Setting Up a Local PaaS Environment: Lighttpd, PHP, and Configuration on Linux

This article continues a series on building a PaaS platform environment by describing how to set up a local Linux instance for running applications, using the domain phpoffline.duapp.com as an example.

It outlines the required directory layout under /home/bae, including /home/bae/bae for PHP, /home/bae/lighttpd for Lighttpd, and /home/bae/wwwdata/htdocs as the Lighttpd document root, with a sub‑directory named after the chosen domain.

To enable Lighttpd, the guide downloads a pre‑packed tarball, extracts it to the appropriate directory, and then edits the whitelist file /home/bae/lighttpd/conf/domain_whitelist to add the domain, followed by editing /home/bae/lighttpd/conf/lighttpd.conf to set runtime paths:

var.rundir = "/home/bae/lighttpd"
var.wwwdir = "/home/bae/wwwdata/htdocs"
var.netpath = "10.40.72.110:9898/log"

It also adds a Lua‑based host rewrite rule:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^(.*)$" {
    vhost-magnet.path-pattern = var.wwwdir + "/%_"
    vhost-magnet.attract-raw-url-to = ("/bae_app_conf.lua")
}

The /etc/hosts file is updated to map the chosen domain to the machine’s IP address, and a symbolic link is created under /home/bae/wwwdata/htdocs pointing to the application directory.

For PHP deployment, the article downloads another tarball, places its three directories under /home/bae/bae, and verifies configuration files such as /home/bae/bae/php/etc/php-fpm.conf and the executable /home/bae/bae/php/sbin/php-fpm. It then edits /home/bae/bae/phplib/php.ini to adjust open_basedir and error_log paths.

Service control commands are provided:

[bae@...]# /home/bae/bae/php/sbin/php-fpm start   # start PHP
[bae@...]# /home/bae/lighttpd/bin/lighttpd_control start   # start Lighttpd

Application deployment is performed by checking out the desired code version from SVN into /home/bae/wwwdata/htdocs/phpoffline.duapp.com and creating a symbolic link from the domain to the application directory.

Finally, the relationship between app.conf and bae_app_conf.lua is explained: app.conf is used when uploading code, while bae_app_conf.lua is used by Lighttpd for request forwarding. A reference link to Baidu’s documentation is provided for further details.