This will also include instructions on how to configure the machine for Nginx.

These instructions are ideal for those who want to run PHP in production. This version of PHP lacks intrusive packages like Suhosin.

And added benefit, is you don't have install any packages like php-json, php-mysql, php-common, nor php-cli

Instead, you have 1 PHP binary, and a PHP FPM binary.

The PHP binaries will be installed in a bin directory off of the user's home directory.

mkdir -p ~/bin/

This will allow you to use type php anywhere and the version of PHP we're compiling will be first on the list - and the first one to be run

Open the file ~/.bashrc and add the following to the end of it

cat >> ~/.bashrc

Now, paste the following into your terminal

# add local bin directory
if [ -d "$HOME/bin/php7/bin" ] ; then
  PATH="$HOME/bin/php7/bin:$PATH"
fi

# press ctrl-c to exit cat

Install the following packages. These are needed for PHP to communicate with MySQL, Postgres, composer, and Nginx.

sudo apt-get install autoconf build-essential \
  libssl-dev pkg-config zlib1g-dev libargon2-dev \
  libsodium-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev \
  libonig-dev

If you want to use nginx instead of laravel's artisan serve or PHP's local web server

sudo apt-get install nginx

If you do not plan on installing MySQL, then skip this step

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server

If you don't plan on installing PostgreSQL then skip this step

# I like to add a postgres user (but, this is optional)
sudo adduser postgres

sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.6 postgresql-client-9.6 \
postgresql-contrib-9.6 libpq-dev

IF you installed the package pkg-config skip this step

Debian based distros don't report the correct location of openSSL headers. Without the pkg-config package PHP looks in the wrong location for the headers. This symlink fixes that.

sudo ln -s /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/curl /usr/include/curl

As of the time of this, PHP 7.4.6 was the latest PHP available.

NOTE: this installs PHP in the user's local bin directory, not globally!

# create the Download directory
mkdir -p ~/Downloads/

# change to the Downloads directory and fetch the PHP 7.3 tarball
cd ~/Downloads;
wget https://www.php.net/distributions/php-7.4.6.tar.bz2 -O php-7.4.6.tar.bz2
tar -xf php-7.4.6.tar.bz2
cd php-7.4.6

This is our base build script. Create a file called build_php.sh and paste this snippet into it

#!/bin/sh

######################
# To build PHP
# STEP 1: sh build_php.sh
# STEP 2: make -j number_of_cores_or_processors_CPU_has
# STEP 3: make install
######################

INSTALL_DIR=$HOME/bin/php7

mkdir -p $INSTALL_DIR

./configure --prefix=$INSTALL_DIR \
    --enable-bcmath \
    --enable-fpm \
    --with-fpm-user=www-data \
    --with-fpm-group=www-data \
    --disable-cgi \
    --enable-mbstring \
    --enable-shmop \
    --enable-sockets \
    --enable-sysvmsg \
    --enable-sysvsem \
    --enable-sysvshm \
    --with-zlib \
    --with-curl \
    --without-pear \
    --with-openssl \
    --enable-pcntl \
    --with-password-argon2 \
    --with-sodium \
    --disable-libxml \
    --disable-simplexml \
    --disable-xml \
    --disable-xmlreader \
    --disable-xmlwriter \
    --disable-dom \
    --without-libxml 

# to add additional compile options to PHP, add " \" after the last
# element. You *must* put a space and then a backslash so the configure
# script knows that the there is more to the build script

--enable-mysqlnd \
--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd

--with-pdo-pgsql=/usr/bin/pg_config

Install the ZIP libraries if you need to work with .zip file

Earlier we installed the package zlib1g-dev, this allows us to work with compressed files, like tar.gz and .tgz, but not .zip files.

sudo apt-get install libzip-dev libzip5

And, add this to the build PHP build script below

--with-zip \

sudo apt-get install libreadline-dev

And, add the following to the PHP build script below

--with-readline \

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev

remove the following lines from the PHP build script below

--disable-libxml \
--disable-simplexml \
--disable-xml \
--disable-xmlreader \
--disable-xmlwriter \
--disable-dom

