Nginx serves php files as downloads instead of executing them

Question

I am installing a website in a droplet  Digital Ocean   I have a issue for install NGINX with PHP properly  I did a tutorial https   www digitalocean com community tutorials how-to-install-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-ubuntu-14-04 but when I try to run some  php file it s just downloading it    for example    http   5 101 99 123 info php it s working but    If I go to the main http   5 101 99 123 it s downloading my index php    Any idea  -rw-r--r--  1 agitar user www-data   418 Jul 31 18 27 index php -rw-r--r--  1 agitar user www-data    21 Aug 31 11 20 info php  My   etc nginx sites-available default server           listen 80 default server          listen      80 default server ipv6only on           root  var www html          index index html index htm index php             Make site accessible from http   localhost          server name agitarycompartir com                  location     php                        fastcgi split path info       php                NOTE  You should have  quot cgi fix pathinfo   0  quot  in php ini                             With php5-cgi alone                      fastcgi pass 127 0 0 1 9000                        With php5-fpm                      fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock                      fastcgi index index php                      include fastcgi params                                  location                                              try files  uri  uri   404                        Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location                       include  etc nginx naxsi rules                    Others  quot location quot  are commented

User · Answer

You need to add this to  etc nginx sites-enabled default to execute php files on Nginx Server   server       listen 80 default server      listen      80 default server ipv6only on       root  usr share nginx html      index index php index html index htm       location     php            try files  uri  404          fastcgi split path info       php                 fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock          fastcgi index index php          fastcgi param SCRIPT FILENAME  document root fastcgi script name          include fastcgi params

User · Answer

First you have to Remove cache in your browser   Then open terminal and run the following command    sudo apt-get install php-gettext sudo nano  etc nginx sites-available default   Then add the following code in the default file   server       listen 80 default server      listen      80 default server ipv6only on       root  usr share nginx html      index index php index html index htm       server name localhost       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 split path info       php                 fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock          fastcgi index index php          fastcgi param SCRIPT FILENAME  document root fastcgi script name          include fastcgi params            If any mismatch just correction and restart Nginx from terminal by the following command     sudo systemctl restart nginx   Then go to browser and Enjoy

User · Answer

For me it was the line   fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock    which had to be just   fastcgi pass unix  run php5-fpm sock

User · Answer

This workded for me   1  MyApp file  vi  etc nginx sites-available myApp  server     listen 80    listen      80     root  var www myApp    index index php index html index htm     location     php          try files  uri  404        fastcgi split path info       php               fastcgi pass unix  run php php7 0-fpm sock        fastcgi index index php        fastcgi param SCRIPT FILENAME  document root fastcgi script name            include fastcgi params              PHP5 users  Change  fastcgi pass unix  run php php7 0-fpm sock    to  fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock      2  Configure cgi fix pathinfo  Set cgi fix pathinfo to 0  Location   PHP5   etc php5 fpm php ini  PHP7   etc php 7 0 fpm php ini    3  Restart services  FPM  php5    sudo service php5-fpm restart  php7    sudo service php7 0-fpm restart  NGINX  sudo service nginx restart

User · Answer

One more thing to check  if you ve set up HTTPS access before setting up PHP -- I used certbot -- you ll need to make the changes in  etc nginx sites-available default twice because there will be two server blocks  one listening on port 80 and one listening on port 443    I was setting up this server primarily for email and didn t have any use for PHP when I first installed nginx just as a way to run certbot more easily

User · Answer

I see a lot of solutions above and many worked correctly for me  but I didn t understand what they were doing and was worried of just copy pasting the code  specifically  fastcgi  So here are my 2 cents    nginx is a web server  and not an application server  and thus  it can only serve static pages  whenever  we try rendering returning a  php file  for example index php  nginx doesn t know what to do  since it just can t understand a  php file  or for that matter any extension apart from a select few like  html   js etc  which are static files  Thus in order to run other kinds of files we need something that sits between nginx and the application  here the php application   This is where common gateway interface  CGI  comes in  It s a piece of software that manages this communication  CGIs can be implemented in any possible language Python  uWSGI   PHP  FPM  and even C  FastCGI is basically an upgraded version of CGI which is much much faster than CGI     For some  servers like Apache  there is built in support to interpret PHP and thus no need for a CGI   This digital ocean link  explains the steps to install FPM pretty well and I am not writing the steps needed to solve the issue of php files getting downloaded instead of rendering since the other answers IMHO pretty good

