Configuring Apache With Php7 Fpm For Mac

Apache and PHP-FPM via Homebrew on macOS. I like to keep my development environment lean, running Apache and PHP-FPM on my MacBook Pro without MAMP or similar. Even tools like Vagrant, while great, for many feel more like an hassle.

Get your Local Web Development Environment Up & Running on macOS Sierra

With Apples’ new macOS Sierra now in public beta, here is how to get the AMP stack up and running on the new macOS. This tutorialwill go through the process on getting Apache, MySQL, PHP (or otherwise known as the ‘AMP’ stack)and phpMyAdmin running on the new mac OS Sierra.

This tutorial sets up the AMP stack in more of a traditional way using the loaded Apache and PHP and downloading MySQL and phpMyAdmin.

Setting Stuff Up

Apache/WebSharing

Web serving is possible via the inbuilt Apache app, it is installed ready to be fired up.

This needs to be done in the Terminal which is found at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal

For those not familiar with the Terminal, it really isn’t as intimidating as you may think, once launched you are faced with a command prompt waiting for your commands – just type/paste in a command and hit enter, some commands give you no response – it just means the command is done, other commands give you feedback.

Using the prefix of sudo is required for commands that have their applications protected in certain folders – when using sudo you will need to confirm with your admin password or iCloud password if set up that way…. lets get to it….

to start Apache web sharing

to stop it

to restart it

To find the Apache version

The Apache version that comes in macOS Sierra is Apache/2.4.23

After starting Apache – test to see if the webserver is working in the browser – http://localhost – you should see the “It Works!” text.

If you don’t get the localhost test, you can try troubleshooting Apache to see if there is anything wrong in its config file by running

This will give you an indication of what might be wrong.

Document Root

Document root is the location where the files are shared from the file system and is similar to the traditional names of ‘public_html‘ and ‘htdocs‘, OSX has historically had 2 web roots one at a system level and one at a user level – you can set both up or just run with one, the user level one allows multiple accounts to have their own web root whilst the system one is global for all users. It seems there is less effort from Apple in continuing with the user level one but it still can be set up with a couple of extra tweaks in configuration files. It is easier to use the user level one as you don’t have to keep on authenticating as an admin user.

System Level Web Root

– the default system document root is still found at –

http://localhost/

The files are shared in the filing system at –

User Level Root

The other web root directory which is missing by default is the ‘~/Sites’ folder in the User account. This takes a bit longer to set up but some users are very accustomed to using it.

You need to make a “Sites” folder at the root level of your account and then it will work. Once you make the Sites folder you will notice that it has a unique icon which is a throwback from a few versions older. Make that folder before you set up the user configuration file described next.

You have to make a few additional tweaks to get the ~/Sites folder back up and running.

Sites Folder

Add a “username.conf” filed under:

If you don’t already have one (very likely), then create one named by the short username of the account with the suffix .conf, its location and permissions/ownership is best tackled by using the Terminal, the text editor ‘nano‘ would be the best tool to deal with this.

Launch Terminal, (Applications/Utilities), and follow the commands below, first one gets you to the right spot, 2nd one cracks open the text editor on the command line (swap ‘username‘ with your account’s shortname, if you don’t know your account shortname type ‘whoami‘ the Terminal prompt):

Then add the content below swapping in your ‘username’ in the code below:

Permissions on the file should be:

If not you need to change…

Open the main httpd.conf and allow some modules:

And make sure these modules are uncommented (the first 2 should already be on a clean install):

Whilst you have this file open also to get php running uncomment. (Mentioned also in the PHP part of the article).

And also uncomment this configuration file also in httpd.conf – which allows user home directories.

Save all your changes (Control + O in nano)

Then open another Apache config file and uncomment another file:

And uncomment:

Save all your changes (Control + O in nano)

Restart Apache for the new file to be read:

Then this user level document root will be viewable at:

http://localhost/~username/

You should only see a directory tree like structure if the folder is empty.

Override .htaccess and allow URL Rewrites

If you are going to use the web serving document root at /Library/WebServer/Documents it is a good idea to allow any .htaccess files used to override the default settings – this can be accomplished by editing the httpd.conf file at line 217 and setting the AllowOverride to All and then restart Apache. This is already taken care of at the Sites level webroot by following the previous step.

Also whilst here allow URL rewrites so your permalinks look clean not ugly.

Uncomment in httpd.conf – should be uncommented on a clean install.

PHP

PHP 5.6.24 is loaded in the build of macOS Sierra and needs to be turned on by uncommenting a line in the httpd.conf file.

Use “control” + “w” to search within nano and search for ‘php’ this will land you on the right line then uncomment the line (remove the #):

Write out and Save using the nano short cut keys at the bottom ‘control o’ and ‘control x’

Reload apache to kick in

To see and test PHP, create a file name it “phpinfo.php” and file it in your document root with the contents below, then view it in a browser.

