Install Apache 2.4 and PHP-FPM with owner specific pools – CentOS 7

Mod Security isn’t ready for NGINX yet, even though the ModSec website says a stable version for NGINX is available it still lacks important features. Because of this I’ve had to stick to Apache, but why not then make use if PHP-FPM. PHP-FPM, if configured accordingly, allows you to setup account specific limits.

To get this done start by install the epel-release repo:

yum install epel-release

Install Apache 2.4 and for good measure, install the devel package as well.

yum install httpd httpd-devel

Next up install php-fpm. Note: Previously you needed to install mod_fastcgi but since Apache 2.4 we use mod_proxy_fcgi

Starting from release 5.3.3 in early 2010, PHP has merged the php-fpm fastCGI process manager into its codebase, and it is now (as of 5.4.1) quite stable.
php-fpm was previously found at http://php-fpm.org/

This means that we can now run secure, fast, and dependable PHP code using only the stock apache httpd and php.net releases; no more messing around with suphp or suexec - or, indeed, mod_php.

Source: https://wiki.apache.org/httpd/PHP-FPM

Install:

yum install php-fpm

Enable Apache and PHP-FPM to start at startup

chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig php-fpm on

Start both services:

service httpd start
service php-fpm start

As of now, you’ve installed both Apache 2.4 and PHP-FPM but Apache doesn’t know how to call PHP-FPM, let’s do that below:

Create two folders inside /etc/httpd/

/etc/httpd/sites-available
/etc/httpd/sites-enabled

Create a file inside /etc/httpd/sites-available named test.com.conf

# File: /etc/httpd/sites-available/test.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName test.com
ServerAlias www.test.com

DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs
ErrorLog /var/www/vhosts/test.com/logs/error_log
CustomLog /var/www/vhosts/test.com/logs/access.log combined

<FilesMatch \.php$>
SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php5-fpm_test.com.sock|fcgi://test.com/"
</FilesMatch>

 <Proxy fcgi://test.com>
   ProxySet connectiontimeout=5 timeout=240
 </Proxy>	

	<Directory "/var/www/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs">
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
		AllowOverride FileInfo All
		# New directive needed in Apache 2.4.3:
		Require all granted
	</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Create the required folders

mkdir /var/www/vhosts/test.com
mkdir /var/www/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs
mkdir /var/www/vhosts/test.com/logs

Create a symlink of this file to /etc/httpd/sites-enabled

ln -s /etc/httpd/sites-available/test.com/conf /etc/httpd/sites-enabled/test.com/conf

Configure Apache to read the conf files from the /etc/httpd/sites-enabled folder. Add the following line at the end of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

Now, navigate to /etc/php-fpm.d and either duplicate the www.conf or create a new file test.com.conf and add the following to it

; Start a new pool named 'www'.
[test.com]


listen = /var/run/php-fpm/php5-fpm_test.com.sock

listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1

user = test.com
group = test.com
listen.mode = 0660

pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 50
pm.start_servers = 5
pm.min_spare_servers = 5
pm.max_spare_servers = 35


php_admin_value[error_log] = /var/www/vhosts/test.com/logs/www-error.log
php_admin_flag[log_errors] = on

php_value[session.save_handler] = files
php_value[session.save_path] = /var/lib/php/session

Now add a user to the system

useradd -d /var/www/vhosts/test.com/ test.com

The user in this case is test.com. Issue the following to change ownership of it’s home directory and give it to the user test.com

chown -R test.com:test.com /var/www/vhosts/test.com

Make sure the folder permissions are set to 0755 and file permissions to 0644. With the setup above, you won’t need to set the permission 777 to files and folders to write to them.

Restart Apache and PHP-FPM

service httpd restart
service php-fpm restart

Throw a file in /var/www/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/ to verify things work

# File test.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

If everything goes fine, you should something like below