This article covers a version of CentOS that is no longer supported. If you are currently operating a server running CentOS 6, we highly recommend upgrading or migrating to a supported version of CentOS.
Reason: CentOS 6 reached end of life (EOL) on November 30th, 2020 and no longer receives security patches or updates. For this reason, this guide is no longer maintained.
See Instead:
This guide might still be useful as a reference, but may not work on other CentOS releases. If available, we strongly recommend using a guide written for the version of CentOS you are using.
Lighttpd is an open source web server originally written by Jan Kneschke as an alternative to Apache, it has a low memory footprint and numerous websites such as YouTube and Wikimedia run Lighttpd servers. MySQL is a popular database solution for use in web applications (such as WordPress) and is generally combined with a server side scripting language, PHP.
This tutorial will show you the steps required to install Lighttpd, PHP and MySQL on CentOs 6 so that you can get up and running with your VPS.
The steps in this tutorial require the user to have root privileges. You can see how to set that up in the Initial Server Setup Tutorial.
Update your system:
sudo yum update
You will need to install wget, a package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP:
sudo yum install wget
Notice that the command starts with "sudo". This will allow you to run the instructions with root privileges.
To install MySQL, login into your VPS and type:
sudo yum install mysql-server
Create a system start-up link for MySQL to enable the services to run at boot:
sudo chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
This might seem silly, but it is a good idea to verify that the MySQL server is running, otherwise you will come up with a MySQL ERROR 2002 (HY000) when executing the mysql_secure_installation command:
sudo service mysqld status
If the VPS is not running type:
sudo service mysqld start
Create a password for the MySQL user root and perform some initial configurations:
sudo mysql_secure_installation Enter current password for root (enter for none):_
Since a MySQL root password has not been configured we can just press ENTER and continue with the process of setting up MySQL:
Set root password? [Y/n] y New password: SQL.ROOT.PASSWORD.EXAMPLE Re-enter new password: SQL.ROOT.PASSWORD.EXAMPLE Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y
Lighttpd and PHP-FPM are not supported from the official CentOS repositories, let's go ahead and add the Remi RPM and the EPEL repositories to CentOS:
sudo rpm --import https://fedoraproject.org/static/0608B895.txt sudo wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel- sudo rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpmrelease-6-8.noarch.rpm
Then run the following command to install Lighttpd:
sudo yum install lighttpd
Create a system start-up link for Lighttpd to enable the service to run at boot:
sudo chkconfig --levels 235 lighttpd on
Start the service and check that it is running:
sudo service lighttpd start sudo service lighttpd status
Open your browser and type your VPS' IP http://123.456.789.10, you can run the following command to reveal your VPS' IP address:
ifconfig
The Lighttpd welcome page should be displayed:
ERROR 1: Lighttpd fails to start: "socket failed: Address family not supported by protocol" or "please use server.use-ipv6 only for hostnames, not without server.bind..." , open Lighttpd.conf:
sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
And disable IPv6:
## server.use-ipv6 = "disable" ##
ERROR 2: Warning "can't have more connections than fds/2: 1024 1024", open Lighttpd.conf:
sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
Uncomment #server.max-fds = 2048:
## server.max-fds = 2048 ##
Restart Lighttpd:
sudo service lighttpd restart Stopping lighttpd [OK] Starting lighttpd [OK]
Install PHP5 (FPM):
sudo yum install php-fpm lighttpd-fastcgi
Open www.conf:
sudo nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
Add lighttpd to the user and group:
; Unix user/group of processes ; Note: The user is mandatory. If the group is not set, the default user's group ; will be used. user = lighttpd ; RPM: Keep a group allowed to write in log dir. group = lighttpd
Create a system start-up link for PHP-FPM to enable the service to run at boot:
sudo chkconfig --levels 235 php-fpm on
Start the service and check that it is running:
sudo service php-fpm start sudo service php-fpm status
Once the installation is complete, we have to enable PHP5 in Lighttpd. Let's find your php.ini file:
sudo nano /etc/php.ini
And uncomment the required line:
; cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 ;
Open fastcgi.conf:
sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf
And uncomment this line:
## include "conf.d/fastcgi.conf" ##
Open fastcgi.conf
sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf
and add the following lines:
## for the php-num-procs example it means you will get 17*5 = 85 php ## processes. you always should need this high number for your very ## busy sites. And if you have a lot of RAM. :) ## ADD YOUR LINES HERE fastcgi.server += ( ".php" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => "9000", "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable" )) ) ## GOOD JOB #fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
Install MySQL PHP module:
sudo yum install php-mysql
Restart Lighttpd and PHP-FPM:
sudo service php-fpm restart sudo service lighttpd restart
Create info.php:
sudo nano /var/www/lighttpd/info.php
Add the following lines:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
Open your browser and go to your server's IP http://123.456.789.10/info.php .We can see that PHP is working through FPM/FastCGI:
And that the MySQL module is listed, therefore working:
And that is all; congratulations!
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very good , thanks sharing. 非常好,简单,清晰。就是少了 php-mysql 的验证。
great job, straight forward detailed steps made it real easy. I used redhat 6.5. for all those who want to get real good training on linux check out linux academy. It includes 4 virtual linux servers redhat included.
Thanks. I followed this tutorial successfully but I have a problem. I have a site that uses .tpl files(index.php redirects to index.tpl), when I tried to open, it returns 404 - Not Found. I can only load the index page.
Those who get 403 Forbidden on any php file including info.php. Double check your /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf at step 4. Make sure its really this your uncommenting, sometimes copy and paste, you’ll miss something :| like me
include “conf.d/fastcgi.conf”
Hi, thanks for writing this guide, it really helps me in my work.
I just want to ask, I know the step 6 is optional, but is there any effect to the server if I could not get the same output as shown by you? I got a warning message - “403 - forbidden”
Thanks
You are running PHP 5.3.3, but the application needs at least PHP 5.4.0 to run.
Any clue about how to upgrade to PHP 5.4?
After a lil research i answer to myself and any other person in need.
Remi Dependency on CentOS 6 and Red Hat (RHEL) 6
then
and boom!
PHP Version 5.4.33 Build Date Sep 20 2014 16:21:38 Server API FPM/FastCGI
@Federico: Do the credentials work when you try to run the following command (replacing username with the username you’re trying to log in as)? <pre>mysql -u username -p</pre> (it’ll ask you for the password once you press enter).
@sianiosmarinos: It means that it should connect to the FastCGI process that is listening on port 9000.
At step 4 where I install php when I will add the lines in file /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf where it says port 9000 means that the lighttpd will listen to port 9000 and not in 80?
I can’t connect to Mysql using php tools like http://www.adminer.org/. User root and password the set password. What I wrong?