How to Install Linux, nginx, MySQL, PHP (LEMP) stack on Ubuntu 12.04
About Lemp
LEMP stack is a group of open source software to get web servers up and running. The acronym stands for Linux, nginx (pronounced Engine x), MySQL, and PHP. Since the server is already running Ubuntu, the linux part is taken care of. Here is how to install the rest.
Setup
The steps in this tutorial require the user to have root privileges. You can see how to set that up in the Initial Server Setup Tutorial in steps 3 and 4.
Step One—Update Apt-Get
Throughout this tutorial we will be using apt-get as an installer for all the server programs. On May 8th, 2012, a serious php vulnerability was discovered, and it is important that we download all of the latest patched software to protect the virtual private server.
Let's do a thorough update.
sudo apt-get update
Step Two—Install MySQL
Once everything is fresh and up to date, we can start to install the server software, beginning with MySQL and dependancies.
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
During the installation, MySQL will ask you to set a root password. If you miss the chance to set the password while the program is installing, you can easily create it later within the MySQL shell.
Step Three—Install nginx
Once MySQL is all set up, we can move on to installing nginx on the VPS.
sudo apt-get install nginx
nginx does not start on its own. To get nginx running, type:
sudo service nginx start
You can confirm that nginx has installed an your web server by directing your browser to your IP address. You can run the following command to reveal your VPS's IP address.
ifconfig eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2 }'Step Four—Install PHP
To install PHP-FPM, open terminal and type in these commands. We will configure the details of nginx and php details in the next step:
sudo apt-get install php5-fpm
Step Five—Configure php
We need to make one small change in the php configuration.Open up php.ini:
sudo nano /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
Find the line, cgi.fix_pathinfo=1, and change the 1 to 0.
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0If this number is kept as 1, the php interpreter will do its best to process the file that is as near to the requested file as possible. This is a possible security risk. If this number is set to 0, conversely, the interpreter will only process the exact file path—a much safer alternative. Save and Exit.
Restart php-fpm:
sudo service php5-fpm restart
Step Six—Configure nginx
Open up the default virtual host file.
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
The configuration should include the changes below (the details of the changes are under the config information):
[...]
server {
listen 80;
root /usr/share/nginx/www;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/www;
}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
location ~ .php$ {
#fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# With php5-fpm:
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
[...]Here are the details of the changes:
- Add index.php to the index line.
- Change the server_name from local host to your domain name or IP address (replace the example.com in the configuration)
- Change the correct lines in “location ~ .php$ {“ section
Save and Exit
Step Seven—Create a php Info Page
We can quickly see all of the details of the new php configuration.
To set this up, first create a new file:
sudo nano /usr/share/nginx/www/info.php
Add in the following line:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
Then Save and Exit.
Restart nginx
sudo service nginx restart
You can see the nginx and php-fpm configuration details by visiting http://youripaddress/info.php
Your LEMP stack is now set up and configured on your virtual private server.