The next three commands create a Makefile so the make command knows how to build PHP, where to install the binaries at, what options PHP should be built with

The variable number_of_cores_or_processors_CPU_has should be at least 3 unless you are building on a small box, or a VM, however, this increases the time greatly

sh build_php.sh
make -j number_of_cores_or_processors_CPU_has
make install

Copy the php-7.3.4/php.ini-development file from the source directory to the ~/bin/php7/lib/ directory, and rename the file to php.ini

cp php.ini-development ~/bin/php7/lib/php.ini
cd ~/bin/php7/lib;

You'll need to set your timezone to one of the following values from here: http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

For example, if you are in the US Central timezone, your timezone will be America/Chicago

If you are in the US Pacific Timezone, your timezone will be America/Los_Angeles

If you are in Zurich, Switzerland, your timezone will be Europe/Zurich

[Date]
; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
; http://php.net/date.timezone
date.timezone=America/Chicago

The MySQL socket PDO connects to (if MySQL is running locally)

; Default socket name for local MySQL connects.  If empty, uses the built-in
; MySQL defaults.
; http://php.net/pdo_mysql.default-socket
pdo_mysql.default_socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

The PHP-FPM fix

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0:

You need to create a php-fpm.conf file to use Nginx.

cd ~/bin/php7/etc/; mv php-fpm.conf.default php-fpm.conf
cd ~/bin/php7/etc/php-fpm.d/; mv www.conf.default www.conf

In your favorite editor, open the www.conf file, and change the user and group from nobody to www-data (the user for nginx). THIS SHOULD BE DONE FOR YOU JUST DOUBLE CHECK TO MAKE SURE IT'S SET

...
user = www-data
group = www-data
...

Sockets are faster then using TCP ports, but are limited in the number of connections they support.

If you want to use sockets, though, you'll need to make the following changes to the www.conf file

change listen from

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

to

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

also, uncomment out the listen.owner, listen.group, & listen.mode variables

listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data
listen.mode = 0660

Edit your .bashrc file and add the PHP 7 bin directories to your path

if [ -d "$HOME/bin/php7" ] ; then
  PATH="$HOME/bin/php7/bin:$HOME/bin/php7/sbin:$PATH"
fi

cd ~/bin
php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php composer-setup.php
ln -s composer.phar composer

Do this for local development, and for testing servers

To run the PHP-FPM process whenever the server reboots run the following command

sudo crontab -eu root

Then add the following line to the crontab

@reboot /home/me/bin/php-fpm

DO NOT install XDebug on a production server!

wget https://xdebug.org/files/xdebug-2.9.6.tgz -O xdebug-2.9.6.tgz
tar -xzf xdebug-2.9.6.tgz

The variable number_of_cores_or_processors_CPU_has should be at least 3. Most modern computers have quad core processors. This significantly speeds up the time taken to compile the PHP binary and its shared libraries

cd xdebug-2.9.6/
phpize
./configure --enable-xdebug
make -j number_of_cores_or_processors_CPU_has
make install

The XDebug installation script should install xdebug.so in the correct location which is $HOME/bin/php7/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20190902/

Test if the file exists

ls -l $HOME/bin/php7/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20190902/xdebug.so

If you get an error stating no such file or directory, then, you need to move the shared object to the PHP extension directory manually

cp modules/xdebug.so $HOME/bin/php7/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20190902/xdebug.so

You need to tell PHP where to find the xdebug library. Append this snippet to the end of the php.ini file located at $HOME/bin/php7/lib/php.ini

[xdebug]
zend_extension=/home/{USER NAME}/bin/php7/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20190902/xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_autostart=1
xdebug.remote_connect_back=1
xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1
xdebug.remote_port=9000

