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.

Combining Ubuntu 20.04 with Lighttpd is a safe bet if you want a fast, efficient and secure web server. Go for it.

Install Lighttpd on Ubuntu 20.04

As Lighttpd is a very popular alternative to web servers on Unix family operating systems, it is available through the Ubuntu 20.04 main repositories

Therefore, to install Lighttpd on Ubuntu 20.04, just open a new terminal and run it:

:~$ sudo apt install lighttpd
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
gamin libgamin0 spawn-fcgi
Suggested packages:
rrdtool php-cgi apache2-utils lighttpd-doc lighttpd-mod-authn-gssapi lighttpd-mod-authn-pam lighttpd-mod-authn-sasl lighttpd-mod-cml lighttpd-mod-geoip
lighttpd-mod-magnet lighttpd-mod-maxminddb lighttpd-mod-trigger-b4-dl lighttpd-mod-vhostdb-dbi lighttpd-mod-vhostdb-pgsql lighttpd-mod-webdav lighttpd-modules-ldap
lighttpd-modules-mysql
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gamin libgamin0 lighttpd spawn-fcgi
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 398 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1538 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

This way it will be installed and ready to use on our server.

On the other hand, Lighttpd is managed as a system service and therefore you can start it with this command:

:~$ sudo systemctl start lighttpd

Or stop it:

:~$ sudo systemctl stop lighttpd

Or know the status of the service:

:~$ sudo systemctl status lighttpd

Then open a web browser and go to http://localhost if you installed locally or http://server-ip if you installed remotely.

If everything went well, you will see the following screen.

However, PHP has to be installed so that dynamic websites can be interpreted.

Adding PHP support to Lighttpd on Ubuntu 20.04

The next step is to install PHP which is one of the most popular web programming languages available. With this we guarantee that a good part of the applications created with this language can be used in our server.

So, you can install PHP with the following command:

:~$ sudo apt install php7.4 php7.4-fpm php7.4-mysql php7.4-cli php7.4-curl php7.4-xml
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
php-common php7.4-common php7.4-json php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline
Suggested packages:
php-pear
The following NEW packages will be installed:
php-common php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-common php7.4-curl php7.4-fpm php7.4-json php7.4-mysql php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline php7.4-xml
0 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 4334 kB of archives.
After this operation, 19.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Now some changes have to be made so that Lighttpd can work with PHP and interpret the websites.

First, open the Lighttpd configuration file which is /etc/php/7.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

:~$ sudo nano /etc/php/7.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

And change the list value to this:

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

If you want you can simply comment on the line and add this one.

Save the changes and close the file.

Then you have to make other changes in another configuration file. So, open the file /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf

:~$ sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf

And change the following lines:

"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
"socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php.socket",

To:

"host" => "127.0.0.1",
"port" => "9000",

Then save the changes and close the file.

Then execute the following commands to enable the modules that will make Lighttpd work with PHP.

:~$ sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
Enabling fastcgi: ok
Run "service lighttpd force-reload" to enable changes

:~$ sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php
Enabling fastcgi-php: ok
Run "service lighttpd force-reload" to enable changes

Finally restart Lighttpd and php-fpm services

:~$ sudo systemctl restart lighttpd php7.4-fpm

To test if everything we have done works, just write a PHP file in the Lighttpd root directory and open it with the browser.

So, create the file and add the following content:

:~$ sudo nano /var/www/html/test.php
<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Again, save the changes and close the file.

Also, you should change the permissions of the directory and make Lighttpd the owner of it:

:~$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/
:~$ sudo chown -R 755 /var/www/html/

And now yes, open your browser and open the file http://your-server/test.php and you will see the following:

So, that is it. Enjoy Lighttpd.

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.

Please share this post and join our Telegram channel.

The post How to install Lighttpd on Ubuntu 20.04? appeared first on Linux Windows and android Tutorials.

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.

Generally, Lighttpd is used in servers where maximum performance is needed even at the sacrifice of some features. Despite this, Lighttpd is always a good alternative to the popular Apache and Nginx.

Install Lighttpd on FreeBSD 12

For this tutorial, you need to have sudo enabled. For this, I recommend you to read our post about it:

How to enable sudo on FreeBSD 12?

Before starting with the tutorial, it is recommended to update the system completely, to do it, open a terminal emulator or connect to your server using SSH and write:

:~$ sudo pkg update

Now we can really get started with the tutorial.

