Installing and Configuring PHP-FPM on Ubuntu Linux

Become root:

sudo su -

Check the status of the nginx service:

systemctl status nginx

The service should be enabled and running.

Verify that we can load the default NGINX web page using curl:

By Public IP:

curl http://`cat /tmp/public_ip.txt`

By Public DNS:

curl http://`cat /tmp/public_dns.txt`

Install PHP-FPM using apt-get:

apt-get -y install php-fpm

Validate that the php7.2-fpm service is running, using systemctl:

systemctl status php7.2-fpm.service

The service should be enabled and running.

We have two pre-configured PHP pages in /usr/share/nginx/html/. Let's take a look at them:

more /usr/share/nginx/html/*.php

Now, try accessing the PHP files via NGINX:

curl http://`cat /tmp/public_dns.txt`/info.php

curl http://`cat /tmp/public_dns.txt`/hello.php

We can see the contents, but the PHP code is not being executed. Try accessing the PHP files at http://PUBLIC_DNS/info.php and http://PUBLIC_DNS/hello.php with a web browser.

We need to add a configuration block to the /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf file, so that NGINX uses php-fpm to process PHP pages:

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

After the location / block, add the following:

 location ~ \.php$ {
     fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
     fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
     include fastcgi_params;
     include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
 }

Before we reload NGINX, we need to validate the configuration:

nginx -t

Once everything checks out, reload the configuration:

systemctl reload nginx

Make sure NGINX is running:

systemctl status nginx

Now, let's try accessing the PHP files via NGINX:

curl http://`cat /tmp/public_dns.txt`/info.php

curl http://`cat /tmp/public_dns.txt`/hello.php

Now the PHP code is not being executed. You can try accessing the PHP files at http://PUBLIC_DNS/info.php and http://PUBLIC_DNS/hello.php with your web browser.