How to Install Nginx with PHP and MySQL (LEMP Stack) on CentOS 7.2

Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on a CentOS7.2 server with php support (through PHP-FPM ) and mysql (MariaDB) support.

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial, I will use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.1.100 . These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

I will use the nano editor in this tutorial to edit configuration files. Nano can be installed like this.

yum -y install nano

I recommend having a firewall installed. If you do not have firewalld installed yet and want to use a firewall, then install it with these commands:

yum -y installfirewalld

start the firewall and enable it to be started at boot time.

systemctl start firewalld.service

systemctl enable firewalld.service

Next, open your SSH port to ensure that you will be able to connect to the server by SSH.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=ssh

firewall-cmd --reload

2 Enabling Additional CentOS Repositories

The latest Nginx is not available from the official CentOS repositories, so we include the repository of the Nginx project to install it:

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo

[nginx]
name=nginx repo
baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/centos/$releasever/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1 3 Installing MySQL (MariaDB)

First, we install MariaDB as MySQL replacement. MariaDB is a free fork of MySQL. Run this command on the shell to install the MariaDB database server:

yum -y install mariadb mariadb-server net-tools

Then we create the system startup links for MariaDB (so that it starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MariaDB server:

systemctl enable mariadb.servicesystemctl start mariadb.service

Now check that networking is enabled. Please note that the MraiDB service is named mysql as it is a compatble database server. Run

netstat -tap | grep mysql

It should show something like this:

[ [emailprotected]

~]# netstat -tap | grep mysql

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:mysql 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 19842/mysqld

Run:

mysql_secure_installation

to set a password for the user root (otherwise, anybody can access your MySQL database!):

[ [emailprotected]

~]# mysql_secure_installation

/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation: line 379: find_mysql_client: command not found

NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MariaDBSERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!

In order to log into MariaDB to secure it, we'll need the current

password for the root user. If you've just installed MariaDB, and

you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,

so you should just press enter here.

Enter current password for root (enter for none):OK, successfully used password, moving on...

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MariaDBroot user without the proper authorisation.

Set root password? [Y/n] <--ENTER

New password: <--yourrootsqlpassword

Re-enter new password: <--yourrootsqlpassword

Password updated successfully!

Reloading privilege tables..

... Success!

By default, a MariaDB installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone

to log into MariaDB without having to have a user account created for

them. This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation

go a bit smoother. You should remove them before moving into a

production environment.

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] <--ENTER

... Success!

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'. Thisensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] <--ENTER

... Success!

By default, MariaDB comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can

access. This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed

before moving into a production environment.

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] <--ENTER

- Dropping test database...

... Success!

- Removing privileges on test database...

... Success!

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so farwill take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] <--ENTER

... Success!

Cleaning up...

All done! If you've completed all of the above steps, your MariaDBinstallation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MariaDB!

[ [emailprotected]

~]#

[[emailprotected]~]#mysql_secure_installation
4 Installing Nginx

Nginx is available as a package from nginx.org which we can install like this:

yum -y install nginx

Then we create the system startup links for nginx and start it:

systemctl enable nginx.servicesystemctl start nginx.service

There are chances that you get an error that port 80 is already in use, the error message will be like this:

[[emailprotected] ~]# service nginx start
Starting nginx: nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)
nginx: [emerg] still could not bind()
[FAILED]
[[emailprotected] ~]#

This means that another web server (probably Apache) is already running on this server. Stop the Apache service and then start the service for NGINX:

systemctl stop httpd.service

yum remove httpd

systemctl disable httpd.service

Then try to start Nginx again.

systemctl start nginx.service

Open the HTTP and HTTPS ports in the firewall

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https

firewall-cmd --reload

The resulting output on the shell will look like this:

[ [emailprotected]

~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http

success

[[emailprotected] ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https

success

[[emailprotected] ~]# firewall-cmd --reload

success

[