Install WordPress on OpenBSD

Introduction

This post shows you how to install WordPress on OpenBSD. It uses httpd(8) as web server, PHP, and MariaDB as database.

Installation of packages

You can install all the required software that is not part of OpenBSD base from the packages:

$ doas pkg_add -i php-mysqli php-curl php-gd php-zip pecl74-imagick mariadb-server

The PHP packages will present you a list of available versions. I recommend you choose the latest one available. At the time of writing this will be 7.4 on OpenBSD 6.7-release.

Configuration of PHP

You must make sure that the required PHP extensions are enabled. The easiest way to this is the following:

$ cd /etc/php-7.4.sample/
$ for i in * ; do doas ln -sf ../php-7.4.sample/$i ../php-7.4/ ; done

Configuration of MariaDB

I recommend that you create a dedicated login group for mysqld - although the package readme tells you that you only need it on busy servers. Append the following to /etc/login.conf:

mysqld:\
    :openfiles-cur=1024:\
    :openfiles-max=2048:\
    :tc=daemon:

Create the initial database for MariaDB:

$ doas mysql_install_db

Now you can start mysqld(8) and secure the installation:

$ doas rcctl enable mysqld
$ doas rcctl start mysqld
$ doas mysql_secure_installation

With httpd(8) chrooted to /var/www you must make sure that the connection to the socket of the MariaDB server is available within the chroot. First create a folder in which the socket will be placed:

$ doas install -d -m 0711 -o _mysql -g _mysql /var/www/var/run/mysql

Second you must change the socket path in /etc/my.cnf. There is a section [client-server] which covers that for both with the option socket:

[client-server]
socket = /var/www/var/run/mysql/mysql.sock

You must restart mysqld(8) in order to activate the new socket:

$ doas rcctl restart mysqld

The last step is to create the database for WordPress:

$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 3
Server version: 10.4.12-MariaDB OpenBSD port: mariadb-server-10.4.12v1

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on wordpress.* TO "wordpress"@"localhost"
    -> IDENTIFIED BY "password";
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> EXIT
Bye

Configuration of httpd(8)

I assume that you want to run WordPress as the only web application on your server. If this is the case, the following httpd.conf(5) is for you:

server "default" {
    listen on egress port http
    log style combined

    root "/wordpress"
    directory index index.php
    location "*.php" {
        fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
    }
}

types {
    include "/usr/share/misc/mime.types"
}

You may want to change the log style from combined to forwarded if you run httpd(8) behind a proxy that sets the headers X-Forwarded-For and X-Forwarded-Port.

In order to make name resolving work within the chroot(2) you should copy your hosts(5) file and your resolv.conf(5) file into it:

$ cd /var/www
$ doas mkdir etc
$ for f in hosts resolv.conf ; do doas cp /etc/$f etc/ ; done

Installation of WordPress First you should fetch the latest version of WordPress:

$ cd
$ ftp -o wordpress.tar.gz https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Next you can unpack the archive into the chroot of httpd(8), set the permissions and prepare for the configuration:

$ cd /var/www
$ doas tar xzf /home/user/wordpress.tar.gz
$ cd wordpress
$ find . -type d -exec doas chown www:daemon {} \;
$ find . -type f -exec doas chown www:bin {} \;
$ doas cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Edit the new file wp-config.php and add or set the following values:

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
define('DB_USER', 'wordpress');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost:/var/run/mysql/mysql.sock');

WordPress needs access to web servers for downloading of themes and plugins. If you need to use a proxy for accessing web pages you can add the following values to wp-config.php:

define('WP_PROXY_HOST', 'proxy.example.net');
define('WP_PROXY_PORT', '8080');
define('WP_PROXY_USERNAME', '');
define('WP_PROXY_PASSWORD', '');
define('WP_PROXY_BYPASS_HOSTS', 'localhost');

Start services and finish setup

Now it is time to actually start httpd(8) and php-fpm:

$ doas rcctl enable php74_fpm httpd
$ doas rcctl start php74_fpm httpd

If both daemons are started you can finish the setup of WordPress by opening the URL of your web server in a browser, e. g. http://www.example.net/:

Wordpress behind relayd reverse proxy

If you are using httpd with relayd you must add the following code to your wp-config.php for wordpress to render static files correctly.

 define('WP_SITEURL', 'https://domain.com');
 define('WP_HOME', 'https://domain.com');
 /** code needed for relayd **/
  $parsedUrl = parse_url(WP_HOME);
  $scheme = $parsedUrl['scheme'];
  if ($scheme == 'https') {$_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';}
  else {$_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'off';}
/** Database hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost:/var/run/mysql/mysql.sock');