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LAMP Server on Fedora 12

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This guide provides step-by-step instructions for installing a full-featured LAMP stack on a Fedora 12 system. In this guide, you will be instructed on setting up Apache, MySQL, and PHP. If you don’t feel that you will need MySQL or PHP, please don’t feel obligated to install them.

System Configuration

It is important to make sure that your system is properly configured before installing Apache. In particular, you need to make sure that your system is up to date and that you have set the correct hostname, as well as set hosts in your /etc/hosts file. If you haven’t configured these, you should follow the directions in the getting started guide. Additionally, if you haven’t configured your timezone yet, follow the instructions in our administration basics guide.

If your system is configured and up to date, you may begin by installing Apache on your Linode. This guide assumes that you are logged in as the root superuser on your Linode.

Install and Configure the Apache Web Server

The Apache Web Server is a very popular choice for serving web pages. While many alternatives have appeared in the last few years, Apache remains a powerful option that we recommend for most uses.

Make sure your system is up to date by issuing the following command:

yum update

To install the current version of the Apache web server (in the 2.x series) use the following commands:

yum install httpd
/sbin/chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

The main configuration directives for Apache are contained in the httpd.conf file, which is located at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. We advise you to make a backup of this file into your home directory, like so:

cp /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ~/httpd.conf.backup

By default, all files ending in the .conf extension in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ are treated as configuration files, and we recommend placing your non-standard configuration options in files in these directories. Regardless of how you choose to organize your configuration files, making regular backups of known working states is highly recommended.

Now we’ll configure virtual hosting so that we can host multiple domains (or subdomains) with the server. These websites can be controlled by different users, or by a single user, as you prefer.

Before we get started, we suggest that you combine all configuration on virtual hosting into a single file called vhost.conf located in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory. Open this file in your favorite text editor, and we’ll begin by setting up virtual hosting.

Configure Virtual Hosting

There are different ways to set up virtual hosts, however we recommend the method below.

By default, Apache listens on all IP addresses available to it. We must configure it to listen only on addresses we specify. Even if you only have one IP, it is still a good idea to tell Apache what IP address to listen on in case you decide to add more.

Begin by adding the following line to the virtual hosting configuration file:

/etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf 
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NameVirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80

Be sure to replace 12.34.56.78 with your own IP address.

Configure Virtual Hosts

Now we will create virtual host entries for each site that we need to host with this server. Here are two examples for sites at “example.com” and “example.org”.

/etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf 
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<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80>
     ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
     ServerName example.com
     ServerAlias www.example.com
     DocumentRoot /srv/www/example.com/public_html/
     ErrorLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log
     CustomLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80>
     ServerAdmin webmaster@example.org
     ServerName example.org
     ServerAlias www.example.org
     DocumentRoot /srv/www/example.org/public_html/
     ErrorLog /srv/www/example.org/logs/error.log
     CustomLog /srv/www/example.org/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Notes regarding this example configuration:

  • All of the files for the sites that you host will be located in directories that exist underneath /srv/www. You can symbolically link these directories into other locations if you need them to exist in other places.
  • ErrorLog and CustomLog entries are suggested for more fine-grained logging, but are not required. If they are defined (as shown above), the logs directories must be created before you restart Apache.

Before you can use the above configuration, you’ll need to create the specified directories. For the above configuration, you can do this with the following commands:

mkdir -p /srv/www/example.com/public_html
mkdir /srv/www/example.com/logs

mkdir -p /srv/www/example.org/public_html
mkdir /srv/www/example.org/logs

After you’ve set up your virtual hosts, issue the following command to run Apache for the first time:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Assuming that you have configured the DNS for your domain to point to your Linode’s IP address, virtual hosting for your domain should now work. Remember that you can create as many virtual hosts with Apache as you need.

Any time you change an option in your vhost.conf file, or any other Apache configuration remember to reload the configuration with the following command:

/etc/init.d/httpd reload

Install and Configure MySQL Database Server

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) and is a popular component in contemporary web development tool chains. It is used to store data for many popular applications, including WordPress and Drupal.

Install MySQL

The first step is to install the mysql-server package, which is accomplished by the following command:

yum install mysql-server

If you want to run MySQL by default when the system boots, which is a typical setup, execute the following command:

/sbin/chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on

Use the chkconfig command to setup runlevels as needed.

Now you can start the mysql daemon (mysqld) with the following command:

service mysqld start

MySQL should be ready to configure and run. While you shouldn’t need to change the configuration file, note that it is located at /etc/my.cnf for future reference.

Configure MySQL and Set Up MySQL databases

After installing MySQL, it’s recommended that you run mysql_secure_installation, a program that helps secure MySQL. While running mysql_secure_installation, you will be presented with the opportunity to change the MySQL root password, remove anonymous user accounts, disable root logins outside of localhost, and remove test databases. It is recommended that you answer yes to these options. If you are prompted to reload the privilege tables, select yes. Run the following command to execute the program:

mysql_secure_installation

Next, we’ll create a database and grant your users permissions to use databases. First, log in to MySQL:

mysql -u root -p

Enter MySQL’s root password, and you’ll be presented with a prompt where you can issue SQL statements to interact with the database.

To create a database and grant your users permissions on it, issue the following command. The semi-colons (; characters) at the end of the lines are crucial for ending the commands. Your command should look like this:

create database webdata;
grant all on webdata.* to 'username' identified by 'password';

In the example above, webdata is the name of the database, username is the username, and password password. Note that database user names and passwords are only used by scripts connecting to the database, and that database user account names need not (and perhaps should not) represent actual user accounts on the system.

With that completed, you’ve successfully configured MySQL and you may now pass these database credentials on to your users. To exit the MySQL database administration utility issue the following command:

quit

With Apache and MySQL installed you are now ready to move on to installing PHP to provide scripting support for your web pages.

Installing and Configuring PHP

PHP makes it possible to produce dynamic and interactive pages using your own scripts and popular web development frameworks. Furthermore, many popular web applications like WordPress are written in PHP. If you want to be able to develop your websites using PHP, you must first install it.

Fedora includes packages for installing PHP from the terminal. Issue the following command:

yum install php php-pear

Once PHP5 is installed, we’ll need to tune the configuration file located in /etc/php.ini to enable more descriptive errors, logging, and better performance. These modifications provide a good starting point if you’re unfamiliar with PHP configuration.

Make sure that the following values are set, and relevant lines are uncommented (comments are lines beginning with a semi-colon (; character)):

/etc/php.ini 
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error_reporting = E_COMPILE_ERROR|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR|E_ERROR|E_CORE_ERROR
display_errors = Off
log_errors = On
error_log = /var/log/php.log
max_execution_time = 300
memory_limit = 64M
register_globals = Off

If you need support for MySQL in PHP, then you must install the php5-mysql package with the following command:

yum install php-mysql

You can test PHP by creating a file with the following contents under your “public_html” directory:

/srv/www/example.com/public\\_html/test.php 
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<?php phpinfo(); ?>

When you view this page in your browser, you should be presented with detailed PHP configuration information.

Restart Apache

Finally, restart Apache to make sure everything is loaded correctly:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.