Hi. After half of year of intending to get around to it, I’m on a mission right to finally understand how all the backend stuff works. So I’m playing around with NGinX and Apache on an Ubuntu 20.04 VM (hosted on Windows, for what it’s worth, but anyway that’s probably irrelevant). I think, no… I KNOW that I’m really close to getting it all working. I managed to figure out serving separate domains (eg blog.local, design.local, etc) from both NGinX and Apache, and got them all redirecting to HTTPS. But there’s something wrong somewhere, as PHP isn’t working. Instead of parsing the PHP, the browser downloads the file. There was one fleeting moment when info.php actually did load on one of the sites, but then I tried changing the settings for another one, and for whatever reason that seemed to knock everything out again.
I was up until some silly hour last night talking to ChatGPT about all this. It’s pretty useful up to a certain point, for sure, but I have the feeling that it sends you off down blind alleys and causes more confusion in the end. It was certainly pretty maddening at the end, as I was in an unending loop. Let’s perhaps not call it a “doom” loop, but it was starting to feel like that by about 2:30 am 
The trouble is that it “forgets” the original intention. At one point it told me how to set up NGinX to handle PHP, and I had to “remind” it that Apache was supposed to be doing that. In the midst of this confusion, I suppose that it’s maybe told me to change some PHP settings which are leading to the current situation.
Anyway, I now need to talk to a human or two, but I thought it might be helpful to show part of the conversation, as a summary of where I am right now. This was pretty close to the moment that I crashed last night! I suppose that maybe not every detail is here, but it’s near enough 90% of everything that I was tearing my hair out over 
Here we go - very polite AI:
I understand your frustration. Let’s take a step-by-step approach to debug the current setup and ensure PHP files are processed correctly.
Recap of the Current SetupNginx is set up to proxy requests to Apache on port 8080. Apache is set up to handle PHP files using PHP-FPM.Steps to Verify and Debug
Verify Nginx Configuration: Ensure your Nginx configuration is correct and contains no syntax errors. sudo nginx -tVerify Apache Configuration:
Ensure your Apache configuration is correct and contains no syntax errors.sudo apache2ctl configtestCheck PHP-FPM Status:
Ensure PHP-FPM is running and properly configured.sudo systemctl status php8.0-fpmCheck Permissions:
Ensure the PHP-FPM socket has the correct permissions and is accessible by the necessary services.sudo ls -l /run/php/php8.0-fpm.sockLogs Analysis:
Check the logs for any errors that might indicate what’s going wrong.Nginx Logs: sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.logApache Logs:
sudo tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log sudo tail -f /var/log/apache2/access.logPHP-FPM Logs:
sudo tail -f /var/log/php8.0-fpm.logTest with a Simple PHP File:
Create a simple PHP file in your web root to test PHP processing.echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > /var/www/localhost/info.php Access it via https://localhost/info.php.Checking Response Headers
Using curl, you can check the headers to see how the file is being served.
curl -I https://localhost/info.phpThe output should not have Content-Type: application/octet-stream.
Sample Apache and Nginx Configurations
Nginx Configuration:server { listen 80; server_name localhost; location / { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } } server { listen 443 ssl; server_name localhost; ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/localhost.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/localhost.key; root /var/www/localhost; index index.html index.htm; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @proxy_to_apache; } location @proxy_to_apache { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080; 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 $scheme; } }Apache Configuration:
<VirtualHost *:8080> ServerName localhost DocumentRoot /var/www/localhost <FilesMatch \.php$> SetHandler "proxy:unix:/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/" </FilesMatch> <Directory /var/www/localhost> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/localhost_error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/localhost_access.log combined </VirtualHost>Final Diagnostic Commands
Restart All Services: sudo systemctl restart nginx sudo systemctl restart apache2 sudo systemctl restart php8.0-fpmTest Again with Curl:
curl -Ik https://localhost/info.phpIf the issue persists, please provide:
The exact output of the curl -Ik https://localhost/info.php command. Any relevant entries from the error logs.
), I’ll get back to attempting to integrate NGinX.
I know they did way back when NGiNX was relatively new, but I’m fairly certain nobody does that anymore 
Anyway, it’s good to understand both from the start, eh.
I’ve been all around the houses looking at php.ini files (there are a few!), and none of the changes that I’ve made have helped.