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LAMP Server on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty)

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This guide provides step by step instructions for installing a full featured LAMP stack on an Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) system. The 11.04 release will be supported with security updates until October of 2012.

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. Make sure you’re logged into your Linode as the “root” user via SSH before proceeding with these instructions.

Set the Hostname

Before you begin installing and configuring the components described in this guide, please make sure you’ve followed our instructions for setting your hostname. Issue the following commands to make sure it is set properly:

hostname
hostname -f

The first command should show your short hostname, and the second should show your fully qualified domain name (FQDN).

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. Issue the following command to install Apache:

apt-get install apache2

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.

Configure Name-based Virtual Hosts

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.

First, create a file in the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ directory for each virtual host that you want to set up. Name each file with the domain for which you want to provide virtual hosting. See the following example configurations for the hypothetical “example.com” and “example.org” domains. Substitute your own domain names for those shown below.

/etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com 
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<VirtualHost *: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>
/etc/apache2/sites-available/example.org 
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<VirtualHost *: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. Substitute your own domain names for those shown below.

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 commands:

a2ensite example.com
a2ensite example.org

This command symbolically links your virtual host file from sites-available to the sites-enabled directory. Finally, before you can access your sites you must reload Apache with the following command:

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

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.

The a2dissite command is the inverse of a2ensite. For example, if you wanted to disable the example.com site, you would issue the following command:

a2dissite example.com

After enabling, disabling, or modifying any part of your Apache configuration, you will need to reload the Apache configuration again with the /etc/init.d/apache2 reload command. You can create as many virtual hosting files as you need to support the domains that you want to host with your Linode.

Install and Configure the MySQL Database Server

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) and is a popular component of 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:

apt-get install mysql-server

During the installation you will be prompted for a password. Choose something secure (use letters, numbers, and non-alphanumeric characters) and record it for future reference.

At this point 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/mysql/my.cnf for future reference.

Configure MySQL and Set Up 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, you may 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 MySQL 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. Note, the semi-colons (;) 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';
flush privileges;

In the example above, webdata is the name of the database, username is the username, and password is the 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.

Install and Configure 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.

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

apt-get install php5 php-pear

Once PHP5 is installed, you’ll need to tune the configuration file located in /etc/php5/apache2/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 (;)):

/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini 
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max_execution_time = 30
memory_limit = 64M
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
register_globals = Off

After making changes to the PHP configuration file, restart Apache by issuing the following command:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

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

apt-get install php5-mysql

To install the php5-suhosin package, which provides additional security for PHP 5 applications (recommended), issue the following command:

apt-get install php5-suhosin

Restart Apache to make sure everything is loaded correctly:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Congratulations! You’ve set up a LAMP server on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty). Happy serving!

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.