User · Answer

Try this    Edit  etc nginx sites-available default Uncomment both listen lines to make nginx listen on port 80 IPv4 and IPv6   listen   80     listen for ipv4  this line is default and implied listen        80 default server ipv6only on     listen for ipv6  Leave server name alone    Make site accessible       server name localhost   Add index php to the index line  root  usr share nginx www  index index php index html index htm   Uncomment location     php        pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on         location     php            try files  uri  404          fastcgi split path info       php                   NOTE  You should have  cgi fix pathinfo   0   in php ini            With php5-cgi alone           fastcgi pass 127 0 0 1 9000            With php5-fpm          fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock          fastcgi index index php          include fastcgi params     Edit  etc php5 fpm php ini and make sure cgi fix pathinfo is set to 0 Restart nginx and php5-fpm sudo service nginx restart  amp  amp  sudo service php5-fpm restart     I have just started using Linux a week ago  so I really hope to help you on this  I am using nano text editor to edit the files  run apt-get install nano if you don t have it  Google on it to know more

User · Answer

My solution was to add       location     php        try files  uri  404      fastcgi split path info       php             fastcgi pass unix  run php php7 0-fpm sock      fastcgi index index php      fastcgi param SCRIPT FILENAME  document root fastcgi script name      include fastcgi params    to my custom configuration file  for example etc nginx sites-available example com conf  Adding to  etc nginx sites-available default didn t work for me

User · Answer

For anyone having same issue with PHP 7  this is what I done to make nginx execute php files properly in CentOS 7  posted here so in case of anyone having same problem    Follow step by step this document on Digital Ocean  Open the  etc nginx conf d default conf  by default I don t have sites-enabled nor sites-available  you can edit accordingly   Edit the location parameter as below    default conf    location     php        try files  uri  404       fastcgi pass unix  var run php-fpm php-fpm sock        instruct nginx execute php7 files instead download them  D     fastcgi pass unix  var run php-fpm www sock       fastcgi index index php      fastcgi param SCRIPT FILENAME  document root fastcgi script name      include fastcgi params       Restart Nginx and PHP services sudo systemctl restart php-fpm and sudo systemctl restart nginx  Last but most important  clear browser cache or running in incognito  Chrome  or Private Browsing  Firefox  etc       Hope this helpful and happy coding

User · Answer

server       listen 80 default server      listen      80 default server ipv6only on       root  var www html      index index php index html index htm       location     php                include snippets fastcgi-php conf              fastcgi pass unix  run php php7 2-fpm sock            The above snippets worked for me in case of php7 2

User · Answer

What worked for me with Ubuntu 16 04  and php7 was deleting this line  fastcgi split path info       php          It stopped downloading php files after that

User · Answer

for a record  I found that my php-fpm was not running and I fixed it with service php7 2-fpm stop

User · Answer

The answer above seemed to comment out too much for the solution I reached  This is what my file looked like    etc nginx sites-available default  location     php      fastcgi split path info       php             NOTE  You should have  cgi fix pathinfo   0   in php ini       With php5-cgi alone    fastcgi pass 127 0 0 1 9000    With php5-fpm  fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock  fastcgi index index php  include fastcgi params      Hope this helps some folks who are frustrated on a sunday afternoon  c

User · Answer

I solved my problem now with this code  change your IP    location     access log off      log not found  off      client max body size    2000m      client body buffer size 512k      proxy buffering on      proxy send timeout 300s      proxy read timeout 300s      proxy buffer size 64k      proxy buffers 32 64k      proxy busy buffers size 128k      proxy temp file write size 128k      proxy connect timeout 300s      proxy http version 1 1      proxy set header Range         proxy pass   https   123 123 123 123 444      proxy set header   Host    host      proxy set header   X-Real-IP   remote addr      proxy set header   X-Forwarded-For  proxy add x forwarded for      proxy set header   X-Forwarded-Proto  scheme      proxy redirect     off

