Compiling Nginx And PHP (with Php-fpm) – Part 1

I have been using nginx as a caching proxy for quite some time now, and have been very happy with the performance. I find it much easier to administer and performant. Now I’m also adding Nginx as the backend server. Here is how I manager to compile the latest version Nginx, php-fpm and a few modules.

Compiling Nginx

Download latest stable version of Nginx from http://nginx.org/en/download.html

	wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.6.1.tar.gz
 

Extract the source and make a folder called modules inside it

	tar -xzf nginx-1.6.1.tar.gz
	cd nginx-1.6.1
	mkdir modules
 

Download extra modules you want and store it into the newly created modules dir.

• ngx_cache_purge: I use this module to clear a single page from the caching proxy.   Get it from https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_cache_purge.
• nginx-ey-balancer:  Allows to load balance requests across multiple servers and limit the number of concurrent connections sent to the backend. Since version 1.2 of Nginx you need to use this forked version https://github.com/msva/nginx-ey-balancer.git if you plan on using a previous version you can get it from https://github.com/ry/nginx-ey-balancer. Either versions require a patch to be applied

	cd modules
	
	# get the cache purge module
	git clone https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_cache_purge.git
	
	# the the load balancer module
	git clone https://github.com/msva/nginx-ey-balancer.git
        cd ../	

	# edit first line of load balancer module's Makefile to point to your build dir
	vim modules/nginx-ey-balancer/Makefile
	
	# apply a patch from load balancer module
	patch -p0 < modules/nginx-ey-balancer/patches/nginx-0.8.32.patch
 

Next I like to create a script called configure.sh which can be reused to recompile with updates later on

#!/bin/bash
########
# Nginx Configure Script
########
./configure \
--sbin-path=/usr/sbin \
--conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \
--pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid \
--lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock \
--http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \
--http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body \
--http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy \
--http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi \
--with-debug \
--with-http_stub_status_module \
--with-http_flv_module \
--with-http_ssl_module \
--with-http_dav_module \
--with-http_gzip_static_module \
--with-http_realip_module \
--with-mail \
--with-mail_ssl_module \
--with-ipv6 \
--add-module=./modules/nginx-ey-balancer \
--add-module=./modules/ngx_cache_purge
 

Before compiling we make sure we have the needed dependencies.

	sudo apt-get install build-essential \
		libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libssl0.9.8 libssl-dev
 

We are now ready to configure and compile.

	chmod +x ./configure.sh
	./configure.sh

	make
	sudo make install

	# make some required directories 
	sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/nginx/body
	sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/nginx/proxy
	sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/nginx/fastcgi
	sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/nginx/uwsgi
	sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/nginx/sc

Nginx is now installed you can test by issuing the following command

	/usr/sbin/nginx -v 
	# Outputs: nginx version: nginx/1.6.1

Lastly we create an init.d script as /etc/init.d/nginx

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          nginx
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description:       starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
        . /etc/default/nginx
fi

set -e

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

test_nginx_config() {
  if nginx -t $DAEMON_OPTS
  then
    return 0
  else
    return $?
  fi
}

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
        test_nginx_config
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS || true
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON || true
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
                /var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON || true
        sleep 1
        test_nginx_config
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
                /var/run/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS || true
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  reload)
        echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
        test_nginx_config
        start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile /var/run/$NAME.pid \
            --exec $DAEMON || true
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  configtest)
        echo -n "Testing $DESC configuration: "
        if test_nginx_config
        then
          echo "$NAME."
        else
          exit $?
        fi
        ;;
  status)
        status_of_proc -p /var/run/$NAME.pid "$DAEMON" nginx && exit 0 || exit $?
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $NAME {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload|status|configtest}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

We can now test it and register it so it’s called at the right moments to start at startup.

	# make sure it's executable
	sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
       
	# start nginx
        sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

	# check that it's running and listenning
        sudo netstat -tlnp |grep nginx

	# register starup script
	sudo update-rc.d nginx defaults

That’s it we now have a working nginx server. Now adding php-fpm into the mix.