Using HHVM with PHP-FPM Fallback

Note: HHVM doesn’t play with all WordPress themes and plugins. Test your site properly before using this in production.

Installation of HHVM:

For installation of HHVM please follow this guide:
https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/wiki/Prebuilt%20Packages%20for%20HHVM

Post installation:

We need to configure our web server to use HHVM,

sudo /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh

You can ignore the WARNING from following message.

# sudo /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh
Checking if Apache is installed
WARNING: Couldn't find Apache2 configuration paths, not configuring
Checking if Nginx is installed
Detected Nginx installation
Checking for custom Nginx configuration
WARNING: Detected clashing configuration. Look at /etc/nginx/hhvm.conf for information how to connect to the hhvm fastcgi instance.
#

Configuring HHVM:

Editing server.ini:

Open server.ini file:

vim /etc/hhvm/server.ini

If HHVM crashed then site must use PHP-FPM as fallback, so change HHVM server port from 9000 to 8000

hhvm.server.port = 8000

Editing php.ini

Open php.ini file:

vim /etc/hhvm/php.ini

Add following towards end of file:

hhvm.log.header = true
hhvm.log.natives_stack_trace = true

Editing hhvm.conf:

Note: This editing is not required, as we are not using this file, but if have included hhvm.conf in your previous site then you also need to change HHVM port here.

vim /etc/nginx/hhvm.conf

and change HHVM port from 9000 to 8000:

fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8000;

Configuring FastCGI:

Open fastcgi.conf file:

vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/fastcgi.conf

and add following line towards end of file:

fastcgi_keep_conn on;

Use HHVM and adding PHP5-FPM as fallback:

Open Upstream.conf file:

vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/upstream.conf

and make sure it look like this:

# Common upstream settings

upstream php {
# server unix:/run/php5-fpm.sock;
server 127.0.0.1:8000;
server 127.0.0.1:9000 backup;
}

upstream debug {
# Debug Pool
server 127.0.0.1:9001;
}

Restart Services:

service hhvm restart
php5-fpm -t && service php5-fpm restart
nginx -t && service nginx restart

Testing:

1. Using web browser:
   Just point your browser to https://example.com:22222/php/info.php, if you are seeing HipHop then, your server is using HHVM, otherwise it is using FPM
2. Using CURL:
   Use following command to test from command line:

curl -I example.com

If you are able to see line like this:

X-Powered-By: HHVM/3.2.0

then your site is using HHVM, otherwise FPM

Log File:

You should check the HHVM error log file for any issues related to your site.

tail -f /var/log/hhvm/error.log

• We also like to know to your experience for HHVM with EE, for that you can comment here: #180
• If your configuration is better that us or you feel like we are missing something you can use our HHVM support checklist #199