how to spawn php-cgi automatically when it exits?

Question

I am using php-cgi on ubuntu(with nginx), and the command to start it is:

spawn-fcgi -a 127.0.0.1 -p 9100 -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -P /var/run/fastcgi-php.pid

but sometimes the php-cgi process will exit automatically, and I need to start it manually. Is there any way that can make it restart automatically, eg) write init script?

Please suggest, thanks.

Answer 1

You should really use PHP-FPM instead of spawn-fcgi. It's a fastcgi process manager which was written to overcome many of the problems with php-cgi (and thus with spawn-fcgi by relation).

Since the 5.2.x line of PHP is end of life'd you should also be on PHP 5.3.x which means you most likely already have php-fpm and it's just a matter of making sure your package manager installs that version (see if it's called php-fpm or similar). If you install from source then it's just a compile time flag to enable it. (--with-fpm)

If you're on 5.2.x and you're too enterprise for your boss to allow you to upgrade then you'll have to monitor it with something like Supervisord or Monit

Answer 2

I currently use upstart (initctl).

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man8/initctl.8.html

I'm running CentOS 6, but I think the process is similar for Ubuntu. For CentOS, create the file /etc/init/php-cgi.conf containing:

 # Upstart event # nginx_start - start nginx web server / proxy # start on runlevel 3 stop on runlevel [016] console output exec /usr/bin/php-cgi -b 127.0.0.1:9001 respawn respawn limit 10 90 

Then you can control it with initctl:

 initctl start php-cgi initctl status php-cgi initctl stop php-cgi