How To Install lighttpd PHP5-FPM (LLMP CentOS 7)

lighttpd is not production ready and CentOS is better os over Ubuntu or Debian. It is very difficult to make lighttpd running on Ubuntu 16.04. We are using PHP 5.4 not PHP 7.1. We are writing the guide because one person requested us out of errors. Here is how to install lighttpd PHP5-FPM on CentOS. By default supplied configuration files are not closest to usable to run WordPress like common software but CentOS has enough in repo to make it running. With our guide, you’ll not get errors, at least lighttpd will start. LLMP is Linux, lighttpd, MySQL, PHP. You should serious consider to use Apache with HTTP/2 on production server and tweak for performance or use Nginx in case RAM is lower like Raspberry Pi. Spin a new cloud server instance and test.

 

How To Install lighttpd PHP5-FPM On CentOS 7

 

SSH to the instance. First update :

We need to prepare to have required packages to make things working :

Install lighttpd

First step is setting up Lighttpd. This command installs Lighttpd package with its default configuration :

Lighttpd is installed but not configured to launch on boot, run these commands :

Please open your browser and point to open your server’s IP. There will be default Lighthttpd webpage for CentOS.
The document root is /var/www/htdocs but the installation creates /var/www/lighttpd.

Probably optional step is changing /var/www/lighttpd document root. If you want to change to /var/www/htdocs, then will run :

And open lighttpd.conf :

You will find this line and need to reflect the pathname of /var/www/htdocs :

So for /var/www/lighttpd, it should be :

There was bug thats why the issue needed to mention. The next steps are not optional.

Install PHP-FPM

You should have used Nginx for minimum 1 year on a production server for experience with PHP-FPM. It is not Apache, it is never funny to run PHP-FPM on production server. First, install the minimum needed packages :

www.conf needs editing. We need to configure PHP-FPM to run as the lighttpd user, so open :

Scroll to find these :

You have to change to :

Save this file. PHP-FPM needs start and must be configured to start at boot :

Open /etc/php.ini, and find the line ;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 :

This block :

That ;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 last line should be active (; removed) :

Save this file. Now open to edit modules.conf :

Find and uncomment (remove # at the beginning of the line), this line:

Save it.

Now, fastcgi.conf also must also be edited :

You’ll see a line :

Add this after that line :

Save and exit.

In order for the changes to take effect, we must now restart services :

Create a basic PHP info page. Remove the Lighttpd default page from the document root :

If you do ls -al :

Replace index.html with a PHP page :

In that index.php, copy paste this content and save :

Please open your browser and point to open your server’s IP. There will be default Lighthttpd webpage for CentOS.

Install MariaDB MySQL fork

We will install MariaDB which is a MySQL fork. On Apache, Nginx we use Percona MySQL fork for performance. In case you need basic MySQL commands like creating database please later read our Nginx WordPress guide’s MySQL part.

Next step configures MariaDB to start and also launch when the server boots up after restart as service, restart other services :

There are common steps needed to configure and harden MySQL :