How to Install Nginx, PHP 7 & MySQL on Ubuntu 16.04, 14.04

The latest major release of PHP version 7.2 has been released with the number of speed optimizations and security. So you should try this version for your development. This tutorial will help you to install Nginx, PHP 7.2 & MySQL 5.7 on Ubuntu 17.10, 16.04, and 14.04 LTS release.

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Step 1 – Nginx Installation

First of all, we will install Latest Nginx web server on our system. Use the following commands to add PPA for installing latest Nginx version on your Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty).

echo "deb http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ `lsb_release -cs` nginx" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu/ `lsb_release -cs` nginx"  >> /etc/apt/sources.list

and use the following commands to install Nginx web server.

curl http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx

Step 2 – PHP & PHP-FPM Installation

Install python-software-properties package on your system which provides add-apt-repository command then use the following set of commands to add PPA for PHP with PHP-FPM packages on your Ubuntu system and install it.

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y php7.2 php7.2-fpm

Also install the required php modules for you application.

sudo apt-get install php7.2-mysql php7.2-curl php7.2-json

Step 3 – MySQL Installation

Download the MySQL apt configuration Debian package officially provided by MySQL team and install it on your system. For Ubuntu 16.04 and later version’s MySQL 5.7 is available under default apt repositories, so you don’t need to enable additional repository that.

wget http://repo.mysql.com/mysql-apt-config_0.8.9-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i mysql-apt-config_0.8.9-1_all.deb

Use the following commands to install MySQL server on your Ubuntu 16.04 and 14.04 systems. Currently, this is the most popular version used by the among users.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.7

You can find more MySQL installation instructions here.

Step 4 – PHP-FPM Configuration

PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features.

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

un-comment cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 line and set value to 0.

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Now set the listen parameter in /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf configuration file. Here you can use php7.2-fpm socket to work or start php7.2-fpm service on specific port. We are going to use it as service .

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Now make changes in the configuration file as below. Commend listen to socket file and enable it as service

#listen = /run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock
listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Step 5 – Nginx VirtualHost Configuration

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

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.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 VirtualHosts configured.

Step 6 – Restart All Services

After installing and configuring all the services on your system, restart all required services to reload any changes made.

sudo service nginx restart
sudo service php7.2-fpm restart

Step 7 – Allow Firewall Access

If you are using iptables, Use following commands to open port 80 for public access of web server.

Iptables Users:

sudo iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

UFW Users:

$ sudo ufw allow 80/tcp

Step 8 – Test Setup

Finally, test the installation of PHP 7 with NGINX. Let’s create a file info.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.