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

Overview of PHP-FPM

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$ docker run -it --name phpfpm -v /path/to/app:/app ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm

The recommended way to get the PHP-FPM Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the AWS Public ECR Gallery or from the GitHub Container Registry

$ docker pull ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions in the GitHub Registry or the available tags in the public ECR gallery.

$ docker pull ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm:[TAG]

This image is designed to be used with a web server to serve your PHP app, you can use docker networking to create a network and attach all the containers to that network.

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.

$ docker network create app-tier --driver bridge

or using Docker Compose:

version: '2'

networks:
  app-tier:
    driver: bridge

Let's create an nginx server block to reverse proxy to our PHP-FPM container.

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

  root /app;

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

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

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

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

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 \
  --network app-tier
  -v /path/to/app:/app \
 ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm

or using Docker Compose:

services:
  phpfpm:
    image: 'ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm:latest'
    networks:
      - app-tier
    volumes:
      - /path/to/app:/app

$ docker run -it \
  -v /path/to/server_block.conf:/opt/bitnami/nginx/conf/server_blocks/yourapp.conf \
  --network app-tier \
  ghcr.io/bitcompat/nginx

or using Docker Compose:

services:
  nginx:
    image: 'ghcr.io/bitcompat/nginx:latest'
    depends_on:
      - phpfpm
    networks:
      - app-tier
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '443:443'
    volumes:
      - /path/to/server_block.conf:/opt/bitnami/nginx/conf/server_blocks/yourapp.conf

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.

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

$ docker run -it --name phpfpm ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm php -a

Further Reading:

• PHP Interactive Shell Documentation

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/app:/app ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm \
  php script.php

You can mount a custom config file from your host to edit the default configuration for the php-fpm docker image. The following is an example to alter the configuration of the php-fpm.conf configuration file:

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

$ docker run --name phpfpm -v /path/to/php-fpm.conf:/opt/bitnami/php/etc/php-fpm.conf ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm

Edit the configuration on your host using your favorite editor.

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

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

$ docker restart phpfpm

PHP has been configured at compile time to scan the /opt/bitnami/php/etc/conf.d/ folder for extra .ini configuration files so it is also possible to mount your customizations there.

Multiple files are loaded in alphabetical order. It is common to have a file per extension and use a numeric prefix to guarantee an order loading the configuration.

Please check http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.php#configuration.file.scan to know more about this feature.

In order to override the default max_file_uploads settings you can do the following:

1. Create a file called custom.ini with the following content:

max_file_uploads = 30M

2. Run the php-fpm container mounting the custom file.

$ docker run -it -v /path/to/custom.ini:/opt/bitnami/php/etc/conf.d/custom.ini ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm php -i | grep max_file_uploads

You should see that PHP is using the new specified value for the max_file_uploads setting.

The PHP-FPM Docker Image sends the container logs to the stdout. You can configure the containers logging driver using the --log-driver option. By defauly the json-file driver is used.

To view the logs:

$ docker logs phpfpm

The docker logs command is only available when the json-file or journald logging driver is in use.

Up-to-date versions of PHP-FPM are provided by Bitcompat project, including security patches, soon after they are made upstream. We recommend that you follow these steps to upgrade your container.

$ docker pull ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm:latest

Stop the currently running container using the command

$ docker stop php-fpm

or using Docker Compose:

$ docker-compose stop php-fpm

Next, take a snapshot of the persistent volume /path/to/php-fpm-persistence using:

$ rsync -a /path/to/php-fpm-persistence /path/to/php-fpm-persistence.bkp.$(date +%Y%m%d-%H.%M.%S)

You can use this snapshot to restore the database state should the upgrade fail.

$ docker rm -v phpfpm

or using Docker Compose:

$ docker-compose rm -v phpfpm

Re-create your container from the new image.

$ docker run --name phpfpm ghcr.io/bitcompat/php-fpm:latest

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

If you encountered a problem running this container, you can file an issue.

This package is released under MIT license.

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.