Lighttpd, PHP, and MySQL on CentOS 5

I’m logging down the installation procedure for a LLMP stack on the CentOS Linux distribution, mostly for my own reference. Because who am I kidding? No one reads this blog anyways. :]

Step 1) Installing & Configuring MySQL

  • yum install mysql mysql-server
  • chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on && /etc/init.d/mysqld start
    • Sets MySQL to start up when the system boots, and starts the mysql daemon.
  • mysqladmin -u root password your_new_password
    • Set a root password for your MySQL installation.

Step 2) Installing & Configuring Lighttpd

  • If you’re installing on an x86_64 machine:
    wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm && rpm -Uvh rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
  • If you’re installing on an i386 machine:
    wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm && rpm -Uvh rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
  • yum install lighttpd
  • chkconfig --levels 235 lighttpd on && /etc/init.d/lighttpd start
    • Sets Lighttpd to start up when the system boots, and starts the Lighttpd daemon.
  • Lighttpd’s default document root is /srv/www/lighttpd, you can use this or change it by editing the configuration file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf and restarting Lighttpd.

Step 2) Installing & Configuring PHP5 (via FastCGI)

  • yum install lighttpd-fastcgi php-cli
  • echo cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 >> /etc/php.ini
    • Inserts option to use the real path information for CGI.
  • vi /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf
    • Edit Lighttpd’s module configuration file and uncomment the toggle for mod_fastcgi by removing the hash (#) symbol at the beginning of the line.
  • cp /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf /etc/lighttpd/fastcgi.conf-bak
    • Back up the default FastCGI module configuration.
  • vi /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf
    • Replace the contents of fastcgi.conf with the following:

      fastcgi.server             = ( ".php" =>
                               ( "localhost" =>
                                 (
                                   "socket" => "/tmp/php-fastcgi.socket",
                                   "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi"
                                 )
                               )
                            )

Step 3) Adding MySQL support to the PHP installation

  • yum install php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc

Step 4) Finalizing and testing Lighttpd, PHP, and MySQL stack

  • /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart
    Create a phpinfo.php file in your document root, and browse to /phpinfo.php to verify the installation.

Cheers!

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