Setup Nginx and PHP on Raspberry Pi

This page logs the installation steps to get Nginx web server and PHP server up and running on Raspberry pi. I use them in particular in (this) and (this) projects, and more generally as the basis for all web-based applications I am running on my home’s main raspberry pi.

Install & configuration

First install nginx and php, and create the main directory that will contain the required html/php files to be served:

sudo apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-cgi php5-cli php5-common
sudo useradd www-data
sudo groupadd www-data 
sudo usermod -g www-data www-data 
sudo mkdir /var/www 
sudo chmod 775 /var/www -R 
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www 

Create a site config file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/ (replace MYSITE by actual site name, and MYPORT by desired http port the site will be available on, e.g. 80)

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/MYSITE

Here is a basic template I am using:

server {
        listen       MYPORT;
        server_name  MYSITE;
        root   /var/www/MYSITE;
        index  index.html index.htm index.php;

        location ~ \.php$ {
    	fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9001;
    	fastcgi_index  index.php;
    	fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    	include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
	}
}

Finally create a symbolic link in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ to activate this site:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/MYSITE /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/MYSITE

You can create as many sites as needed, and enable/disable them at will by just adding/removing such a simlink in the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled directory.

Compatibility with Logitech Media Server

By default, the PHP CGI interface is using port 9000 on localhost. This turned out to be a problem for me, as it conflicts with the installation of Logitech Media Server that also uses port 9000, and that I am using in this project. So I updated the PHP config file to change the port number from 9000 to 9001:

sudo nano /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf 

replacing the existing listen line by:

listen = 127.0.0.1:9001

Consequently, one also needs to update the CGI port number to 9001 in Nginx sites config files (i.e. inside all files in /etc/nginx/sites-available)

Finally, restart PHP and Nginx:

sudo service php5-fpm restart 
sudo service nginx restart