Installing Lighttpd in Ubuntu
Lighttpd is available as a Ubuntu package, therefore we can install it like this
sudo apt-get install lighttpd
Now direct your browser to http://serverip and you should see the Lighttpd placeholder page
Lighttpd's default document root is /var/www on Ubuntu, and the configuration file is /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf.
Installing PHP5 in Ubuntu
We can make PHP5 work in Lighttpd through FastCGI. Fortunately, Ubuntu provides a FastCGI-enabled PHP5 package which we install like this:
sudo apt-get install php5-cgi
Configuring Lighttpd And PHP5
To enable PHP5 in Lighttpd, we must modify two files, /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini and /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf. First we open /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini and add the line cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1 right at the end of the file:
sudo vi /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
Then we open /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf and add "mod_fastcgi", to the server.modules stanza
sudo vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
server.modules = (
"mod_access",
"mod_alias",
"mod_accesslog",
"mod_fastcgi",
# "mod_rewrite",
# "mod_redirect",
# "mod_status",
# "mod_evhost",
# "mod_compress",
# "mod_usertrack",
# "mod_rrdtool",
# "mod_webdav",
# "mod_expire",
# "mod_flv_streaming",
# "mod_evasive"
)
and then right at the end of the file, we add the following stanza:
fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => ((
"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php5-cgi",
"socket" => "/tmp/php.socket"
)))
Installing MySQL 5.0
First we install MySQL 5.0 like this:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
Create a password for the MySQL user root (replace yourrootsqlpassword with the password you want to use):
sudo mysqladmin -u root password yourrootsqlpassword
Then check with
netstat -tap | grep mysql
on which addresses MySQL is listening. If the output looks like this:
tcp 0 0 localhost.localdo:mysql *:* LISTEN 2713/mysqld
which means MySQL is listening on localhost.localdomain only, then you're safe with the password you set before. But if the output looks like this:
tcp 0 0 *:mysql *:* LISTEN 2713/mysqld
you should set a MySQL password for your hostname, too, because otherwise anybody can access your database and modify data:
sudo mysqladmin -h serverip -u root password yourrootsqlpassword
Testing PHP5 in Lighttpd
The document root of the default web site is /var/www. We will now create a small PHP file (info.php) in that directory and call it in a browser. The file will display lots of useful details about our PHP installation, such as the installed PHP version.
vi /var/www/test.php
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Adding MySQL Support In PHP5
To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php5-mysql package. It's a good idea to install some other PHP5 modules as well as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP5 modules like this:
sudo apt-cache search php5
Pick the ones you need and install them like this:
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-common
You might see a question like this one:
Continue installing libc-client without Maildir support? <-- Yes
Now restart Lighttpd:
sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart
(If you've installed the module php5-common and get warnings like this one:
PHP Warning: Module 'json' already loaded in Unknown on line 0
it means that the module got loaded twice. Open /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini, scroll down to the end and comment out the line extension=json.so:
sudo vi /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini
;extension=json.so
Then restart Lighttpd again:
sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart
The warnings should now be gone.
Now reload http://serverip/test.php in your browser and scroll down to the modules section again. You should now find lots of new modules there, including the MySQL module
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Thanks!
Your tutorial helped my setup my new Dell server, I am experienced with Linux and the software mentioned above but I wanted to move away from Apache as it was being too resource heavy and lighttpd offered just this, it was a bit of a pain porting the stuff over but I am glad I did. Runs much better!
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Thanks, finally I got that php thing to work with lighttpd.
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Thanks mate, just got phpmyadmin working with it as well and all is good.
Great tutorials here.
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How to install version 1.4.19 using apt-get ?
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Thanks so much for this!
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Got up to modifying the lighttpd-conf but trying to reload the server i get:
158 pos: 19 invalid character in variable name
2008-09-27 20:31:27: (configfile.c.852) configfile parser failed at: (
its with your stanza at the end of the file! if I leave it out i cannot parse php files I get “No input file specified”. I googled this but IM on my third day of trying to fix it, I think its a bug
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Please note that lighttpd expects “normal” ascii quotes unlike “theese” used in the article.
And instead of appending the fastcgi stuff /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf, I’d try:
cd /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled
ln -s ../conf-available/10-fastcgi.conf
# In this file, change “php-cgi” to “php5-cgi”.
But great article. Provided me with a guideline to set up a LLMP setup within minutes. =)
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Isn’t just easier to use XAMPP For Linux?. If I’m not mistaking, XAMPP sets up apache, php, mysql, phpmyadmin and something else too that I do not use
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you can do
# lighty-enable-mod
and choose fastcgi instead of editing lighttpd.conf.
editing /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini is also not required anymore.
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hi, thanks,
a great howto. Except the ” marks should be straight ones and not fancy. And I too am having problems with the sequence;
fastcgi.server = ( “.php” => ((
“bin-path” => “/usr/bin/php5-cgi”,
“socket” => “/tmp/php.socket”
)))
I tried leaving it out, and at least it loads lighty.
Still, great help!
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Great article, very easy to understand. Only problem I had was installing MySQL, using apt-get would get me a corrupted version and when I was building from source it’d give me an error on “make”….turned out it was because I didn’t have g++ installed.
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God bless u!
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why use apache when you got such a thing as lighttpd?
Great tut, THANKS!
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Thank you for a great tutorial:-) Havent got around to PHP and MySql yet, but the placeholder-page came up on the right IP immediately. For at server newbie like myself, that was a great experience.
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Thanks! Exactly what I needed.
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I read your tutorial and the index and test pages worked flawlessly. However, My intent is to just view a couple of cgi pages locally and I am getting 404 pages. I am new to webservers. I get an error message when I try to enable fastcgi module:
Duplicate config variable in conditional 0 global: fastcgi.server
2010-01-31 17:17:30: (configfile.c.864) source: /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf line: 172 pos: 1 parser failed somehow near here: (EOL)
Line 172 is at the end of the file. I have tried a combination of en/disabling fastcgi and cgi modules. There is apparently something a miss here. Hope you have some suggestions for me.
Thanks
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Merci beaucoup pour ce tutorial
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Thanks for demystifying this process for me!
Installing on Ubuntu Server 10.04 I encountered an issue with regard to the cgi module not being installed, whereby attempts to load the test.php file returned a 403 error.
Once I had loaded the cgi module with ‘lighty-enable-mod’ the errors disappeared.
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THANK YOU!
In trying to get all my different things straightened out in Ubuntu, I have sifted through pages and pages of tutorials. This is the first one that I have seen in all those wasted hours that solves my problem perfectly! I followed these steps exactly and the result was happiness! Thank you so much!!
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Here is an easier way:
sudo apt-get install lighttpd php5-cgi
sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload
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sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php
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Great post! Got me running in minutes!
Two notes
– Some of your examples have directional quotes, and I had to replace them with standard quotes after I copied and pasted.
– I had to restart lightppd after making the changes
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Merci
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