This article describes steps one can take to install Drupal CMS on Ubuntu Linux with Lighttpd support.
Lighttpd is a secure, fast and flexibly HTTP server with a small memory footprint compared to other webservers. Its event-driven architecture is optimized for a large number of parallel connections (keep-alive) which is important for high performance dynamic applications.
Drupal, a powerful and popular content management systems (CMS) is the right tool to develop and build powerful and dynamic websites based on PHP is flexible and can be run on variety or HTTP servers.
Below is how to run Drupal with Lighttpd support on Ubuntu Linux.
How to install Drupal on Ubuntu Linux with Lighttpd support
As mentioned above, Lighttpd is a secure, fast and flexibly HTTP server with a small memory footprint compared to other webservers.
Below is how to run Drupal and Lighttpd HTTP server on Ubuntu Linux.
Install Lighttpd
sudp apt update
sudo apt install lighttpd
After installing Lighttpd, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable Lighttpd service to always startup when the server boots up.
sudo systemctl stop lighttpd.service sudo systemctl start lighttpd.service sudo systemctl enable lighttpd.service
Install MariaDB
Drupal also requires a database server, and MariaDB database server is a great place to start.
To install it run the commands below.
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client
After installing, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots.
sudo systemctl stop mysql.service sudo systemctl start mysql.service sudo systemctl enable mysql.service
After that, run the commands below to secure MariaDB server.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.
- Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
- Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
- New password: Enter password
- Re-enter new password: Repeat password
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y
Install PHP 7.1 FastCGI and Related Modules
PHP 7.1 isn’t available on Ubuntu default repositories. In order to install it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.
Run the commands below to add the below third-party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.1
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.1
sudo apt update
After that, run the commands below to install PHP7.1-FastCGI and related PHP modules. There are many PHP modules that perform different functions.
However, these ones below maybe needed when developing PHP based websites.
sudo apt install php7.1-cgi php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-cli php7.1-mysql php7.1-gd php7.1-imagick php7.1-xml php7.1-recode php7.1-tidy php7.1-xmlrpc
After installing PHP7.1-FastCGI, you can enable PHP-FastCGI modules by running the commands below
sudo sudo lighttpd-enable-mod fastcgi sudo lighttpd-enable-mod fastcgi-php
If the commands above fail, install the package below.
sudo apt install libterm-readline-gnu-perl
Then run the commands to enable the modules again, this time they should work.
sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload
Create Drupal Database
Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required, continue below to start configuring the servers.
First run the commands below to create a blank Drupal database.
To logon to MariaDB database server, run the commands below.
sudo mysql -u root -p
Then create a database called drupaldb
CREATE DATABASE drupaldb;
Create a database user called drupaluser with new password
CREATE USER 'drupaluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';
Then grant the user full access to the database.
GRANT ALL ON drupaldb.* TO 'drupaluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Finally, save your changes and exit.
FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;
Configure Lighttpd PHP-FastCGI Settings
Next, you may want to configure Lighttpd to use PHP server scripting properly. The default PHP-FastCGI configuration file is located at /etc/php/7.1/cgi/php.ini
Open PHP Lighttpd configuration file by running the commands below
sudo nano /etc/php/7.1/cgi/php.ini
Then edit the file to suit your environments. Some important lines to consider:
file_uploads = On allow_url_fopen = On memory_limit = 256M upload_max_filesize = 100M cgi.fix_pathinfo=0 date.timezone = America/Chicago
Next, open the Lighttpd site configuration file. By default, it’s stored at /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
Then configure the highlighted lines below to enable its rewrite module and create a VirtualHost for our site and save the file. Remember to replace example.com with your own domain name.
server.modules = (
"mod_access",
"mod_alias",
"mod_compress",
"mod_redirect",
"mod_rewrite",
)
$HTTP["host"] =~ "(^|www\.)example.com$" {
server.document-root = "/var/www/html/drupal"
server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/example.com-error.log"
server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"
}
server.document-root = "/var/www/html"
server.upload-dirs = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" )
server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid"
server.username = "www-data"
server.groupname = "www-data"
server.port = 80
index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.lighttpd.html" )
url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" )
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" )
compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/"
compress.filetype = ( "application/javascript", "text/css", "text/html", "text/plain" )
# default listening port for IPv6 falls back to the IPv4 port
## Use ipv6 if available
#include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl " + server.port
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl"
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl"
Next, run the commands below to open FastCGI default configuraiton file for Lighttpd.
sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf
Then confirm that PHP-FastCGI is configured as shown in the highlighted portion below to use PHP 7.1..
# -*- depends: fastcgi -*-
# /usr/share/doc/lighttpd/fastcgi.txt.gz
#
## Start an FastCGI server for php (needs the php7.1-cgi package)
fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>
((
"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi7.1",
"socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php.socket",
"max-procs" => 1,
"bin-environment" => (
"PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "4",
"PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "10000"
),
"bin-copy-environment" => (
"PATH", "SHELL", "USER"
),
"broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
))
)
Download Drupal Package
Next, visit Drupal site and download the latest package. or run the commands below to download and extract Drupal content.
After downloading, run the commands below to extract the downloaded file and move it into a new Drupal root directory.
cd /tmp && cd /tmp && wget tar -zxvf drupal*.gz sudo mv drupal-8.4.2 /var/www/html/drupal
Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Drupal to function properly.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/drupal/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/drupal/
Restart Lighttpd services
sudo systemctl restart lighttpd.service
After that, open your browser and browse to your domain name to launch Drupal configuration wizard.
You should see Drupal setup wizard to complete. Please follow the wizard carefully.
Enter the database confirmation and continue with the setup.
Continue with the wizard until you’ve successfully configured Drupal.
Enjoy!
