Flarum | Nginx & HHVM | 502 Bad Gateway

ZeroSec

For a long time I've looked for a decent forum, and I found Flarum, but this is pretty hard to install. There's errors everywhere. I'm running Nginx & HHVM on Ubuntu Linux, and I keep getting 502 Bad Gateway only when I'm using the Flarum. Whenever I reset the default conf file to the way it was before, everything works perfect running my own .php files, but using Flarum's totally fucks it up. I've looked pretty much anywhere, and can't find a solution for this.

My "/etc/nginx/sites-available/default" file looks like this:

I tried on my Windows VPS, but then 2 errors outputted that I missed the "vendor/autoload.php" files?

BlackSheep

Do not use HHVM.
Do not use the default file of nginx to the purpose of assignating it to one thing.

webeindustry

I tried using flarum with HHVM without success a while back. A search for HHVM seems to indicate nobody else has got this working, either. We have install docs with webservers that are known to work. Anything else is experimental and not supported, though if you do have success please share here so we can verify and expand our install docu.

ZeroSec

I found the error for why the 502 Bad Gateway. Wrong FastCGI setup, but that still doesn't explain the missing vendor files, even though I used composer.

webeindustry

ZeroSec

If you don't have a vendor folder the composer install failed. You need to nuke the directory, try a fresh install, and report the error back here.

If you wind up with a solid setup using HHVM please share the config. I would like to run it through some tests & this could help others.

ZeroSec

webeindustry

Everything seems to have installed correctly, except the missing vendor files. Could it be because I used

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install composer

to install the composer on Ubuntu?

And yeah, I will.

webeindustry

ZeroSec

You shouldn't have an issue installing composer from apt. Please try to install again. People often miss errors that are reported the first time around.

ZeroSec

webeindustry

I will try it out, brb.

ZeroSec

webeindustry

I don't get the vendor files, but this time a lot of errors was shown. I missed mbstring, illuminate support, and a lot other extensions. I got rid of the mbstring error by installing it, but do I really have to install every single extension that is missing, or is there an easier way to do it? Many of the extensions are already installed by default, like curl I installed before executing the composer, but the missing ext is still showing as an error. As seen below:

ZeroSec

I think I have it solved.

webeindustry

ZeroSec

Yes you need to install each dependency as you would any other app. I bet you installed curl, and not the extension curl for php. No shortcuts.

ZeroSec

webeindustry

Any idea how to make the directory writable? Looks like these are the only left errors that needs to be fixed, and then its pretty much working for now.

ZeroSec

Problem fixed. Looks like after all, that Flarum is compatible with NGINX & HHVM combined.

webeindustry

Glad you got it installed. You'll need to test it more than that. Please submit your configuration.

ZeroSec

webeindustry

I just followed Digital Ocean's tutorial on how to setup NGINX with HHVM, with some small modifies, since it didn't work correctly.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-hhvm-with-nginx-on-ubuntu-14-04

But well I got it installed with no error, but now I get a 502 Bad Gateway again after Flarum being installed.

webeindustry

ZeroSec

What does your /etc/hhvm/server.ini look like?

ZeroSec

webeindustry

Like this:

; php options

pid = /var/run/hhvm/pid

; hhvm specific 

hhvm.server.file_socket=/var/run/hhvm/hhvm.sock
hhvm.server.type = fastcgi
hhvm.server.default_document = index.php
hhvm.log.use_log_file = true
hhvm.log.file = /var/log/hhvm/error.log
hhvm.repo.central.path = /var/run/hhvm/hhvm.hhbc

ZeroSec

I just tested it by using

/var/www/html

as webroot folder instead, and creating a .php file. No 502 Bad Gateway error, it must simply be because of Flarum itself sadly ?

webeindustry

Yea I'm not getting it to display on a running flarum. HHVM has issues with illuminate, which Flarum uses. I don't know there's much if any improvement over php7 with laravel5 apps. The chart I looked at showed a small decrease in performance. Oh well. You should probably just stick to nginx.

ZeroSec

webeindustry

I'm not that familiar with running NGINX, so does Flarum still works just using FastCGI, without HHVM, or how?