What is PHP-FPM?

PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites.

php-fpm.org

TLDR

docker run -it --name phpfpm bitnami/php-fpm

Docker Compose

phpfpm:
  image: bitnami/php-fpm
  volumes:
    - /path/to/php/app:/app

Get this image

The recommended way to get the Bitnami PHP-FPM Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/php-fpm:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions in the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/php-fpm:[TAG]

If you wish, you can also build the image yourself.

git clone https://github.com/bitnami/bitnami-docker-php-fpm.git
cd bitnami-docker-php-fpm
docker build -t bitnami/php-fpm .

Linking

This image is designed to be used with a web server to serve your PHP app, you can use the linking system provided by Docker to do this.

Serving your PHP app through an nginx frontend

We will use PHP-FPM with nginx to serve our PHP app. Doing so will allow us to setup more complex configuration, serve static assets using nginx, load balance to different PHP-FPM instances, etc.

Step 1: Create a virtual host

Let's create an nginx virtual host to reverse proxy to our PHP-FPM container. The Bitnami nginx Docker Image ships with some example virtual hosts for connecting to Bitnami runtime images. We will make use of the PHP-FPM example:

server {
    listen 0.0.0.0:80;
    server_name yourapp.com;

    access_log /logs/yourapp_access.log;
    error_log /logs/yourapp_error.log;

    root /app;

    location / {
        index index.php;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        # fastcgi_pass [PHP_FPM_LINK_NAME]:9000;
        fastcgi_pass yourapp:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi.conf;
    }
}

Notice we've substituted the link alias name yourapp, we will use the same name when creating the link.

Copy the virtual host above, saving the file somewhere on your host. We will mount it as a volume in our nginx container.

Step 2: Run the PHP-FPM image with a specific name

Docker's linking system uses container ids or names to reference containers. We can explicitly specify a name for our PHP-FPM server to make it easier to connect to other containers.

docker run -it --name phpfpm -v /path/to/php/app:/app bitnami/php-fpm

or using Docker Compose:

phpfpm:
  image: bitnami/php-fpm
  volumes:
    - /path/to/php/app:/app

Step 3: Run the nginx image and link it to the PHP-FPM server

Now that we have our PHP-FPM server running, we can create another container that links to it by giving Docker the --link option. This option takes the id or name of the container we want to link it to as well as a hostname to use inside the container, separated by a colon. For example, to have our PHP-FPM server accessible in another container with yourapp as it's hostname we would pass --link phpfpm:yourapp to the Docker run command.

docker run -it -v /path/to/vhost.conf:/bitnami/nginx/conf/vhosts/yourapp.conf \
  --link phpfpm:yourapp \
  bitnami/nginx

or using Docker Compose:

nginx:
  image: bitnami/nginx
  links:
    - phpfpm:yourapp
  volumes:
    - /path/to/vhost.conf:/bintami/nginx/conf/yourapp.conf

We started the nginx server, mounting the virtual host we created in Step 1, and created a link to the PHP-FPM server with the alias yourapp.

PHP runtime

Since this image bundles a PHP runtime, you may want to make use of PHP outside of PHP-FPM. By default, running this image will start a server. To use the PHP runtime instead, we can override the the default command Docker runs by stating a different command to run after the image name.

Entering the REPL

PHP provides a REPL where you can interactively test and try things out in PHP.

docker run -it --name phpfpm bitnami/php-fpm php -a

Further Reading:

• PHP Interactive Shell Documentation

Running your PHP script

The default work directory for the PHP-FPM image is /app. You can mount a folder from your host here that includes your PHP script, and run it normally using the php command.

docker run -it --name php-fpm -v /path/to/php/app:/app bitnami/php-fpm \
  php script.php

Configuration

This container looks for configuration in /bitnami/php-fpm/conf. You can mount a directory there with your own configuration, or the default configuration will be copied to your directory if it is empty.

