Installing Nginx on Ubuntu Linux

This tutorial will show you all the steps required to install Nginx on Ubuntu Linux.

This tutorial was tested on Ubuntu 18.04.

Table of Contents

  1. Install Nginx on Ubuntu Linux
  2. Install MySQL on Ubuntu Linux
  3. Add PHP support to Nginx

1. Install Nginx on Ubuntu Linux

Use the Ubuntu APT command to install the Nginx server.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install nginx

Restart the Nginx web server manually.

# service nginx restart
# service nginx status

Verify the Nginx service status.

● nginx.service – A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2018-12-29 04:29:22 UTC; 1h 17min ago
Docs: man:nginx(8)
Process: 2233 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status
Process: 2221 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exite
Main PID: 2238 (nginx)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 1152)
CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
├─2238 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
└─2239 nginx: worker process

Open your browser and enter the IP address your web server.

In our example, the following URL was entered in the Browser:

• http://200.200.200.200

The Nginx Welcome page will be presented.

Nginx welcome page

The Nginx web server was installed successfully.

2. Install MySQL on Ubuntu Linux

Almost every website requires a database system to store all its configuration.

Use the Ubuntu APT command to install the MySQL server.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Use the following command to access the MySQL service console.

# mysql -u root -p

3. Add PHP support to Nginx

Nginx needs an external program to add PHP support.

Use the Ubuntu APT command to install the PHP required packages.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install php7.2-fpm

Optional. Use the following command to install the Apache most used PHP modules.

# apt-get install php7.2-xml php7.2-curl php7.2-gd php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql
# apt-get install php7.2-bz2 php7.2-zip php7.2-json php7.2-readline

Find the location of the PHP configuration file on your system.

Edit the php.ini configuration file.

# updatedb
# locate php.ini
# vi /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

Your PHP version may not be the same as ours.

Your PHP configuration file location may not be the same as ours.

Here is the file with our configuration.

file_uploads = On
max_execution_time = 300
memory_limit = 256M
post_max_size = 32M
max_input_time = 60
max_input_vars = 4440

Edit the Nginx default website configuration file.

# vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Here is the original file, before our configuration.

server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /var/www/html;
index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
server_name _;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
}

Here is the new file with our configuration.

server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /var/www/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name _;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
}
}

Verify if your Nginx configuration file has no error.

# nginx -t

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Restart the PHP service.
Restart the Nginx service.

# service php7.2-fpm restart
# service nginx restart

To test our configuration, let’s create a basic PHP test page.

# vi /var/www/html/test.php

Here is the content of the test.php file.

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Open your browser and enter the IP address your web server plus /test.php.

In our example, the following URL was entered in the Browser:

• http://200.200.200.200/test.php

The PHP information page should be presented.

PHPInfo Nginx