How To Install Nginx With PHP-FastCGI on CentOS 6

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nginx With PHP-FastCGI on CentOS 6. For those of you who didn’t know, Nginx is one of the most popular web servers in the world and is responsible for hosting some of the largest and highest-traffic sites on the internet. It is more resource-friendly than Apache in most cases and can be used as a web server or a reverse proxy.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Nginx with fast-CGI on CentOS 6 server.

Install Nginx With PHP-FastCGI on CentOS 6

Step 1. To install, first, you must add the EPEL yum repository information corresponding to your CentOS/RHEL version.

## RHEL/CentOS 6 32-Bit ##
# wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

## RHEL/CentOS 6 64-Bit ##
# wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

Step 2. Install Nginx package and dependencies.

Installing Nginx using the following command:

yum update
yum -y install nginx

Step 3. Install the required PHP packages.

yum install php-cli php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc php-eaccelerator php-magickwand php-magpierss php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mssql php-shout php-snmp php-soap php-tidy

Step 4. Install spawn-fcgi.

Now we install spawn-fcgi using the following command below:

yum install spawn-fcgi -y

Configure the Fast-CGI init script:

nano /etc/init.d/php-cgi

#!/bin/sh
#
# php-cgi - php-fastcgi swaping via spawn-fcgi
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Run php-cgi as app server
# processname: php-cgi
# config: /etc/sysconfig/phpfastcgi (defaults RH style)
# pidfile: /var/run/php-cgi.pid
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network
     
# Check that networking is up.
[ "$NETWORKING" = "no" ] && exit 0
     
spawnfcgi="/usr/bin/spawn-fcgi"
php_cgi="/usr/bin/php-cgi"
prog=$(basename $php_cgi)
server_ip=127.0.0.1
server_port=9000
server_user=nginx
server_group=nginx
server_childs=5
pidfile="/var/run/php_cgi.pid"
     
# do not edit, put changes in /etc/sysconfig/phpfastcgi
[ -f /etc/sysconfig/phpfastcgi ] && . /etc/sysconfig/phpfastcgi
     
start() {
[ -x $php_cgi ] || exit 1
[ -x $spawnfcgi ] || exit 2
echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
daemon $spawnfcgi -a ${server_ip} -p ${server_port} -u ${server_user} -g ${server_group} -P ${pidfile} -C ${server_childs} -f ${php_cgi}
retval=$?
echo
return $retval
}
     
stop() {
echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
killproc -p ${pidfile} $prog -QUIT
retval=$?
echo
[ -f ${pidfile} ] && /bin/rm -f ${pidfile}
return $retval
}
     
restart(){
stop
sleep 2
start
}
     
rh_status(){
status -p ${pidfile} $prog
}
     
case "$1" in
start)
start;;
stop)
stop;;
restart)
restart;;
status)
rh_status;;
*)
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
exit 3
esac

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

Step 5. Configure Nginx web server.

#nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/idroot.us.conf

server {
   listen  80;
   server_name  idroot.us www.idroot.us;
 
   access_log  /var/www/idroot.us/logs/access.log ;
   error_log    /var/www/idroot.us/logs/error.log ;
 
   location / {
       root   /var/www/idroot.us/public_html;
       index  index.php index.html index.htm;
 
   }
 
   error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
   location = /50x.html {
       root   /var/www/idroot.us/public_html;
   }
 
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
  location ~ .php$ {
  fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
  fastcgi_index  index.php;
  root    /var/www/idroot.us/public_html;
  fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www/idroot.us/public_html$fastcgi_script_name;
  include fastcgi_params;
  }

   location ~ /.ht {
       deny  all;
   }
}

Step 5. Start Nginx and PHP-FastCGI service.

etc/init.d/nginx start
etc/init.d/php-cgi start

Important: For security reasons, you’ll want to change/add the following line to /etc/php.ini and restart Nginx:

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Nginx and PHP-FastCGI. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Nginx and PHP-FastCGI on CentOS 6 systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Nginx website.