User · Answer

I had the same issue and none of the answers solved the problem    I ran   sudo nginx -t   to test the config file at  etc nginx sites-available default    It gave me these errors   nginx   emerg  unexpected end of file  expecting     in  etc nginx sites-enabled default 115 nginx  configuration file  etc nginx nginx conf test failed   So I went into the config file and on the last line there was        I uncommented  ran the test command again and it worked

User · Answer

So this is what finally worked in my case as rewrite rules where the culprit I changed the nginx rewrite rules as follows         location  vendors   rewrite   vendors     vendors php break       becomes       location  vendors   rewrite   vendors     vendors php last      Apparently without the last keyword  the request didn t get restarted  so it never hit the  php location segment  and was simply interpreted as a download

User · Answer

Update nginx config  etc nginx sites-available default or your config file  if you are using php7 use this       location     php                include snippets fastcgi-php conf              fastcgi pass unix  run php php7 0-fpm sock                if you are using php5 use this       location     php                include snippets fastcgi-php conf              fastcgi pass unix  run php php5-fpm sock              fastcgi index index php              include fastcgi params          Visit here for complete detail Detail here

User · Answer

check your nginx config file extension is   conf  for example   etc nginx conf d myfoo conf   I got the same situation  After I rename the my config file from myfoo to myfoo conf  it fixed  Do not forget to restart nginx after rename it

User · Answer

I had been having the same problem what solved it was this server block also have this block above other location blocks if you have css not loading issues  Which I added to my sites-available conf file     location         php        fastcgi split path info        php         fastcgi index            index php  fastcgi pass             unix  var run php php7 3-fpm sock  include                  fastcgi params  fastcgi param   PATH INFO        fastcgi path info  fastcgi param   SCRIPT FILENAME  document root fastcgi script name

User · Answer

If anything else doesn t help you  And maybe earlier you installed apache2 with info php test file  Just clear App Data  cache cookie  for localhost

User · Answer

If any of the proposed answers is not working  try this   1 fix www conf in etc php5 fpm pool d   listen   127 0 0 1 9000  delete all line contain listen     2 fix nginx conf in usr local nginx conf   remove server block server    if exist  in block html   because we use server   in default  config file in etc nginx site-available  which was included in nginx conf   3  fix default file in  etc nginx site-available  location     php            fastcgi pass 127 0 0 1 9000          fastcgi index index php          include fastcgi params             4 restart nginx service     sudo service nginx restart   5 restart php service     service php5-fpm restart   6 enjoy     Create any php file in  usr share nginx html and run in  server name file name php     server name depend on your config normaly is localhost  file name php is name of file which created in  usr share nginx html      I am using Ubuntu 14 04

User · Answer

I had similar problem which was resolved by emptying the browser cache  also worked fine with different browser

User · Answer

Uncomment the  php location in  etc nginx sites-available default     sudo vi  etc nginx sites-available default    location     php                include snippets fastcgi-php conf                 With php5-cgi alone              fastcgi pass 127 0 0 1 9000                With php5-fpm              fastcgi pass unix  var run php5-fpm sock

User · Answer

I my case I was not using  etc nginx sites-available default I was using a different server block configuration file  e g  example com   and the only way I was able to fix this problem is by removing the default server block configuration file symbolic link     rm  etc nginx sites-enabled default   then reloading Nginx     sudo systemctl reload nginx

User · Answer

I was about to go mental trying to fix this  for me the issue was that Cloudflare had cached the php file and kept making me download it   The fix for me was to purge the cache on Cloudflare

User · Answer

For me it helped to add   query string at the end of  index php  like below   location             try files  uri  uri   index php  query string

[php] Nginx serves .php files as downloads, instead of executing them

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