How to Install a LEMP Stack (Nginx, MySQL, PHP) on Ubuntu 24.04 Print

The LEMP stack swaps Apache for Nginx (pronounced “engine-x”, hence the E): Linux, Engine-X (Nginx), MySQL, PHP. Nginx's event-driven architecture serves thousands of concurrent connections with a fraction of Apache's memory, which is why it is the default choice for busy sites and small VPS plans alike. Here is the full Ubuntu 24.04 installation, including the PHP-FPM wiring most tutorials get wrong.

Step 1 — Install Nginx, MySQL and PHP-FPM

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx mysql-server php-fpm php-mysql -y

Nginx does not embed PHP the way Apache does — PHP runs as a separate PHP-FPM service that Nginx forwards requests to. Allow web traffic:

sudo ufw allow "Nginx Full"

Step 2 — Secure MySQL

Exactly as with the LAMP stack: run sudo mysql_secure_installation, then create a dedicated database and user for the application.

Step 3 — Configure the server block

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    root /var/www/example.com;
    index index.php index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Enable it and drop the default site:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

Step 4 — Test PHP-FPM

echo '<?php phpinfo();' | sudo tee /var/www/example.com/info.php

Browse to http://your_server_ip/info.php; the “Server API” line should read FPM/FastCGI. Delete the file when done.

Step 5 — Tune PHP-FPM for your RAM

The default pool allows more PHP workers than a small VPS can feed. On a 2 GB server, edit /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf:

pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 12
pm.start_servers = 3
pm.min_spare_servers = 2
pm.max_spare_servers = 4

sudo systemctl reload php8.3-fpm

If your site dies under load with “server reached pm.max_children” in the logs, that value is the dial to turn — alongside adding swap as a safety net.

Common errors

502 Bad Gateway almost always means Nginx cannot reach PHP-FPM — check the socket path in your server block matches ls /run/php/. 413 Request Entity Too Large on uploads: raise client_max_body_size 64m; in the server block and upload_max_filesize in php.ini.

Next steps

Add a free SSL certificate with Certbot (it has a native Nginx plugin), enable unattended security updates, and monitor the stack with the tools in our performance monitoring guide.

Related Ubuntu guides

• How to Install a LAMP Stack (Apache, MySQL, PHP) on Ubuntu 24.04
• How to Get a Free SSL Certificate on Ubuntu with Lets Encrypt and Certbot
• How to Add Swap Space on Ubuntu: Fix Out-of-Memory Errors on Your VPS
• How to Monitor Ubuntu Server Performance: CPU, RAM and Processes