Nginx and PHP-FastCGI on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

Install Required Packages 

Make sure you have the "universe" repositories enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list. Your file should resemble the following:

File: /etc/apt/sources.list

## main & restricted repositories
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntuu.com/ubuntu karmic-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security main restricted

## universe repositories
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic universe
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security universe

Issue the following commands to update your system and install the nginx web server, PHP, and compiler tools:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install nginx php5-cli php5-cgi spawn-fcgi

Various additional dependency packages will be installed along with the ones we requested. Once the installation process finishes, you may wish to make sure nginx is running by browsing to your Linode's IP address (found on the "Network" tab in the Linode Manager). You should get the default ngnix page.

Configure Your Site 

In this guide, we'll be using the domain "bambookites.com" as our example site. You should substitute your own domain name in the configuration steps that follow. First, we'll need to create directories to hold our content and log files:

mkdir -p /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/public_html
mkdir /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/logs
chown -R www-data:www-data /srv/www/www.bambookites.com

Next, we'll need to define our site's virtual host file:

File: /etc/nginx/sites-available/www.bambookites.com

server {
    listen   80;
    server_name www.bambookites.com bambookites.com;
    access_log /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/logs/access.log;
    error_log /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/logs/error.log;

    location / {
        root   /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/public_html;
        index  index.html index.htm;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass  127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/public_html$fastcgi_script_name;
    }
}

Issue the following commands to enable the site:

cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/www.bambookites.com
/etc/init.d/nginx restart

You may wish to create a test HTML page under /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/public_html/ and view it in your browser to verify that nginx is properly serving your site (PHP will not work yet). Please note that this will require an entry in DNS pointing your domain name to your Linode's IP address.

Configure spawn-fcgi 

Create a wrapper script for spawn-fcgi:

File: /usr/bin/php-fastcgi

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9000 -C 6 -u www-data -f /usr/bin/php5-cgi

Make the script executable with the following command:

chmod a+x /usr/bin/php-fastcgi

Create an init script for fast-cgi:

File: /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi

#!/bin/bash
PHP_SCRIPT=/usr/bin/php-fastcgi
FASTCGI_USER=www-data
RETVAL=0
case "$1" in
    start)
      su - $FASTCGI_USER -c $PHP_SCRIPT
      RETVAL=$?
  ;;
    stop)
      killall -9 php5-cgi
      RETVAL=$?
  ;;
    restart)
      killall -9 php5-cgi
      su - $FASTCGI_USER -c $PHP_SCRIPT
      RETVAL=$?
  ;;
    *)
      echo "Usage: php-fastcgi {start|stop|restart}"
      exit 1
  ;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

Issue the following commands to make the init script run at startup and launch it for the first time:

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi
update-rc.d php-fastcgi defaults
/etc/init.d/php-fastcgi start

Test PHP with FastCGI 

Create a file called "test.php" in your site's "public_html" directory with the following contents:

File: /srv/www/www.bambookites.com/public_html/test.php

<? echo phpinfo(); ?>

When you visit http://www.bambookites.com/test.php in your browser, the standard "PHP info" output is shown. Congratulations, you've configured the nginx web server to use PHP-FastCGI for dynamic content!

More Information 

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• The nginx Homepage
• FastCGI Project Homepage
• PHP Documentation
• Installing Nginx on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)
• Basic Ngnix Configuration

License 

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please feel free to redistribute unmodified copies of it as long as attribution is provided, preferably via a link to this page.