CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpvariablesnginxcentos7nextcloud
Adrián Jaramillo
Adrián Jaramillo

Reputation: 299

What is the purpose of the php-fpm system environment variables?

My scenario

I have set up in 1 VM (centos7):

For this task, I have followed this guide (of course, I had to change some settings to make it work in my environment)

My question

In some point of the guide, I had to uncomment these lines in the config file for php-fpm /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

env[HOSTNAME] = $HOSTNAME
env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
env[TMP] = /tmp
env[TMPDIR] = /tmp
env[TEMP] = /tmp

In the guide, It was said that these were php-fpm system environment variables. I had to uncomment them to active them.
I know nothing about these variables, but I know that they are taking as values some info of my system.
Also, I have to say that my nextcloud is working without errors with these variables uncommented. But just for testing, I commented the lines back again, and nextcloud continued working as usual.

So what I want to learn and currently I can't understand is:
Why the guide says that these variables are needed? What is the function of these variables, if activated, in the communication process between nginx and php-fpm?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1343

Answers (1)

Danila Vershinin
Danila Vershinin

Reputation: 9875

Why the guide says that these variables are needed?

Because it is a somewhat junky, extraneous addition to the article.

What is the function of these variables

The primary use would be, I guess, having an environment variable pass with a different value for specific PHP-FPM pool. E.g. you have installed some CLI tool (converting between image formats for example) under /usr/local/bin/foo). Then you want to have your website to be able to launch that. It can't unless it can find it in PATH environment variable (which, by default does not include /usr/local/bin.

So you have two options there:

  1. Change the PATH for the PHP-FPM user (defined in pool settings), e.g. in ~/.bashrc

  2. env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

So this is just one of the ways to achieve the same.

if activated, in the communication process between nginx and php-fpm?

No, this is nothing about NGINX->PHP-FPM. It is just how PHP-FPM will run its worker processes (with which environment), so it affects how/which environment PHP scripts will see.

Upvotes: 1

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