MySQL

The macOS Sierra Public Beta’s didn’t play well with MySQL 5.7.x, but these issues are now resolved by using MySQL 5.7.16

MySQL doesn’t come pre-loaded with macOS Sierra and needs to be dowloaded from the MySQL site.

The latest version of MySQL 5.7.16 does work with the public release of macOS.

If you already have MySQL 5.7 and you have upgraded OS from El Capitan to Sierra I expect that to be ok, but will be interested if anyone comments on that.

Use the Mac OS X 10.11 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive version (works on macOS Sierra).

If you are upgrading from a previous OSX and have an older MySQL version you do not have to update it. One thing with MySQL upgrades always take a data dump of your database in case things go south and before you upgrade to macOS Sierra make sure your MySQL Server is not running.

When downloading you don’t have to sign up, look for » No thanks, just take me to the downloads! – go straight to the download mirrors and download the software from a mirror which is closest to you.

Once downloaded open the .dmg and run the installer.

When it is finished installing you get a dialog box with a temporary mysql root password – that is a MySQL root password not a macOS admin password, copy and paste it so you can use it. But I have found that the temporary password is pretty much useless so we’ll need to change it straight away.

You are also told:

If you lose this password, please consult the section How to Reset the Root Password in the MySQL reference manual.

Change the MySQL root password

Note that this is not the same as the root or admin password of macOS – this is a unique password for the mysql root user, use one and remember/jot down somewhere what it is.

Stop MySQL

Start it in safe mode:

This will be an ongoing command until the process is finished so open another shell/terminal window, and log in without a password as root:

Change the lowercase ‘MyNewPass’ to what you want – and keep the single quotes.

Start MySQL

Starting MySQL

You can then start the MySQL server from the System Preferences or via the command line.

Command line start MySQL.

To find the MySQL version from the terminal, type at the prompt:

This also puts you in to a shellVintage mac tool box for sale warwick. interactive dialogue with mySQL, type q to exit.

After installation, in order to use mysql commands without typing the full path to the commands you need to add the mysql directory to your shell path, (optional step) this is done in your “.bash_profile” file in your home directory, if you don’t have that file just create it using vi or nano:

The first command brings you to your home directory and opens the .bash_profile file or creates a new one if it doesn’t exist, then add in the line above which adds the mysql binary path to commands that you can run. Exit the file with type “control + x” and when prompted save the change by typing “y”. Last thing to do here is to reload the shell for the above to work straight away.

You will get the version number again, just type “q” to exit.

Fix the 2002 MySQL Socket error

Fix the looming 2002 socket error – which is linking where MySQL places the socket and where macOS thinks it should be, MySQL puts it in /tmp and macOS looks for it in /var/mysql the socket is a type of file that allows mysql client/server communication.

phpMyAdmin

First fix the 2002 socket error if you haven’t done so from the MySQL section-

Download phpMyAdmin, the zip English package will suit a lot of users, then unzip it and move the folder with its contents into the document root level renaming folder to ‘phpmyadmin’.

Make the config folder

Change the permissions

Run the set up in the browser

http://localhost/~username/phpmyadmin/setup/ orhttp://localhost/phpmyadmin/setup/

You need to create a new localhost mysql server connection, click new server.

Switch to the Authentication tab and set the local mysql root user and the password.
Add in the username “root” (maybe already populated, add in the password that you set up earlier for the MySQL root user set up, click on save and you are returned to the previous screen.
(This is not the macOS Admin or root password – it is the MySQL root user).

Make sure you click on save, then a config.inc.php is now in the /config directory of phpmyadmin directory, move this file to the root level of /phpmyadmin and then remove the now empty /config directory.

Now going to http://localhost/~username/phpmyadmin/ will now allow you to interact with your MySQL databases.

To upgrade phpmyadmin just download the latest version and copy the older ‘config.inc.php‘ from the existing directory into the new folder and replace – backup the older one just in case.

Permissions

To run a website with no permission issues it is best to set the web root and its contents to be writeable by all, since it’s a local development it shouldn’t be a security issue.

Lets say that you have a site in the User Sites folder at the following location ~/Sites/testsite you would set it to be writeable like so:

If you are concerned about security then instead of making it world writeable you can set the owner to be Apache _www but when working on files you would have to authenticate more as admin you are “not” the owner, you would do this like so:

This will set the contents recursively to be owned by the Apache user.

If you had the website stored at the System level Document root at say /Library/WebServer/Documents/testsite then it would have to be the latter:

Another easier way to do this if you have a one user workstation is to change the Apache web user from _www to your account.

That’s it! You now have the native AMP stack running on top of macOS Sierra.

