How to Install PHP 7, NGINX & MySQL 5.6 on CentOS/RHEL 7.4 & 6.9

Few days back PHP version 7.2 has been released. Which has a number of changes and improvements over PHP version 7.X. This article will help you to install PHP 7, NGINX and MySQL 5.6 on CentOS / RHEL 7.4 & 6.9 operating systems. This tutorial has been tested with CentOS 7.4, so all the services command are used with systemctl, For CentOS 6 users change all systemctl command correspondence service command.

Step 1 – Setup Yum Repository

In the first step install all the required yum repositories in your system used in the remaining tutorial for various installations. You are adding REMI, EPEL, Webtatic & MySQL community server repositories in your system.

CentOS / RHEL 7

yum install epel-release
rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://repo.mysql.com/mysql-community-release-el7-5.noarch.rpm

CentOS / RHEL 6

yum install epel-release
rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://repo.mysql.com/mysql-community-release-el6-5.noarch.rpm

Step 2 – Install PHP 7

Now install PHP 7 packages from remi-php72 rpm repository using the following command.

yum --enablerepo=remi-php72 install php

Now install required php modules. Use following command to list available modules in yum repositories.

yum --enablerepo=remi-php72 search php

Now check all listed modules in above command and install required modules like below.

yum --enablerepo=remi-php72 install php-mysql php-xml \
php-soap php-xmlrpc php-mbstring php-json php-gd php-mcrypt

Step 3 – Install NGINX

NGINX is the popular web server used on Linux systems. Let’s install Nginx web server using the following command on your system.

yum install nginx

Now start nginx service and enable to start on boot using below commands.

systemctl enable nginx.service
systemctl start nginx.service

Step 4 – Install MySQL 5.6

In step 1 we already have installed required yum repository in your system. Lets use following command to install MySQL server on your system.

yum install mysql-server

You need to execute mysql_secure_installation once after installation of MySQL server using following command. First it will prompt to set a password for root account, after that ask few questions, I suggest to say yes ( y ) for all.

systemctl start mysqld.service
mysql_secure_installation

Now restart MySQL service and enable to start on system boot.

systemctl restart mysqld.service
systemctl enable mysqld.service

Step 5 – Setup PHP-FPM

Now use following command to install php7 fpm package using following command.

yum --enablerepo=remi-php72 install php-fpm

Step 6 – Create Nginx VirtualHost

Finally do the configuration of Nginx VirtualHost. For this example we are editing default configuration file.

sudo vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.conf

and make changes as below.

server {
        listen   80;

        root /var/www;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;
        server_name  example.com www.example.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
        }

        error_page 404 /404.html;
        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
              root /usr/share/nginx/www;
        }

        location ~ .php$ {
                try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }
}

You have to do the same changes in all Virtual Hosts configured.

Step 7 – Restart Services

After installing all services on your system, start all required services.

systemctl restart nginx.service
systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Step 8. Open Port in Firewall

Finally open firewall ports for HTTP (80) and https (443) services using the following command.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
firewall-cmd --reload

Step 9. Verify Setup

Let’s check the installed versions of packages on system using following commands one by one.

# php -v

PHP 7.2.0 (cli) (built: Nov 28 2017 20:22:21) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies

# nginx -v

nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Finally, verify installation of PHP 7 with NGINX. Let’s create a file index.php on website document root using following content.

Now browse this file in web browser. It will so all the details about versions and installation.

You have successfully configured LEMP Stack setup on your CentOS / RHEL 7.4 & 6.9 system.