1.- Install Lighttpd

Lighttpd is available from the official FreeBSD repositories. Therefore, the installation will not result in problems. So to install it, use the following command:

:~$ sudo pkg install lighttpd
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.txz: 100%    944 B   0.9kB/s    00:01    
Fetching packagesite.txz: 100%    6 MiB  53.0kB/s    02:02    
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD repository update completed. 31558 packages processed.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 4 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
lighttpd: 1.4.54
lua52: 5.2.4
libedit: 3.1.20191211,1
pcre: 8.43_2

Number of packages to be installed: 4

The process will require 10 MiB more space.
2 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]:

After entering the password, the download will start.

For now, we won’t start the Lighttpd service because there are some settings we have to make first.

2.- Install PHP on FreeBSD 12

Of course, if we install only Lighttpd we won’t be able to run any web application made with PHP. This brings a consequence that the functionality would decay. So let’s install it:

:~$ sudo pkg install php74 mod_php74 php74-mbstring php74-zlib php74-curl php74-gd php74-json

I took the opportunity to install some extra modules.

Now we have to make some modifications to PHP so that it can work without problems with Lighttpd.

First open the file /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and make these changes.

Find the line:

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

And exchange it for this one:

listen = /var/run/php-fpm.sock

Then, locate the following lines and decomment them:

;listen.owner = www
;listen.group = www
;listen.mode = 0660

Looking like this in the picture:

So, save the changes and close the file.

Now it is necessary to create a new php.ini file. During the installation, two example files are created that we have to use depending on the function of our computer. These files are php.ini-production and php.ini-development.

So we have to choose one, in my case, I will assume that FreeBSD 12 is for production, so that will be my choice.

Note: it is likely that if you choose the other one this tutorial will work as well.

So, we copy the example file as php.ini:

:~$ sudo cp /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini

And we edited the file in question:

:~$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/php.ini

And locate the line:

;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

And exchange it for this one:

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Again, save the changes and close the file.

Now we can start and enable the PHP-fpm service.

:~$ sudo sysrc php_fpm_enable=yes
php_fpm_enable: -> yes
:~$ sudo service php-fpm start
Performing sanity check on php-fpm configuration:
[20-Feb-2020 14:50:21] NOTICE: configuration file /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.conf test is successful
Starting php_fpm.

3.- Configuring Lighttpd on FreeBSD 12

In this section of the tutorial, we have to make some configurations to Lighttpd so that it can work with PHP.

So, open the file /usr/local/etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

:~$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/lighttpd/modules.conf

And uncomment the line:

include "conf.d/fastcgi.conf"

What this does is to include the fastcgi module which is the one we will use for Lighttpd to process PHP.

At the end of that same file, add the following:

fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>
        ((
                "socket" => "/var/run/php-fpm.sock",
                "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable"
        ))
)

Save the changes and close the editor.

Before starting the service, edit the main Lighttpd configuration file and uncomment the line:

:~$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

server.bind = "localhost"

So, you can save the changes and close the file.

If your server uses IPv6, you have to locate this line as well and leave it as it is:

server.use-ipv6 = "enable"

And at the end of the file comment on this line:

$SERVER["socket"] == "0.0.0.0:80" { }

Remember, this is only if your server uses IPv6, if not omit this.

Now, enable and start the Lighttpd service:

:~$ sudo sysrc lighttpd_enable=yes
lighttpd_enable: -> yes

:~$ sudo service lighttpd start

So, we are going to test it.

4.- Testing Lighttpd and PHP on FreeBSD 12

Now we’re going to try everything we’ve done. The best way is to create a PHP file for the server to run.

First, create the folder where Lighttpd will look for the web files. In other words, the root directory.

:~$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/www/data

And now create a PHP file called test.php and add the following:

:~$ sudo nano /usr/local/www/data/test.php
<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the changes and close the file.

Now open your favorite web browser and go to http://server-ip/test.php and you will see the following:

So, that is it. If you want to use a database management program in FreeBSD 12, you can check these posts:

How to install PostgreSQL on FreeBSD 12?

How to install SQLite on FreeBSD 12?

So, enjoy it.

Conclusion

Lighttpd is less popular than Apache and Nginx, that’s for sure, but it’s quite useful on small servers or when we want maximum performance in a web application. Today thanks to this post, you have learned how to install it on FreeBSD 12.

Please share this post and join our Telegram channel.

The post How to install lighttpd on FreeBSD 12? appeared first on Linux Windows and android Tutorials.

Why create a Virtualhost on Lighttpd?

One of the great advantages of creating a Virtualhost is that we can have in a single server, different sites or web applications.

Then, using our computer we will be able to access several applications with even different names. This is especially useful in servers that have to serve many web applications in a single computer. It is also useful if you are a web developer and need to deploy several applications locally for testing.

So let’s do it.

Install Lighttpd on Debian

The first step is to install and configure Lighttpd on Debian 10.

