I tried install HHVM for fun on my Ubuntu machine using the following steps:
- Check ubuntu version
lsb_release -a
- Add the offical repo
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0x5a16e7281be7a449
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main"
I work out a fish shell, so had to type bash to get into a bash shell before running the above commands. Didn't spend time to customize fish to use bash commands
- Install HHVM
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hhvm
- Add HHVM to Startup
sudo update-rc.d hhvm defaults
- Configure NGINX to use HHVM
On my home machine, I don't have any custom FastCGI configuration, so the below default integration of Nginx with HHVM will work. Else, look at the DigitalOcean link below.
sudo /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh
This basically adds the configuration file /etc/nginx/hhvm.conf to the default Nginx server block configuration /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default. It works only with a default Nginx configuration without any FastCGI configurations.
- Configure HHVM to listen on a socket
As the DO link states, HHVM is considered for environments under heavy load so the first configuration change you can do is to make HHVM listen to a socket instead of a TCP port. Thus, the communication between Nginx and HHVM will require less CPU and memory.
To do this edit, /etc/hhvm/server.ini using:
sudo vim /etc/hhvm/server.ini
Remove the line starting with hhvm.server.port and add the below line:
hhvm.server.file_socket=/var/run/hhvm/hhvm.sock
- Configure Nginx to use the socket
For this we need to edit, /etc/nginx/hhvm.conf using:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/hhvm.conf
Change the fast_cgi pass line to:
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/hhvm/hhvm.sock;
Restart NGINX
sudo service nginx restart
- Test HHVM!
Edit the Nginx default file:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
Then go to the server part and add index.php at the line with indexes so that it looks like this:
index index.html index.htm index.php;
Restart NGINX
sudo service nginx restart
To make sure HHVM is being used and not the legacy version of php, run:
/usr/bin/php --version
My output is:
HipHop VM 3.10.1 (rel)
Compiler: tags/HHVM-3.10.1-0-g689b4969a141620ee5a282ce0dbf72278c84d44b
Repo schema: 6c99ee1f98340f6f3ef397a332583f0e843a627d
If the old version of php is being used, update using the following command to make hhvm be used by running:
sudo /usr/bin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/php php /usr/bin/hhvm 60
Now let us do the standard phpinfo() test! :-)
Create the index.php file:
sudo vim /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php
Enter the following lines:
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Set the permissions, as it is always a good practice to make sure that all Nginx web files are owner by the Nginx user www-data. Thus change the ownership of this file to www-data with the command:
sudo chown www-data: /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php
Access the link using ... http://your_server_ip/info.php
- Make HHVM start on boot
Important! HHVM doesn't start on boot(currently). To make it start run use:
sudo update-rc.d hhvm defaults
You can always check it using:
sudo service hhvm status
Yay! It works! My output is below! :-)
