How to Install LEMP (Nginx, MariaDB, PHP) on Centos 7

Verified and Tested 04/02/2021

Introduction

In this How-To, we will walk you through the LEMP install on your CentOS 7 Server. LEMP is a software bundle that is made up of four parts (Linux, Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP). This how-to will be using CentOS 7 which was released on July 7th, 2014.

NGINX Car by Walker Cahall

Installing EPEL and Remi in CentOS 7 for LEMP

In this how to we are going to install the Fedora epel release to quickly install Nginx and Remi for PHP using the following command:

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

Installing and Configuring NGINX in CentOS 7 for LEMP

Install NGINX with the following command:

sudo yum install nginx

Start the NGINX service with the following command:

sudo systemctl start nginx

Configure NGINX to start when the system is rebooted:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

You will now have NGINX installed on your server. This can be verified by typing in the following with your IP ADDRESS on your browser. Also, all configuration files are provided on the page.

We can now verify Apache is working by opening your browser and entering the URL http://your-server's-address. you should get a blue Nginx test page similar to the image below.

Note: If you do not know your IP address, run the following command:

sudo ip addr show eth0

An example of running the command: ip addr show eth0 and getting 192.168.100.10 for the IP address.In our example we would put http://192.168.100.10 into our browser’s address bar.

Sample Nginx Default Webpage

Installing and Configuring MariaDB on CentOS 7 for LEMP

Install MariaDB with the following command to begin the install:

sudo yum install mariadb-server

Start the service with the following command:

sudo systemctl start mariadb

Set root MySQL password with the following command:

sudo /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Note: You will be prompted with a series of questions. Just type Y for yes on all of them, see the screenshot below:

Sample my_secure_installation output.

Configure MariaDB to start when the system is rebooted:

sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Installing and Configuring php-fpm on CentOS 7 for LEMP

Install php-fpm with the following command:

sudo yum --enablerepo=remi-php74 install php-fpm php-mysql

Start the php-fpm service with the following command:

sudo systemctl start php-fpm

Make sure php-fpm starts on boot with the following command:

sudo systemctl enable php-fpm

Using your favourite editor, edit the file /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf  and change user and group from apache to nginx. It should look similar to the block below.

; Unix user/group of processes
; Note: The user is mandatory. If the group is not set, the default user's group
;       will be used.
; RPM: apache Choosed to be able to access some dir as httpd
user = nginx
; RPM: Keep a group allowed to write in log dir.
group = nginx

Now we need to make some changes to the Nginx configuration file so that php-fpm works correctly with Nginx. Using your favorite editor, edit the file /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf and carry out the following changes or copy the following block below into your conf file.

1) Add the index.php to the index location

2) Change the root location to /usr/share/nginx/html

3) Uncomment the Pass PHP scripts to FastCGI section.

4) Change the fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  to use /usr/share/nginx/html$fastcgi_script_name

#
# The default server
#
server {
    listen       80 default_server;
    server_name  _;

    #charset koi8-r;

    #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

    # Load configuration files for the default server block.
    include /etc/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

    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;
    }

    # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
    #
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

    # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
    #
    #location ~ \.php$ {
    #    proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1;
    #}

    # 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  /usr/share/nginx/html$fastcgi_script_name;
        include        fastcgi_params;
    }

    # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
    # concurs with nginx's one
    #
    #location ~ /\.ht {
    #    deny  all;
    #}
}

Create a test PHP file in the following directory with the following command:

sudo vi /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php

Insert the following code in the space then save and exit:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Restart apache so all the changes take effect:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Test your page in your browser with the following hyperlink changed with yourIP address:
http://YOUR.IP.ADD.RESS/info.php

You should remove the info.php file as it could be used against you by an attacker. Delete it with the following command:

sudo rm /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php

Congratulations! You have just installed LEMP on your CentOS 7 Server. Thank you for following along in this How-To! Check back with us for any new updates and browse our scalable VPS hosting solutions for any sized business.