Updated by LinodeContributed byLinode

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mod_fcgid is an Apache module that uses the FastCGI protocol to provide an interface between Apache and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs. CGI helps a web server handle dynamic content generation and processing for scripting languages like PHP. This dynamic functionality is commonly used when running content management systems like WordPress on a LAMP stack.

This guide will show you how to install mod_fcgid and PHP-FPM on CentOS 8. It will also provide a basic configuration that uses socket based connections, instead of TCP. These steps will enable you to run PHP through mod_fcgid. Running PHP through mod_fcgid helps to reduce the amount of system resources used by forcing the web server to act as a proxy and only pass files ending with the .php file extension to PHP-FPM. Additionally, using PHP-FPM allows each virtual host to be configured to run PHP code as individual users.

This guide assumes that you are familiar and comfortable with setting up a LAMP stack on CentOS 8. If you are new to Linux server administration, you may be interested in reading our Linux System Administration Basics guide.

Before You Begin

1. Complete the steps in the How to Install a LAMP Stack on CentOS 8 guide. After completing the LAMP stack guide, you should have an Apache virtual hosts configuration for your own website. This guide will continue to refer to the site as example.com.

   Note

   This guide’s examples will use PHP version 7.3. When running commands related to PHP, ensure you replace any version numbers with your own system’s PHP version.

Install mod_fcgid and PHP-FPM

In this section, you will install the mod_fcgid and PHP-FPM modules on your CentOS 8 Linode.

1. Update your system if you have not already done so and install the wget command line utility.

2. Install mod_fcgid and PHP-FPM:

3. Verify that the configuration is correct:

4. Restart the Apache web server:

Configure Apache with PHP-FPM

You will now configure Apache to pass all requests for files with the .php extension, to the PHP wrapper through FastCGI.

1. Configure PHP-FPM to use UNIX sockets instead of TCP. In this command, you will use grep to determine if the sockets are already being used. This command will search your php-fpm installation’s default pool configuration file for the setting.

   You should see the following output:

   If you see the above output, skip to step 6, otherwise continue to the next step to manually configure your UNIX sockets.

2. If no output is returned, you will need to edit your PHP pool configuration file by adding a listen setting with the address on which to accept FastCGI requests. Add the line in the example file.

   /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

3. If the listen = 127.0.0.1:9000 is not already uncommented, do so now:

   /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

4. Restart the php-fpm daemon for these changes to take effect.

5. With the text editor of your choice, update your default Apache configuration file with the following basic settings for mod_fcgid. You may consider changing these settings based on your own needs.

   /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

6. Check for configuration errors.

7. Edit your FastCGI module’s configuration file to add the settings in the example file.

   /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/10-fcgid.conf

8. Check for configuration errors.

9. If you received Syntax OK for steps 6 and 8, restart the Apache service:

10. Check if PHP is working by creating and accessing a page with phpinfo() displayed. Create the info.php file.

11. Open the info.php file with the editor of your choice and add the following line:

    /var/www/html/example.com/public_html/info.php

    Navigate to www.example.com/info.php to view your system’s information.

Configuring PHP Pools

PHP-FPM brings in the concept of pools. With pools, PHP-FPM can create and manage a pool of php processes to run PHP files from a site’s root directory. Each pool that is run by PHP-FPM can be run with separate user and group ID’s. Pools are a great way to provide more security when you are running multiple sites on one server. Running your site’s PHP scripts using dedicated user and group IDs, means that no one user can execute scripts on all sites running on your Linode. In this section you will create a pool for the domain example.com which is owned by the user bob.

1. Create a copy of your original pool file to use as the foundation for your example.com pool configuration.

2. Edit the file to change the socket name, user and group, and socket listen address. Ensure that the listen address is different from the listen address that you set in the main PHP pool configuration file. You can append the name of your site as part of the file name, for example, listen = /var/run/php-fpm/example.com.sock. Also, ensure that you comment out or replace any existing user and group and add your own user and group settings as shown in the example.

   /etc/php-fpm.d/example.com.conf

3. Restart the php7.3-fpm process for the new pool to be created.

4. Edit the virtual host file of example.com to use your new PHP-FPM pool. Depending on your current virtual hosts file what you need to add and edit may differ. The <IfModuel mod_fcgid.c> directive and its contents is what you should add to your file. Ensure you replace any instance of example.com with your own domain name.

   /etc/httpd/sites-available/example.com.conf

5. Check the configuration file for errors.

6. If there were no errors, restart Apache.

7. Use the command line tool, ps, to verify that PHP-FPM is running the example.com pool as the bob user and group. Replace bob with the user that you defined in your pool configuration file.

   Your output should display bob as the user corresponding to the command that started the listed process php-fpm: pool example.com.

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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.