Install php with nginx and php-fpm using homebrew osx

How I setup a osx php development environment with nginx and php-fpm using Homebrew. 

I didn't find any documentation specific to my situation of developing in osx and using the homebrew package manager. I hope to provide some useful configuration file settings, directory paths, comments, and a reference for myself. 

This is intended for performing development work on a mac, not running a live production system. 

I am running OSX 10.7. 5. 

Install Homebrew if you have not already. 

Add the php repository and install, adding compile flags for php-fpm and other tools you will be working with, such as mysql. For a list of options one may type 'brew options php54'

  $ brew tap josegonzalez/homebrew-php
  $ brew install php54 --with-fpm --with-mysql 

In another terminal start php-fpm

  $ php-fpm 

This will start php-fpm in the foreground, nice for debugging and seeing that everything is working. Later one can use php-fpm -D to daemonize it.  

Start nginx 

 $ sudo nginx

Test it by entering http://localhost into your web browser. A welcome page should appear.  The welcome page is located in /usr/local/Cellar/nginx/1.2.5/html/index.html

Edit the configs

I will use vi but any text editor is fine such as nano. 

php-fpm

The config file for php-fpm is called php-fpm.conf and is found in /usr/local/etc/php/5.4 along with php.ini . I left most of the settings alone, but made a backup copy of the file and set

  pid = run/php-fpm.pid

which tells it to create php-fpm.pid in /usr/local/var/run. This might be useful for a startup script, and nice to see something that says php-fpm is running and reading the config file. One can also set the port, error log, and a bunch of other things in php-fpm.conf. 

Set the PHP date.timezone to your time zone

  $ vi /usr/local/etc/php/5.4/php.ini
  date.timezone = Europe/Berlin

nginx.conf

nginx.conf is located in /usr/local/etc/nginx. 

Make a backup of nginx.conf

Create a folder for logs 

  $ mkdir /usr/local/var/log/nginx

In nginx.conf update 

  error_log  /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log;

In the http section

  access_log  /usr/local/var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log  main;

In the server section

  listen       80;

add

  root   /Users/homedir/php-projects; 
  index  index.html index.php;

Update 

  location ~ \.php$ {
    root           /usr/local/var/www;
    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index  index.php;
    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include        fastcgi_params;
  }

Complete nginx.conf

Reload nginx

  $ sudo nginx -s reload

Create a test index.php file in your php projects folder and test it out. 

Credits

http://interfacelab.com/nginx-php-fpm-apc-awesome/
http://www.group7even.com/blog/2012/02/23/installing-nginx-php-fpm-on-os-x-mountain-lion-10-8/

MySQL Error 2013

I encountered 2013 during mysqldump and when selecting from a specific table.

A good tip I found was to check Uptime after the query

mysql> \s
...
Uptime: 7 min 4 sec

Which indicated the mysqld instance had restarted.

The best solution was for me was to check /var/log/mysql/mysql-error.log . It turned out advice from the log file saved the day:

InnoDB: It is also possible that your operating
InnoDB: system has corrupted its own file cache
InnoDB: and rebooting your computer removes the
InnoDB: error.

After rebooting the OS the error was gone.

Other advice I found online was:

1. Check wait_timeout is long enough

mysql> show variables

The default is 28800 seconds (8 hours). This was set to the default and thus not the problem.

2. Set max_allowed_packet to something larger

I opted for one gigabyte

mysql> set max_allowed_packet=1000 * 1024 * 1024;
This also had no effect. It would have been better if I had checked the error log immediately which makes good sense after an unexpected restart.