The PHP FastCGI process manager, PHP-FPM

Substitute

Article from ADMIN 12/2012

By Tim Schürmann

Apache web servers generally use the mod_php module to run PHP programs, but the official PHP package also contains a little-acclaimed alternative by the name of PHP-FPM, which uses the FastCGI interface and has some very interesting properties.

If you open the PHP documentation at the Installation chapter, you are likely to come across the mod_php Apache module first. It integrates the PHP interpreter with the Apache web server, thus allowing the server to execute PHP applications. The Lighttpd and IIS documentation describes a PHP interpreter that uses the FastCGI interface (see the "CGI Accelerator" box). Further into the docs, until you will find the FastCGI Process Manager, which is an alternative PHP interpreter that eliminates a few serious disadvantages of mod_php and of the traditional FastCGI interpreter.

CGI Accelerator

Web servers are pretty dumb when left to their own devices. All they can do is serve up files and thus deliver static content. To create a web page dynamically, they need the help of another web server program – such as the PHP interpreter. The PHP interpreter then runs one or more (PHP) scripts that, ultimately, build the page. The method web servers use to call the interpreter and return the completed page was specified in a 1993 standard, the Common Gateway Interface, or CGI for short. As soon as the web server receives a request, it sets a few environmental variables and then starts the interpreter. The interpreter in turn evaluates the environmental variables from, and returns the generated web page to, the web server via standard output (Figure 1).

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