I finally found a nice tutorial geared at doing just this. I will outline the steps I took as I already had my LAMP stack installed but the full tutorial can be found here.
Note for the new:
In the tutorial, it begins by switching to the root user with:
sudo su
In my case I simply prefixed those commands sudo
instead of switching users, so I will be documenting my steps that way.
Begin
Step one: Install the Apache Worker MPM (Multi-Procesing Modules)
sudo apt-get install apache2-mpm-worker
This replaces the prefork I had installed which is the default when installing Apache.
Step 2: Install PHP5 and necessary modules
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-fastcgi php5-fpm php5
At this point you may get an error installing 'libapache2-mod-fastcgi':
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package libapache2-mod-fastcgi is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source
E: Package 'libapache2-mod-fastcgi' has no installation candidate
This part is not in the above tutorial
To reconcile this, the multiverse
repository must be added to the apt sources.
To do this:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
To which I appended the following lines:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse
precise
in this case refers to my version of Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin".
So now, save those changes and back to terminal:
sudo apt-get update
and again:
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-fastcgi php5-fpm php5
which will (should) now work.
Now enable these Apache modules:
sudo a2enmod actions fastcgi alias
restart apache
sudo service apache2 restart
Step 3: Apache configuration
To make Apache work with PHP-FPM, we need the following configuration:
<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
AddHandler php5-fcgi .php
Action php5-fcgi /php5-fcgi
Alias /php5-fcgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi
FastCgiExternalServer /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5-fcgi -host 127.0.0.1:9000 -pass-header Authorization
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
Require all granted
</Directory>
#directory statement mult be on multiple lines
</IfModule>
Note:
If you're using an older version of Apache (2.3.x or older), leave out the line
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin> Require all granted </Directory>
You can check your installed version with the command
apache2 -version
You can put it in the global Apache configuration (so it's enabled for all vhosts), for example in /etc/apache2/conf.d/php5-fpm.conf
(this file does not exist, so you must create it), or you can place it in each vhost that should use PHP-FPM.
I choose to go the global route, so:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf.d/php5-fpm.conf
paste in the code block above, and save, exit.
This new file will be automatically loaded by Apache's default configuration which loads all files in the /etc/apache2/conf.d/
directory.
restart Apache:
sudo service apache2 restart
Now create the following PHP file in the document root /var/www
:
sudo nano /var/www/info.php
Add:
<?php phpinfo();
save & exit.
Now we call that file in a browser (e.g. http://your-server-ip/info.php
)
Under Server API at the top you should see FPM/FastCGI
.
Success!
For more information like how to change PHP-FPM to use a unix socket instead of the default TCP port or how to configure this for individual virtual hosts instead of all of them, see the source tutorial linked at the top.