Web Server: Using FastCGIProxy to Reverse Proxy to Native PHP (original) (raw)

This cookbook will show you how to execute local CGI scripts through Resin using FastCGI. We'll use php-fpm as the FastCGI process manager and map *.php to Resin's included FastCGI servlet. Finally, it will provide instruction on setting up WordPress to run in Resin using FastCGI.

For standard CGI, see Application Server: Native PHP With CGIServlet.

Keep in mind that Resin comes with [Quercus], Caucho's 100% Java implementation of PHP5. You may not need native PHP if Quercus works for your application.

Executing PHP with FastCGI

Setup of FastCGI is sightly more complex than basic CGI, since you need to install php-fpm. php-fpm is PHP's FastCGI process manager. It DOES NOT come with PHP by default. It must be enabled as a compile time option using the flag "--enable-fpm". See PHP-FPM Install documentation for more information. (The IUS Community Project has a php-fpm RPM available.)

Startup php-fpm

php-fpm

php-fpm will startup by default listening on the local address on port 9000, which works fine for us.

The example below provides a simple Resin configuration with /var/www as the root (htdocs) directory where PHP content is located.

(This is an "Apache" style configuration, where all documents located in /var/www are web content. You can also configure FastCgi in a single Java web-application by adding resin:FastCgiProxyto WEB-INF/resin-web.xml.)

conf/resin.xml:

Create a simple test php file in /var/www, as follows:

test.php

And then access the URL http://127.0.0.1:8080/test.php and you will see something like this:

Notice "Server API" shows "FPM/FastCGI".

As an interesting exercise, try commenting out resin:FastCgiProxy in resin.xml, and access the page again. It should still work, but the page now show the Quercus PHP info display instead. All *.php is mapped to QuercusServlet by default in app-default.xml. Your resin-web.xml overrides this mapping, but the webapp will fallback to QuercusServlet if not set.

WordPress on Resin with FastCGI and php-fpm

These instructions were tested with Resin 4.0.25 Professional, PHP 5.3.10, and WordPress 3.3.1.

Before starting, create an empty mysql database for your WordPress tables

PHP requires the php-mysql extension

WordPress requires sendmail

Startup php-fpm

php-fpm

Shutdown resin

resinctl stop

Backup the packaged ROOT webapp directory:

cd /var/www/webapps mv ROOT ROOT.bak

Download and extract Wordpress:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip unzip latest.zip

Rename wordpress to ROOT so that it is served as the ROOT webapp (/ context)

mv wordpress ROOT

Create resin-web.xml

cd ROOT mkdir WEB-INF vi WEB-INF/resin-web.xml (copy/paste from the example above)

Configure WordPress

cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php vi wp-config.php (modify DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_HOST)

Startup Resin

resinctl start

Access the URL http://127.0.0.1:8080/wp-admin/install.php :