Nginx – PHP-CGI Not working on CentOS 5

you should install fcgiwrap via apitude. worked out of the box.

most of the nginx tutorials suck, because they are either not debian-specific, try to reinvent the wheel or use old software or configuration. so be careful and read a bit more than usual.

fyi, my cgi location block:

location ~ \.cgi {
        root    /usr/lib;
        fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;
          # Fastcgi parameters, include the standard ones
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        # Adjust non standard parameters (SCRIPT_FILENAME)
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME  /usr/lib$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param  AUTH_USER          $remote_user;
        fastcgi_param  REMOTE_USER    $remote_user;

}

the /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params

fastcgi_param   QUERY_STRING        $query_string;
fastcgi_param   REQUEST_METHOD      $request_method;
fastcgi_param   CONTENT_TYPE        $content_type;
fastcgi_param   CONTENT_LENGTH      $content_length;

fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME     $request_filename;
fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_NAME     $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param   REQUEST_URI     $request_uri;
fastcgi_param   DOCUMENT_URI        $document_uri;
fastcgi_param   DOCUMENT_ROOT       $document_root;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_PROTOCOL     $server_protocol;

fastcgi_param   GATEWAY_INTERFACE   CGI/1.1;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_SOFTWARE     nginx/$nginx_version;

fastcgi_param   REMOTE_ADDR     $remote_addr;
fastcgi_param   REMOTE_PORT     $remote_port;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_ADDR     $server_addr;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_PORT     $server_port;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_NAME     $server_name;

the ikiwiki stuff goes in /usr/lib/cgi-bin, you can reach it via http://server/cgi-bin/

You have yourself in an intresting spot. CGI(not FastCGI) has been known the be very slow everyone and there sister has made a cgi module or pluin backin the day. So your choice to move over to fastcgi is a good one. I am also a big fan of nginx It is a great tool I think the issue is adding nginx on top of an apache laywer still means apache has to do some work and its still a known fact that it is rather slow. If you require alot of the statical data that it asks for you may want to find a method of compling logs when the server is idel but in your case I would recommend that you use nginx on its own. You can use php-fpm which allows php to work with fast cgi. It should give u a much better boast in perfomance being able to skip the apche side this way nginx runs the web server and rendering apache pages.