PHP-FPM + nginx version

[schmunk42]

Since there's an Apache flavour available of the PHP Docker image, what's about a similar solution for PHP -FPM + nginx?

PS: I found no instructions for fpm at all - I can start the image, but I didn't manage it to get anything out of port 9000, not even an error.

[yosifkit]

We can't really do an FPM with Nginx image since it would be two separate processes in the image, which would require something like supervisord and that is not the direction we currently want for official images. We are working on documentation to run Nginx and FPM together.

[schmunk42]

We can't really do an FPM with Nginx image since it would be two separate processes in the image.

I understand what you mean and support that view also, but having two containers just for a simple web-application looks also a bit too much to me - anyway - looking forward to the docs and your solution.

[atmoz]

I also had this thought today, and I'm looking forward to the docs!

[dz0ny]

I've just wanted to share my take on it https://github.com/wtool/nginx (control of PHP version trought env variable) and https://github.com/wtool/php (builds all php versions{latest 5.3+} with php-build).

[schmunk42]

Here's my approach https://github.com/phundament/docker - tailored for our app and with composer pre-installed, but you'll get the idea.
PHP is running as a service but exposes no ports, nginx is triggered via /root/run.sh and should be "the running process" in the container.

[bennibu]

I also tried to use the fpm only version (php:5.6.5-fpm, docker 4.1) but can't get the fpm process to successfully bind to 9000. The fpm process outputs "ready for incoming connections" and thats it. Further investigations with netstat show now LISTEN statement at all. So I guess, the php-fpm manager doesn't start properly.

As we currently deploy out php apps with chef scripted nginx + php-fpm I don't want to include apache as a new depency. So I am very interested in having a solid solution for php-fpm and I want to avoid maintaining out own php-fpm Dockerfiles. I appreciate any help.

[md5]

Where did you run netstat? How is the nginx container finding out how to
connect to the fpm container?

[bennibu]

O.k. I have to confess. There were no problem in the fpm server. fpm binds sucessfully to 9000, I have used the wrong commands. Nevertheless, I will also have to include an nginx for myself, because for deploying wordpress we also need to serve some static content, which we can't deliver with the php-fpm server, as I understand for now.

So I don't see a solution to not violate the docker best practive of having only one running process in a container at the time. Maybe we can mount the wordpress sources in both containers, but that would require running them on the same host.

Or stick to the provided mode-php-apache concept. But this will introduce another dependency, and we haven't used apache for a long time.

Any suggestions?

[schmunk42]

@bennibu I had the same thoughts. Could somebody elaborate more on the difference between the php-fpm "service" for nginx and the apapche mod_php - I know that the module is in a child fork of apache and therefore not counted as a separate service. What unexpected things could happen when using only one container with a running nginx and a PHP in the same container?

It looks to me like, if we'd use the PHP cli (theoretically speaking) with nginx we'd not violate the container principle. But that setup makes no sense.

[tianon]

As one example, the nginx process could die, and you wouldn't notice right
away and be confused why your site is down when your container is up.

[md5]

@bennibu I'd look at making an analogous image to wordpress, except based on php:fpm instead of php:apache. To do this, I'd copy as much of the entrypoint of the existing wordpress image as possible as well as the logic for downloading Wordpress into /usr/src/wordpress and the exposure of /var/www/html as a volume. I'd then craft a custom image based on nginx that serves static assets from a shared /var/www/html/wp-content/whatever and share the volume with the Wordpress container. That same nginx would be configured to talk to FPM on port 9000 for non-static requests.

@tianon Do you think it would be reasonable to have a wordpress:fpm variant in the official images based on php:fpm?

[tianon]

@md5 that sounds divine :)

[md5]

I have a quick POC for the Wordpress part here: https://github.com/md5/wordpress/commit/c299bbb20d8021ec144a72fdcc79d8b959aa447a

I tried to whip up a quick nginx config to work with it and got it to proxy to the FPM container, but I hit a redirect loop on the install and don't have time today to work on it anymore.

The only thing I had to do besides copying the Dockerfile and entrypoint was to switch the base image to php:fpm, change the CMD to php-fpm, and remove Apache-related stuff that needs to be handled outside the wordpress:fpm image (i.e. the .htaccess stuff).

I also switched the rsync in the entrypoint to tar (after a helpful suggestion someone made in the synctree/mediawiki image) and removed the rsync install from the Dockerfile. This could probably be done in the main wordpress variant as well.

I'm not ready to open a PR for that wordpress:fpm work until I get it working with an example Nginx conf, but if someone wants to run with it I won't stop them.

[tianon]

Ooh, using "tar" as an "rsync" replacement is clever.

This definitely needs some love (as you outlined), but it looks like some
good progress! 👍

[thaJeztah]

Apache-related stuff that needs to be handled outside the wordpress:fpm image (i.e. the .htaccess stuff)

Might be useful to warn people that .htaccess only applies to Apache and running WordPress on NGINX may need extra configuration. IIRC, some plugins (and WordPress itself) modify the .htaccess to add rewrite-rules etc. and I'm not sure those properly detect NGINX. Sure, this is something the user should research, but there's a lot of non-too experienced users using WordPress that may need the extra pointers.

Looks like this page collects issues/hints for running WordPress on NGINX; http://codex.wordpress.org/Nginx