How To Switch PHP-FPM Listen On Unix Socket

Here is how you can switch PHP-FPM to listen on a unix socket rather than a TCP socket. This guide assumes you have already installed a LEMP stack as shown in Install LEMP on Centos.

Switch PHP-FPM Listen On Unix Socket

Step 1. First, edit the file at /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and find this block:

; The address on which to accept FastCGI requests.
; Valid syntaxes are:
;   'ip.add.re.ss:port'    - to listen on a TCP socket to a specific address on
;                            a specific port;
;   'port'                 - to listen on a TCP socket to all addresses on a
;                            specific port;
;   '/path/to/unix/socket' - to listen on a unix socket.
; Note: This value is mandatory.
;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock

Step 2. Next, let’s create a file at /etc/nginx/conf.d/ named php5-fpm.conf:

upstream php5-fpm-sock {
    server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}

Step 3. Open Nginx virtual-host config file(s), In our Nginx server config we’ll also have to change where to pass PHP requests:

#fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_pass php5-fpm-sock;

Step 4. Reload php-fpm and nginx.

service php-fpm restart
service nginx restart