can't interpret PHP on RHEL + nginx

Question

I'm doing the following steps and can't seem to have the PHP interpreted. I've done many variants of this, searched the web extensively and shown it to a friend: we don't understand what we do wrong. Could you help?

Launch RHEL 7.3 Amazon free tier instance

Connect in SSH with mac Terminal app

sudo yum install wget
wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -Uvh epel-release-latest-7*.rpm
sudo yum install nginx
sudo service nginx restart

open port 80 in rehl instance inbound rules
check http://[my_instance_name].eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com/, it displays the welcome to nginx on Fedora page
install php and configure nginx

sudo yum install php-fpm
sudo yum install nano
sudo nano /etc/php.ini, and in the file, set cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, and set the worker processes to 4 (value was: auto)
sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf and have the following conf:

    server {
        listen       80;
        server_name localhost;


        location / {
            root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
            index index.php  index.html index.htm;
        }

        error_page  404              /404.html;
        location = /404.html {
            root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
        }

        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
        }

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        location ~ \.php$ {
            root           /usr/share/nginx/html;
            fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
            fastcgi_index  index.php;
            fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME   $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            include        fastcgi_params;
        }
    }

configure php

sudo nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and confirm user and group are php-fpm
sudo service php-fpm restart
sudo nano /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php containing phpinfo(); (with the php tags, stackoverflow seems to hide it)
sudo service nginx restart
sudo chkconfig --levels 235 nginx on
sudo chkconfig --levels 235 php-fpm on

browse to http://[my_instance_name].eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com/info.php : it downloads the php file instead of interpreting it
change step /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and say that user and group are nginx, restart nginx, php file still downloaded instead of interpreted
change step /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf and say server_name = [IP of my instance], restart nginx, php file still downloaded instead of interpreted

What am I missing?

Hi there, also tried with server_name = my AWS IP, no more luck. Was that what you're pointing to? — Night
Stack Overflow is a site for programming and development questions. This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about programming or development. See What topics can I ask about here in the Help Center. Perhaps Super User or Unix & Linux Stack Exchange would be a better place to ask. Also see Where do I post questions about Dev Ops? — jww

Yedidia Yedidia · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-08T21:48:03

First of all check logs at /var/log/nginx and /var/log/php-fpm

Second, Check using netstat -lnp that php-fpm do listen on port 9000

Third, This is the nginx configuration that works for me:

location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
                fastcgi_split_path_info  ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
                try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                fastcgi_param   PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
                include fastcgi_params;
    }

can't interpret PHP on RHEL + nginx

2 Answers