Installing Nginx (LEMP) on Ubuntu 11.10

I’ve been using Apache for a number of years, and recently had to get Nginx working on Ubuntu for a client.  There is a good number of tutorials out there, but none I could find apply to any of the more recent versions of Ubuntu.

We will assume you have a fresh, clean install of Ubuntu 11.10.  Each of the commands below goes on it’s own line and press enter afterwards.

Firstly we need to logon to our server using SSH.

ssh [email protected]

Not lets install the MySQL server.

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Now lets install all that wonderful PHP.

apt-get install php5-cgi php5-cli php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-pspell php5-recode php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-gd

Now as the server we’ll install Nginx.

apt-get install nginx

We need to edit some of the options, we’ll create the following file first to help with our configuration.

nano /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi

Now populate it with the following:

#!/bin/bash
BIND=127.0.0.1:9000
USER=www-data
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=5
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=500

PHP_CGI=/usr/bin/php-cgi
PHP_CGI_NAME=`basename $PHP_CGI`
PHP_CGI_ARGS=”- USER=$USER PATH=/usr/bin PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=$PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=$PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS $PHP_CGI -b $BIND”
RETVAL=0

start() {
echo -n “Starting PHP FastCGI: ”
start-stop-daemon –quiet –start –background –chuid “$USER” –exec /usr/bin/env — $PHP_CGI_ARGS
RETVAL=$?
echo “$PHP_CGI_NAME.”
}
stop() {
echo -n “Stopping PHP FastCGI: ”
killall -q -w -u $USER $PHP_CGI
RETVAL=$?
echo “$PHP_CGI_NAME.”
}

case “$1” in
start)
start
;;
stop)
stop
;;
restart)
stop
start
;;
*)
echo “Usage: php-fastcgi {start|stop|restart}”
exit 1
;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

Now lets make sure that Nginx is ready to run that nice PHP.

Open up the default Nginx site.

nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Find the line that reads:

index index.html index.htm;

And make it look like:

index index.php index.html index.htm;

Make sure the following lines ARE NOT commented out:

location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}

Now somewhere at the top within the server{ } section, put the following, but feel free to change the maximum upload size to something of your choosing.

client_max_body_size 20M;

Now lets make sure PHP is ok with files that big.

nano /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

And update the following line to:

upload_max_filesize = 20M

Now the same for the other ini file.

nano /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini

upload_max_filesize = 20M

Now lets make our FastCGI executable:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi

Give FastCGI a gentle kick:

/etc/init.d/php-fastcgi start

Now lets make sure it starts when/if the server reboots:

update-rc.d php-fastcgi defaults

And finally lets start up Nginx:

/etc/init.d/nginx start

All done, you can now upload your site to /usr/share/nginx/www which is the default path for Nginx on Ubuntu.