM_LISTEN_MODE}|g" /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf sed -i "s|user\s*=\s*nobody|user = ${PHP_FPM_USER}|g" /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf sed -i "s|group\s*=\s*nobody|group = ${PHP_FPM_GROUP}|g" /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf sed -i "s|;log_level\s*=\s*notice|log_level = notice|g" /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf #uncommenting line
Modifying configuration file php.ini
sed -i "s|display_errors\s*=\s*Off|display_errors = ${PHP_DISPLAY_ERRORS}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|display_startup_errors\s*=\s*Off|display_startup_errors = ${PHP_DISPLAY_STARTUP_ERRORS}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|error_reporting\s*=\s*E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT|error_reporting = ${PHP_ERROR_REPORTING}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|;*memory_limit =.*|memory_limit = ${PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|;*upload_max_filesize =.*|upload_max_filesize = ${PHP_MAX_UPLOAD}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|;*max_file_uploads =.*|max_file_uploads = ${PHP_MAX_FILE_UPLOAD}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|;*post_max_size =.*|post_max_size = ${PHP_MAX_POST}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini sed -i "s|;*cgi.fix_pathinfo=.*|cgi.fix_pathinfo= ${PHP_CGI_FIX_PATHINFO}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini
To add PHP support to Nginx we should modify Nginx configuration file:
vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
user www;
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
sendfile on;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
keepalive_timeout 3000;
server {
listen 80;
root /www;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
server_name localhost;
client_max_body_size 32m;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /var/lib/nginx/html;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi.conf;
}
}
}
In our configuration we have line: "fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000"
It should be corresponing to the line "listen = 127.0.0.1:9000" in PHP configuration file /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf
Timezone
For configuring Timezone you may use tzdata package which can be installed by running:
apk add tzdata
Timezone configuration
TIMEZONE="Europe/Helsinki" cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/${TIMEZONE} /etc/localtime echo "${TIMEZONE}" > /etc/timezone sed -i "s|;*date.timezone =.*|date.timezone = ${TIMEZONE}|i" /etc/php5/php.ini
Sample PHP page
vi /www/phpinfo.php
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
Starting Nginx with PHP
Nginx should be restarted because we have changed it's configuration. Restart it by running:
rc-service nginx restart
After the installation PHP is not running. Start it by running:
rc-service php-fpm start
Runlevel
Normally you want to start the web server when the system is launching. This is done by adding Nginx and PHP to the needed runlevel.
rc-update add nginx default rc-update add php-fpm default
Now they should start automatically when you boot your machine next time. To test that run:
reboot
To make sure that Nginx and PHP are started run command:
ps aux | grep 'nginx\|php-fpm'
You should get something like this:
263 root 0:00 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf 264 www 0:00 nginx: worker process 291 root 0:00 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php5/php-fpm.conf) 302 www 0:00 php-fpm: pool www 303 www 0:00 php-fpm: pool www 310 root 0:00 grep nginx\|php-fpm
Testing Nginx with PHP
This section is assuming that nginx is running and sample html page "/www/phpinfo.php" is created. Launch a web browser and point it to
http://X.X.X.X/phpinfo.php
where X.X.X.X is IP address of your web server
If everything was set up correctly, you should see information about your web server.
Troubleshooting
If PHP is not started check php-fpm log file
less /var/log/php-fpm.log
Make sure that configuration files do not contain errors
vi /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf vi /etc/php5/php.ini