Olaf, I've got the same problem with Lenny, resolved doing this below: can you try do add the var.PID part in the fastcgi.server section? "socket" => "/tmp/php-cgi.socket" + var.PID (ref: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-do-graceful-restart-lighttpd-php-server/ ) Many thanks, P.