How to install Lighttpd on Debian 10?

Once you have completed the installation we can continue.

Creating virtual hosts on Lighttpd (I)

The first thing we must do is create a folder for each Virtualhost we want to create. This is basic to have every website or web application apart.

Also, we must take into account that it is recommended that the name of the folder is the same as the name of the virtual host. In my case, I have chosen “www.test.osradar.lan” and “www.test2.osradar.lan“. You can choose whatever you want.

:~$ sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/www.test.osradar.lan
:~$ sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/www.test2.osradar.lan

Then, for all applications and websites to run properly, you need to change the permissions to the virtual host folders.

:~$ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/www.test.osradar.lan
:~$ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/www.test2.osradar.lan

Also, you have to change the owner of the folders. In the case of Debian, ownership must be given to the user and group www-data.

:~$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/www.test.osradar.lan
:~$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/www.test2.osradar.lan

To demonstrate the proper functioning of the virtual hosts, create an index.html file in each folder and add the following for the first host:

:~$ sudo nano /var/www/html/www.test.osradar.lan/index.html

<html>
<body>
welcome to www.test.osradar.lan
</body>
</html>

And

:~$ sudo nano /var/www/html/www.test2.osradar.lan/index.html

<html>
<body>
welcome to www.test2.osradar.lan 
</body>
</html>

For the second one.

So, save the changes and close the file.

Creating virtual hosts on Lighttpd (II)

The folders and files are ready, now we have to make some changes for Lighttpd to interpret them.

It’s a good idea to create a folder called vhosts.d in /etc/lighttpd/ and place all the virtual host configuration files there. As with the folders, it’s a good idea to have one file for each virtual host.

:~$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/

However, for all these changes to be made, the Lighttpd configuration file must be modified. So let’s do it.

:~$ sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

And at the end of the file add the following:

include_shell "cat /etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/*.conf"

Save the changes and close the file.

Now we will create a configuration file for each virtual host. And in the first one we will add the following.

:~$ sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/www.test.osradar.lan.conf

$HTTP["host"] =~ "(^|.)test.osradar.lan$" {
    server.document-root = "/var/www/html/www.test.osradar.lan"
    server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/www.test.osradar.lan-error.log"
    accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/www.test.osradar.lan-access.log"
}

And for the second:

:~$ sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/vhosts.d/www.test2.osradar.lan.conf

$HTTP["host"] =~ "(^|.)test2.osradar.lan$" {
    server.document-root = "/var/www/html/www.test2.osradar.lan"
    server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/www.test2.osradar.lan-error.log"
    accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/www.test2.osradar.lan-access.log"
}

Save the changes and close the editor.

You can also use the following command to check the syntax of the configuration files:

:~$ sudo lighttpd -t -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

The result should be something like:

Syntax OK.

Then, restart lighttpd.

:~$ sudo systemctl restart lighttpd

And that’s it.

To test it, you need to modify some parameters in the client computer.

:~$ sudo nano /etc/hosts

And add the following

[Server_IP] www.test.osradar.lan
[Server_IP] www.test2.osradar.lan

Save the changes and close the editor.

Now open your favorite web browser and go to www.test.osradar.lan and you will see the following:

Now, go to www.test2.osradar.lan:

So, everything is OK. And that is it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in this post, you have learned how to create virtual hosts using Lighttpd as a web server. This not so well known server is useful to serve heavy applications without problems.

Please share this post and join our Telegram channel.

The post How to configure virtual hosts on Lighttpd? appeared first on Linux Windows and android Tutorials.

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.

Combining Debian 10 with Lighttpd is a safe bet if you want a fast, efficient and secure web server. Go for it.

Install Lighttpd on Debian 10

Fortunately, Lighttpd is available from the official Debian repositories. So, the installation only comes down to one command.

So, open a terminal session or connect to your server remotely and run the following command:

:~$ sudo apt install lighttpd

In case you do not have sudo enabled, you can log in as root, or learn how to enable it with our post manager:

How to enable sudo on Debian 10?

Once it has been installed, we will be able to check the operation of it, opening a web browser and going to http://SERVER_IP or http://localhost if we are in a local machine. Remember that this works through port 80 and it has to be available.

If we manage to see this image, it means that everything is in order.

Now, let’s install PHP.

Enabling the PHP support to Lighttpd

Lighttpd is up and running, but let’s be honest, a web server that doesn’t have at least PHP is not much use to us. So we’ll install and configure PHP and Lighttpd.

The first step is to install PHP and some of its modules, to do this, use the following command:

:~$ sudo apt install php7.3 php7.3-fpm php7.3-mysql php7.3-cli php7.3-curl php7.3-xml

And then we will do the settings.

