This article describes the steps to install Drupal CMS on Ubuntu Linux with Lighttpd support.
Lighttpd is a secure, fast, and flexible HTTP server with a small memory footprint compared to other webservers. In addition, its event-driven architecture is optimized for many parallel connections (keep-alive), which is important for high-performance dynamic applications.
Drupal, a powerful and popular content management system (CMS), is the right tool to develop and build robust and dynamic websites based on PHP is flexible and can be run on various 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 flexible 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 the 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 the MariaDB service always to 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 the MariaDB server.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.
- Enter current password for root (enter for none): 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’s default repositories. So 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. Many PHP modules perform different functions.
However, the ones below may be 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 required packages continue below to start configuring the servers.
First, run the commands below to create a blank Drupal database.
To log on to the 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 a 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 the 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 environment. Some crucial 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, create a VirtualHost for our site, and save the file. Remember to replace example.com with your 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 the FastCGI default configuration 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
# http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Docs:ConfigurationOptions#mod_fastcgi-fastcgi
## 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 the 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 https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.4.2.tar.gz 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 correctly.
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 your domain name to launch the Drupal configuration wizard.
http://example.com
You should see the Drupal setup wizard 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!