You'll have to start php-fpm manually to get it working with Nginx

sudo $HOME/bin/php7/sbin/php-fpm

To run the PHP-FPM process whenever the server reboots run the following command

sudo crontab -eu root

Then add the following line to the crontab

@reboot /home/me/bin/php-fpm

You need to modify Nginx's configuration to start using PHP-FPM

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available

Open default and change the root directory to where your code is

root /path/to/your_PHP_project;

Add index.php to the index list

index index.php;

Remove the location section and make the following changes in the FastCGI section

location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;

    # If you want to use a TCP port, un-comment this
    # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;

    # ...OR
    # If you want to use Unix sockets, un-comment this
    # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
}

So, your conf file should look like this:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    # path to code (index.php should be in this directory)
    root /path/to/PHPCODE;

    index index.php;

    server_name phpdevbox;

    location / {
      try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;

        # use this if you want to use TCP:
        # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;

        # use this if you want to use sockets
        # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
      # deny access to .htaccess files
      deny all;
    }
}

Nginx should now be serving your files

There are multiple ways to use PHP for development.

If you're using Laravel 5.5 this is how you start the built in PHP server

php artisan serve --host=your.ip.of.vm --port=8000

If you want to use the built in PHP web-server

php -S ip.of.your.machine:port_number

While, you can use Nginx for testing, it's not the best alternative. One of the issue you will find is that Nginx times out.

Follow the instructions found in the section Using PHP with Nginx (production mode) on how to setup Nginx to serve PHP files from your VM

You'll need to edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and change the line sendfile on; to sendfile off;

What will happen is changes to static files (CSS and Javascript) files won't be updated. Turning off sendfile will cause Nginx to serve the file via a different method and the new file's changes will be displayed immediately.

These step are if you want to develop [write code] on Windows or Mac, but run the code on a VM.

I prefer Ubuntu Server because it lacks a window manager and only needs about 256 MB RAM

Every step in the below instructions has been tailored specifically for Ubuntu Server on Virtualbox.

After installing Ubuntu Server (20.04) in a virtual machine, install the following packages

nfs-kernel-server

NFS (Network File System) is targeted at *NIX based systems. Originally developed by Sun MicroSystems in the 1980s, NFS allows the file system of one *NIX computer to be accessed by another *NIX system.

First create a directory to be shared. It's best to use a directory with no assigned user by default

mkdir -p /mnt/shared_dir

Each folder to be shared via NFS must have an entry in the file /etc/exports

# NOTE: NO SPACE AFTER THE IP ADDRESS!
/mtn/shared_dir client_ip(permissions)

• The first arguement is pretty simple: the directory to share.
• The second argument is the client's IP or IP range: e.g. 192.168.1.1/24. That IP address means anyone from 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.255. If you want anyone to be able to connect, change the IP Address to *
• The third arguement is the permissions

Here's the list of permissions that work on Mac/Ubuntu to an Ubuntu server

• rw
• sync
• no_subtree_check
• insecure
• all_squash - tells NFS that for any user connecting,ignore their actual user & group ID and treat them as if user ID = anonuid and group ID = anonguid
• anonuid=1000
• anonguid=1000

IF anonuid and anonguid are 0,then that user IS GIVEN ROOT PERMISSION

The anonuid and anonuid of 1000 is the user and group of the user on my Ubuntu Server

Now that we have a shared dir, allow others to connect to it

sudo exportfs -a
sudo systemctl restart nfs-kernel-server
systemctl start rpc-statd

Using MacOS Catalina (10.15) this is one way to connect

cd # change to the home directory
mkdir -p nfs_mount # create a new directory called "nfs_mount"
sudo mount 192.168.1.184:/mnt/shared_dir /Users/{my mac user}/nfs_mount

If you are using VSCode this launch.json will allow you to write code locally and debug remotely

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
        "name": "Listen for XDebug",
        "type": "php",
        "request": "launch",
        "port": 9000,
        "pathMappings": {
            "/home/phpuser/cifs_share": "${workspaceRoot}"
        }
    }
  ]
}