Install Lighttpd With PHP FPM And MariaDB (LLMP) on Debian 9

$ su

$ sudo su -

apt-get -y install  mariadb-server

systemctl start mariadb

systemctl enable mariadb

Latest Lighttpd is available on Debian repository, so, you can install it using the apt-get command.

apt-get -y install lighttpd

Start the Lighttpd service after the installation.

systemctl start lighttpd

Firewall:

Issue the following commands to allow HTTP (80) and HTPPS (443) request through the firewall.

ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw reload

Open a web browser and visit the following URL.

You should get the following page, and this confirms that you have successfully installed Lighttpd on the server.

Auto-start the Lighttpd service at your system start up.

# systemctl enable lighttpd

Install PHP5-FPM:

Now, we will install PHP through PHP-FPM (PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager). PHP-FPM is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation, and it has some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites.

apt-get -y install php-fpm php-mysql

Edit php.ini file.

nano /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini

set cgi.fix_pathinfo to 1.

cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

PHP-FPM listens on the UNIX socket /var/run/php7-fpm.sock by default. Edit the file “/etc/php/7.0/fpm/pool.d/www.conf” to make PHP-FPM listens on TCP socket.

nano /etc/php/7.0/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Change the listen parameter.

FROM:

listen = /run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock

TO:

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Restart PHP-FPM service.

systemctl restart php7.0-fpm

Edit 15-fastcg-php.conf file.

nano /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf

Look for the below entries and change it.

FROM:

"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
"socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php.socket",

TO:

"host" => "127.0.0.1",
"port" => "9000",

Enable FastCGI and FastCGI-PHP modules.

lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php

Restart Lighttpd service.

systemctl restart lighttpd

PHP-FPM Support on Virtual Host:

Let’s create a name based virtual host on Lighttpd server for the following details.

Server Name : server.itzgeek.local
Document Root : /var/www/html/server.itzgeek.local

Create a configuration file called itzgeek.conf  in /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/.

nano /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/itzgeek.conf

Add the following content.

$HTTP["host"] == "server.itzgeek.local" {   ### Domain URL
server.document-root = "/var/www/html/server.itzgeek.local"   ### Document root
}

Enable the virtual host.

ln -s /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/itzgeek.conf /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled/

Testing PHP-FPM support on Virtual host:

Create the document root directory and log directory.

mkdir /var/www/html/server.itzgeek.local

For testing the PHP-FPM, place a .php file on to the document root of the created virtual host.

nano /var/www/html/server.itzgeek.local/index.php

VI editor will open up a file called index.php. Copy/Paste this line into the index.php file:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Set permission.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

Restart the services.

systemctl restart lighttpd
systemctl restart php7.0-fpm

Now open a web browser and type your domain in the web address.

In my case it is,

the page will look like below:

From the above screen shot, PHP is working, and it’s working through FPM/FastCGI, as shown in the Server API line.

Scroll further down to see modules that are already enabled in PHP, including MySQL information.

That’s all!