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Installing MEN NPP stack (MongoDB, Express, Node.js, Nginx, PostgreSQL, PHP) on CentOS 7 from scratch

I’ve been playing with my VPS that I bought from WeLoveServers.net and I previously wrote about how to set up your VPS from scratch. Here I’ll show just brief commands for installing a MEN NPP stack (MongoDB, Express, Node.js, Nginx, PostgreSQL, PHP) on my CentOS machine.

Nginx

  • high performance web server that is much more flexible and lightweight than Apache
  • SELinux – if you run into issues change the SELinux mode to permissive or disabled
  • sudo rpm -Uvh http://nginx.org/packages/centos/7/noarch/RPMS/nginx-release-centos-7-0.el7.ngx.noarch.rpm
  • sudo yum install nginx
  • sudo systemctl start nginx.service or sudo service nginx start
  • sudo systemctl enable nginx.service (no alternative with sudo service)
  • default server root directory /usr/share/nginx/html defined /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
  • server blocks (known as Virtual Hosts in Apache) are created in /etc/nginx/conf.d. Files that end with .conf in that directory will be loaded when Nginx is started
  • main Nginx configuration file is located at /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
  • sudo vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf looks like: 
    server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  localhost;

    location / {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index  index.html index.htm;
    }
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

    change to:

    server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  server_domain_name_or_IP;

    root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
    error_page 404 /404.html;
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
  • sudo systemctl restart nginx
  • sudo nginx -t
    nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
    nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Node.js

  • just a side note for Mac: brew install node
  • sudo yum install epel-release
  • sudo yum install node
  • sudo yum install npm

Express

  • npm install express

PHP

  • sudo yum install php php-mysql php-fpm
  • sudo vi /etc/php.ini – in order to secure it do cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
  • sudo vi /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf set line to listen = /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock
  • sudo systemctl start php-fpm
  • sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service to start from boot

 

PostgreSQL

  • exclude the CentOS version of postgres in order to get the most recent version from the project’s website
  • sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo
    At the bottom of the [base] and [updates] sections, add a line that excludes the postgres packages: exclude=postgresql*
  • Find the link for your version of the OS here
  • curl -O http://yum.postgresql.org/9.4/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/pgdg-centos94-9.4-1.noarch.rpm
  • rpm -ivh pgdg*
  • yum list postgres*
  • install the -server package: sudo postgresql94-server.x86_64
  • sudo /usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/postgresql94-setup initdb
  • chkconfig postgresql-9.3 on
  • service postgresql-9.3 start
  • postgres creates a user and a database called postgres
  • sudo su – postgres
  • psql
  • \?: Get a full list of psql commands, including those not listed here
  • \h: Get help on SQL commands. You can follow this with a specific command to get help with the syntax
  • \q: Quit the psql program and exit to the Linux prompt
  • \d: List available tables, views, and sequences in current database
  • \du: List available roles
  • \dp: List access privileges
  • \dt: List tables
  • \l: List databases
  • \c: Connect to a different database. Follow this by the database name
  • \password: Change the password for the username that follows
  • \conninfo: Get information about the current database and connection 
    CREATE TABLE new_table_name (
    table_column_title TYPE_OF_DATA column_constraints,
    next_column_title TYPE_OF_DATA column_constraints,
    table_constraint
    table_constraint
) INHERITS existing_table_to_inherit_from;

     

MongoDB

  • Instructions from here
  • sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb.repo: 
    [mongodb]
name=MongoDB Repository
baseurl=http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/redhat/os/x86_64/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
  • sudo yum install -y mongodb-org
  • to prevent unintended upgrades, add to /etc/yum.conf file:
    exclude=mongodb-org,mongodb-org-server,mongodb-org-shell,mongodb-org-mongos,mongodb-org-tools
  • sudo service mongod start
  • sudo chkconfig mongod on

 

Written by Nikola Brežnjak