So I followed the guide in the Linode Library for installing a LEMP server on Ubuntu 11.10, but when I type in the URL my browser tries to download the actual text file 'index.php'

I have a good feeling that 'index.php' just isn't being handled by FastCGI, so where should I look/check to see where everything went south?

You can find some good information about PHP & fastcgi here: http://www.fastcgi.com/drupal/node/5?q=node/10

Kind regards
Michael

== Full time system administrator for hire ==

Post the contents of your nginx configuration file that's serving the site. It's probably a misconfiguration.

_________________
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How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
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Below is my nginx.conf, where I have replaced the domain with ampersands for anonymity (maybe I'm paranoid ). I will post the virtual host configuration in the next post. Enjoy.

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
   worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
   include      mime.types;
   default_type  application/octet-stream;

   #log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
   #                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
   #                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

   #access_log  logs/access.log  main;

   sendfile        on;
   #tcp_nopush    on;

   #keepalive_timeout  0;
   keepalive_timeout  65;

   #gzip  on;

   include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/&&&&&&&&.org;




   # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
   #
   #server {
   #    listen      8000;
   #    listen      somename:8080;
   #    server_name  somename  alias  another.alias;

   #    location / {
   #        root  html;
   #        index  index.html index.htm;
   #    }
   #}


   # HTTPS server
   #
   #server {
   #    listen      443;
   #    server_name  localhost;

   #    ssl                  on;
   #    ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
   #    ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

   #    ssl_session_timeout  5m;

   #    ssl_protocols  SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
   #    ssl_ciphers  HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
   #    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers  on;

   #    location / {
   #        root  html;
   #        index  index.html index.htm;
   #    }
   #}

}

Here is my virtual host configuration, again with the domain replaced by ampersands.

server {

listen    80 default_server;
       access_log /srv/www/&&&&&&&&.org/logs/access.log;
       error_log /srv/www/&&&&&&&&.org/logs/error.log;
       root /srv/www/&&&&&&&&.org/public_html;
server_name     &&&&&&&&.org www.&&&&&&&&.org;



location / {
               index    index.htm index.html index.php;
}

location \.php$ {
               try_files $uri =404;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /srv/www/&&&&&&&&.org/public_html$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}

location \.php$ { 

should be

location ~ \.php$ { 

You missed the ~

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

Damnit haha this worked. Thank you very much.