I’ve readed a lot of tutorials of using nginx and php-fpm.
I’m still using apache2 much more due the .htaccess easiness that allow with rewriting and password protect (despite using other modules like mod_svn, etc)

Even I haven’t found a 100% transparent solution like ngninx, here is what I’m using to work with php-fpm and apache2. Here are the steps in debian:

• echo "deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
• apt-get update
• apt-get install libapache2-mod-fastcgi apache2-mpm-worker php5-fpm php5-common php5-cli
• do all the apt-get of all php5-* modules you want
• Add the following to a new file: /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/fpm.load

  AddType application/x-httpd-fastphp5 .php .phtml
  Action application/x-httpd-fastphp5 /fast-cgi-fake-handler

• in /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf change:

  listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

  for:

  ; listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
   listen = /var/run/php-fpm.socket

  This will enable the unix socket which should be faster

• /etc/init.d/php-fpm restart
• /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

With this you will be able to use php-fpm through a /fast-cgi-fake-handler so for example in your /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default your file will look like:

FastCGIExternalServer /var/www/fast-cgi-fake-handler -socket /var/run/php-fpm.socket
DocumentRoot /var/www

The system will rewrite /index.php path into: /fast-cgi-fake-handler/index.php which will be passed to the fastcgi

This have two problems:

1. You need to set the FastCGIExternalServer like ${DOCUMENT_ROOT}/fast-cgi-fake-handler in all your virtual hosts to make it work
2. Zend framework and other which use the consume all url’s pattern to pass through index.php will not work as will generate an endless loop, there is an easy solution, in your .htaccess use after RewriteEngine On:

   RewriteRule ^fast-cgi-fake-handler/ - [L,NC]

   this will skip processing all urls which contain “fast-cgi-fake-handler” at start; or of course use a RewriteCond to avoid this.