Step 1: Run the PHP-FPM image

Run the PHP-FPM image, mounting a directory from your host.

docker run --name phpfpm -v /path/to/phpfpm/conf:/bitnami/php-fpm/conf bitnami/php-fpm

or using Docker Compose:

phpfpm:
  image: bitnami/php-fpm
  volumes:
    - /path/to/phpfpm/conf:/bitnami/php-fpm/conf

Step 2: Edit the configuration

Edit the configuration on your host using your favorite editor.

vi /path/to/phpfpm/conf/php-fpm.conf

Step 4: Restart PHP-FPM

After changing the configuration, restart your PHP-FPM container for the changes to take effect.

docker restart phpfpm

or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose restart phpfpm

Note! You can also reload PHP-FPM by sending the USR2 signal to the container using the docker kill command.

docker kill -s USR2 phpfpm

Logging

The Bitnami PHP-FPM Docker Image supports two different logging modes: logging to stdout, and logging to a file.

Logging to stdout

The default behavior is to log to stdout, as Docker expects. These will be collected by Docker, converted to JSON and stored in the host, to be accessible via the docker logs command.

docker logs phpfpm

or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose logs phpfpm

This method of logging has the downside of not being easy to manage. Without an easy way to rotate logs, they could grow exponentially and take up large amounts of disk space on your host.

Logging to file

To log to file, run the PHP-FPM image, mounting a directory from your host at /bitnami/php-fpm/logs. This will instruct the container to send logs to a php-fpm.log file in the mounted volume.

docker run --name phpfpm -v /path/to/phpfpm/logs:/bitnami/php-fpm/logs bitnami/php-fpm

or using Docker Compose:

phpfpm:
  image: bitnami/php-fpm
  volumes:
    - /path/to/phpfpm/logs:/bitnami/php-fpm/logs

To perform operations (e.g. logrotate) on the logs, mount the same directory in a container designed to operate on log files, such as logstash.

Maintenance

Backing up your container

To backup your configuration and logs, follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Stop the currently running container

docker stop phpfpm

or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose stop phpfpm

Step 2: Run the backup command

We need to mount two volumes in a container we will use to create the backup: a directory on your host to store the backup in, and the volumes from the container we just stopped so we can access the data.

docker run --rm -v /path/to/backups:/backups --volumes-from phpfpm busybox \
  cp -a /bitnami/phpfpm /backups/latest

or using Docker Compose:

docker run --rm -v /path/to/backups:/backups --volumes-from `docker-compose ps -q phpfpm` busybox \
  cp -a /bitnami/phpfpm /backups/latest

Note! If you only need to backup configuration, you can change the first argument to cp to /bitnami/php-fpm/conf.

Restoring a backup

Restoring a backup is as simple as mounting the backup as volumes in the container.

docker run -v /path/to/backups/latest/conf:/bitnami/php-fpm/conf \
  -v /path/to/backups/latest/logs:/bitnami/php-fpm/logs \
  bitnami/php-fpm

or using Docker Compose:

phpfpm:
  image: bitnami/php-fpm
  volumes:
    - /path/to/backups/latest/conf:/bitnami/php-fpm/conf
    - /path/to/backups/latest/logs:/bitnami/php-fpm/logs

Upgrade this image

Bitnami provides up-to-date versions of PHP-FPM, including security patches, soon after they are made upstream. We recommend that you follow these steps to upgrade your container.

Step 1: Get the updated image

docker pull bitnami/php-fpm:latest

or if you're using Docker Compose, update the value of the image property to bitnami/php-fpm:latest.

Step 2: Stop and backup the currently running container

Before continuing, you should backup your container's configuration and logs.

Follow the steps on creating a backup.

Step 3: Remove the currently running container

docker rm -v phpfpm

or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose rm -v phpfpm

Step 4: Run the new image

Re-create your container from the new image, restoring your backup if necessary.

docker run --name phpfpm bitnami/php-fpm:latest

or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose start phpfpm

Testing

This image is tested for expected runtime behavior, using the Bats testing framework. You can run the tests on your machine using the bats command.

bats test.sh

Contributing

We'd love for you to contribute to this Docker image. You can request new features by creating an issue, or submit a pull request with your contribution.

Issues

If you encountered a problem running this container, you can file an issue. For us to provide better support, be sure to include the following information in your issue:

• Host OS and version
• Docker version (docker version)
• Output of docker info
• Version of this container (echo $BITNAMI_APP_VERSION inside the container)
• The command you used to run the container, and any relevant output you saw (masking any sensitive information)

License

Copyright 2015 Bitnami

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.