Month: April 2019

Update, upgrade Debian and install Nginx

#sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
#sudo apt-get install nginx

Configure UFW firewall to allow Nginx services

#sudo apt-get install ufw
#sudo ufw enable
#sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
#sudo ufw allow ssh
#sudo ufw status

You should see allowed services (Nginx, SSH, etc) in the displayed output:

Output
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Nginx HTTP ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Nginx HTTP (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)

Test the Nginx web server on browser http://server_domain_or_IP

Install MySQL , Follow the instructions, choose Y

#sudo apt-get install mysql-server
#sudo mysql_secure_installation

Install PHP for Processing

Since Nginx does not contain native PHP processing like some other web servers, we will need to install fpm, which stands for “fastCGI process manager”. We will tell Nginx to pass PHP requests to this software for processing.  Open /etc/apt/sources.list in your text editor:

#sudo vim/etc/apt/sources.list

Append the contrib and non-free repositories at /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://cloudfront.debian.net/debian jessie main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://cloudfront.debian.net/debian jessie-updates main contrib non-free

#sudo apt-get update
#sudo apt-get install php5-fpm php5-mysql

** Choose additional PHP Extension to install as follows

#apt-get -y install php5-mysqlnd php5-curl php5-gd php5-intl php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-intl php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl

Secure PHP components

#sudo vim /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

Uncomment cgi.fix_pathinfo and change conditions to “0”

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Restart our PHP processor by typing:

#sudo systemctl restart php5-fpm
#/etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart

Configure Nginx to Use the PHP Processor

Open the default Nginx server block configuration file by typing:

#sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Currently, with the comments removed, the Nginx default server block file looks like this:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    root /var/www/html;
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    server_name _;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

We need to make some changes to this file for our site.

• First, we need to add index.php as the first value of our index directive so that files named index.php are served, if available, when a directory is requested.
• We can modify the server_name directive to point to our server’s domain name or public IP address.
• For the actual PHP processing, we just need to uncomment a segment of the file that handles PHP requests. This will be the location ~\.php$ location block, the included fastcgi-php.confsnippet, and the socket associated with php-fpm.
• We will also uncomment the location block dealing with .htaccess files. Nginx doesn’t process these files. If any of these files happen to find their way into the document root, they should not be served to visitors.

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    server_name your_server_ip;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Test your configuration file for syntax errors by typing:

#sudo nginx -t

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

If any errors are reported, go back and recheck your file before continuing.

When ready, reload Nginx to make the necessary changes:

#sudo systemctl reload nginx

Create a PHP File phpinfo() to Test Configuration

#vim /var/www/html/info.php

Open at browser http://server_domain_or_IP/info.php