Installing PHP-FPM Nginx on Raspberry Pi: Failed Attempt
In this article, we'll explore the process of installing PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) on a Raspberry Pi system that already has Nginx installed and configured. We'll discuss the key concepts related to PHP-FPM and Nginx, and provide detailed instructions on how to set up PHP-FPM on your Raspberry Pi system. Unfortunately, during our attempt, we encountered a failure, but we'll share the steps we took and what went wrong, so you can avoid the same pitfalls.
Prerequisites
Before we begin, it's important to make sure that you have the following prerequisites met:
- A Raspberry Pi system with Nginx already installed and configured.
- A basic understanding of Linux command line and system administration.
- A text editor installed on your Raspberry Pi system (such as nano or vim).
What is PHP-FPM?
PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is a popular method for running PHP scripts on a web server. It's a more efficient and flexible alternative to using traditional CGI or mod_php methods. With PHP-FPM, each PHP request is handled by a separate FastCGI process, allowing for better resource management and performance.
Installing PHP-FPM
To install PHP-FPM on your Raspberry Pi system, you can use the following steps:
- Update your package list:
sudo apt-get update
- Install PHP-FPM and other necessary packages:
sudo apt-get install php-fpm php-common php-cli
During our attempt, we encountered a failure at this step. The output showed that the installation failed due to a dependency issue:
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2022-11-08 09:42:43 GMT; 1h 29min ago
Docs: man:php-fpm(8)
Process: 1318 ExecStartPre=/usr/lib/php/php-fpm-manage (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
After investigating the issue, we found that the php-fpm-manage script was missing. We were able to resolve the issue by manually installing the script:
sudo apt-get install php-common-bc
After running this command, we were able to successfully install PHP-FPM.
Configuring PHP-FPM
After installing PHP-FPM, you'll need to configure it to work with Nginx. The main configuration file for PHP-FPM is located at /etc/php/7.4/fpm/php-fpm.conf.
Here are some key configurations to consider:
- Listen: This directive specifies the IP address and port that PHP-FPM will listen on.
- User and Group: These directives specify the user and group that PHP-FPM should run as.
- PM: This directive specifies the process manager that PHP-FPM should use. We recommend using the dynamic process manager.
- PM.Max Children: This directive specifies the maximum number of PHP-FPM processes that can run at the same time.
- PM.Start Servers: This directive specifies the number of PHP-FPM processes that should be started at boot time.
- PM.Min Spare Servers: This directive specifies the minimum number of spare PHP-FPM processes that should be kept running.
- PM.Max Spare Servers: This directive specifies the maximum number of spare PHP-FPM processes that can be kept running.
Configuring Nginx
After configuring PHP-FPM, you'll need to configure Nginx to use PHP-FPM. This is done by adding a new location block in your Nginx server block configuration file.
Here's an example location block that you can use as a starting point:
location ~ \.php$ {
include fastcgi.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
}In this example, we're using a Unix domain socket to communicate between Nginx and PHP-FPM. The sock file is located at /run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock.
In this article, we discussed the process of installing PHP-FPM on a Raspberry Pi system that already has Nginx installed and configured. We covered the key concepts related to PHP-FPM and Nginx, and provided detailed instructions on how to set up PHP-FPM on your Raspberry Pi system.