Lighttpd is a “secure, fast, compatible, and very flexible” web server optimized for high-performance environments. It consumes very few resources compared to other web servers and especially fast for running AJAX applications. It is also open source and uses a BSD license and works on UNIX-like systems, such as Linux or BSD.

A server with AlmaLinux as an operating system together with Lighttpd is a guarantee for an efficient and resource-efficient web server.

Install Lighttpd on AlmaLinux / CentOS 8

Installing Lighttpd is very easy to do but there are a few extra configurations to do.

Let’s start by adding the EPEL repository to the system because that is where the lighttpd package is hosted.

sudo dnf install epel-release

Then, you can install the program by running the following command:

sudo dnf install lighttpd

This will install the package immediately.

By default, AlmaLinux does not start the service when a program is installed. Therefore we have to do it.

sudo systemctl start lighttpd

And now make the service start with the system.

sudo systemctl enable lighttpd

Then, you can test the operation of the service with the command

sudo systemctl status lighttpd

Output

● lighttpd.service - Lightning Fast Webserver With Light System Requirements
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/lighttpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-04-14 16:54:29 CEST; 11s ago
 Main PID: 1247 (lighttpd)
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 12142)
   Memory: 1.1M
   CGroup: /system.slice/lighttpd.service
           └─1247 /usr/sbin/lighttpd -D -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Apr 14 16:54:29 osradar systemd[1]: Started Lightning Fast Webserver With Light System Requirements.
Apr 14 16:54:29 osradar lighttpd[1247]: 2021-04-14 16:54:29: (server.c.1404) can't have more connections than fds/2:  1024 1024

Also, you can check the installed version with the command:

lighttpd -v
lighttpd/1.4.55 (ssl) - a light and fast webserver

Install PHP on AlmaLinux / CentOS 8

One way to test the performance of the webserver, you have to install PHP and make it work with Lighttpd

sudo dnf install php php-mysqlnd php-pdo php-gd php-mbstring php-fpm php-fpm lighttpd-fastcgi

Now we need to make it work with Lighttpd by editing some configuration files.

sudo nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

And modify the group and user values to be lighttpd values.

user = lighttpd
group = lighttpd

In this same file, modify the value of listen to this one

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Save the changes and close the file.

Now edit the /etc/php.ini file, which also needs to be modified by one value

sudo nano /etc/php.ini

And edit the cgi.fix_pathinfo value to 1.

cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

Now, make another change to the /etc/lighttpd/modules.conf file and uncomment the following line:

include "conf.d/fastcgi.conf"

Save the changes and close the editor.

Finally, we have to edit another configuration file called fastcgi.conf where we have to add the server that will listen for PHP requests.

sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/fastcgi.conf

And add this to the end of the file

fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>
         ((
                 "host" => "127.0.0.1",
                 "port" => "9000",
                 "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
         ))
 )

Again, save the changes and close the editor.

Then, restart the lighttpd service and start and enable php-fpm.

sudo systemctl restart lighttpd
sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Test Lighttpd and PHP on AlmaLinux / CentOS 8

The best way to know if everything is OK is to create a PHP file and check if it is interpreted.

So, create a PHP file with any valid code such as the phpinfo method in the default root directory.

sudo nano /var/www/lighttpd/info.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the changes and access it from a web browser, for example http://your-domain/info.php or http://ip-server/info.php.

This checks that everything is working properly.

Conclusion

Lighttpd stands out for being very light in the execution of web applications. So it can serve us for many interesting things in our daily work on a server. Today we have learned to install it on a server with Ubuntu 20.04 and we have also added support for PHP.

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