To start with, you have to modify the listen parameter in the PHP-fpm configuration file.

:~$ sudo nano /etc/php/7.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Save the changes and close the file.

Now, another configuration file needs to be modified. In this case, it is /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf and in it, you have to change the following:

:~$ sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf

"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
"socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php.socket",

To

"host" => "127.0.0.1",
"port" => "9000",

After saving the changes and closing the file, PHP-fpm must be enabled in Lighttpd.

:~$ sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
 Enabling fastcgi: ok
:~$ sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php
 Enabling fastcgi-php: ok

Then, restart lighttpd and php-fpm.

:~$ sudo systemctl restart lighttpd
:~$ sudo systemctl restart php7.3-fpm

Now, we are going to test PHP.

Test PHP and Lighttpd on Debian 10

The best way to test the installation is to create a PHP file and open it from the web browser and check that it runs.

So, let’s create one.

:~$ sudo nano /var/www/html/test.php

And add the following:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the changes and close the file.

Also, it’s a good idea to change the permissions of the Lighttpd root folder so that all files run correctly:

:~$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/
:~$ sudo chown -R 755 /var/www/html/

Now, open your web browser and go to http://your-server/test.php or if the installation is local http://localhost/test.php and you should see this image.

So, enjoy it.

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 Debian 10 and we have also added support for PHP.

Please share this post and join our Telegram channel.

The post How to install lighttpd on Debian 10? appeared first on Linux Windows and android Tutorials.

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.

Combining Ubuntu 18.04 with Lighttpd is a safe bet if you want a fast, efficient and secure web server. Go for it.

0. Prerequisites

The idea is to install a complete web server using Lighttpd, PHP, and MariaDB in Ubuntu 18.04. It’s not complicated but you should keep in mind the following:

• It is advisable to have some knowledge about the use of the terminal.
• Have root access to perform the commands.
• Have a computer with Ubuntu 18.04.

1.- Upgrade the system

It’s a good idea to start these tutorials by updating the system, making sure you have the latest security patches for your system. Open a terminal and run:

:~$ sudo -i

After entering the password you will be the root user. Next:

:~# apt update && apt upgrade

With this, you will have updated your system.

2.- Install MariaDB

MariaDB is a fork of Mysql. It is fully compatible with the former and is the most recommended for its experience of use. However, despite this, it is very powerful and reliable.

To install it, run:

:~# apt install mariadb-server

Now you have to perform a configuration process. This is best done with mysql_secure_installation script.

:~# mysql_secure_installation

After setting the root password, you will be asked some configuration questions. I will answer Y, N, Y, Y.

3.- Install Lighttpd

The easiest and most direct way to install Lighttpd on Ubuntu 18.04 is to do it from the official repositories.

:~# apt install lighttpd

And then you enable the service to start with the system.

:~# systemctl enable lighttpd
:~# systemctl start lighttpd

In order to avoid problems between Lightppd and the firewall, run:

:~# ufw allow 80/tcp
:~# ufw reload
:~# ufw enable

To check the installation, go to your web browser and try to access to http://IP_SERVER. If you see this then everything is OK.

4.- Install PHP

A web server needs a programming language to interpret and execute the applications built, so install PHP.

:~# apt install php7.2 php7.2-fpm php7.2-mysql php7.2-cli php7.2-curl php7.2-xml

Next, edit the file /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

:~# nano /etc/php/7.2/pool.d/www.conf

Change the line”listen” to 127.0.0.1:9000.

Next, edit the file /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf too.

:~# nano /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/15-fastcgi-php.conf

And change:

"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
"socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php.socket",

To:

"host" => "127.0.0.1",
"port" => "9000",

Finally, enable the FastCGI and FastCGI-PHP modules:

:~# lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
:~# lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php

Restart Lighttpd:

:~# systemctl restart lighttpd

5. Testing the installation

To verify that everything is working, make a .php file in the root directory of the server, i.e. in /var/www/html. I’ll call it t.php. Put on it this:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Change the permissions:

:~# chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/
:~# chown -R 755 /var/www/html/

Finally, open your web browser and go to http://IP_SERVER/t.php. If you see this, everything is working.

Conclusion

To install Lighttpd only basic knowledge about the use of the terminal and configuration files is required because it is really simple. Being this a web server oriented to simplicity and speed we find simple files to configure.

We want to know about you, have you used this program before? you have been using the tutorial? what about your experience with PHP and Lighttpd? Let us know in the comments.

Please share this article on your social networks.

The post How to install lighttpd web server on Ubuntu 18.04? appeared first on Linux Windows and android Tutorials.