Installation Of LAMP Stack

5 min readOct 25, 2020

I’m running all the steps in this tutorial with root privileges, so make sure you’re logged in as root:

sudo -s

1. Installing MySQL or MariaDB Database

To install MySQL 5.7, execute this command:

apt-get -y install mysql-server mysql-client

The packages mysql-server and mysql-client are so-called ‘meta-packages’, they install always the latest MySQL version that is available from Ubuntu. The latest version is currently MySQL 5.7. We have set the root password for MySQL already during installation, but I would like to remove the anonymous user and test database for security reasons. Run the mysql_secure_installation command below to achieve that.

mysql_secure_installationEnter password for user root: Enter the MySQL root password VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin?Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No:
Using existing password for root.
Change the password for root ? ((Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Choose 'y' here if you like to enable the password validation, I don't need that function, so I choose 'n' here. ... skipping.
By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
Success.Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
Success.By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
- Dropping test database...
Success.- Removing privileges on test database...
Success.Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes
made so far will take effect immediately.Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :y
Success.All done!

Run the following command to install MariaDB-server and client:

apt-get -y install mariadb-server mariadb-client

Now we set a root password for MariaDB.

mysql_secure_installation

You will be asked these questions:

Enter current password for root (enter for none): <-- press enter
Set root password? [Y/n] y
New password: <-- Enter the new MariaDB root password here
Re-enter new password: Repeat the password
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

2. Install Apache Web Server

Apache 2 is available as an Ubuntu package, therefore we can install it like this:

apt-get -y install apache2

3. Install PHP 7.2

We can install PHP 7.2 and the Apache PHP module as follows:

apt-get -y install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2

Then restart Apache:

systemctl restart apache2

Test PHP and get details about your PHP installation

The document root of the default web site is /var/www/html. We will now create a small PHP file (info.php) in that directory and call it in a browser. The file will display lots of useful details about our PHP installation, such as the installed PHP version

nano /var/www/html/info.php
<?php
phpinfo(); 
?>

Then change the owner of the info.php file to the www-data user and group.

chown -R /var/www/html/

Now we call that file in a browser

To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php7.2-mysql package. It’s a good idea to install some other PHP modules as well as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP modules like this

apt-cache search php-

Pick the ones you need and install them like this:

apt-get -y install php7.2-mysql php7.2-curl php7.2-gd php7.2-intl php-pear php-imagick php7.2-imap php-memcache  php7.2-pspell php7.2-recode php7.2-sqlite3 php7.2-tidy php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-xsl php7.2-mbstring php-gettext
systemctl restart apache2

6. Install the Opcache + APCu PHP cache to speed up PHP

PHP 7 ships with a built-in opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code, it has the name ‘opcache’ and is available in the package php7.0-opcache. It is strongly recommended to have an Opcache installed to speed up your PHP page. Besides opcache, I will install APCu which is a compatibility wrapper for opcache to provide the functions of the APC cache, an often used caching system in PHP 5.x versions and many CMS systems still use it.

Opcache and APCu can be installed as follows:

apt-get -y install php7.2-opcache php-apcu

Now restart Apache:

systemctl restart apache2

7. Enable the SSL website in apache

SSL/ TLS is a security layer to encrypt the connection between the web browser and your server. Most web browsers start to show sites as insecure today when the connection between the server and the web browser is not encrypted with SSL. In this chapter, I will show you how to secure your website with SSL.

Execute the following commands on your server to enable SSL (https://) support. Run

a2enmod ssl
a2ensite default-ssl

which enables the SSL module and adds a symlink in the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled folder to the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf to include it into the active apache configuration. Then restart apache to enable the new configuration:

systemctl restart apache2

8. Install phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a web interface through which you can manage your MySQL databases. It’s a good idea to install it:

apt-get -y install phpmyadminWeb server to configure automatically: Select the option: apache2Configure database for phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common? YesMySQL application password for phpmyadmin: Press enter, apt will create a random password automatically.

Root access to PHPMyAdmin

mysql -u root

Create a new user with the name “root” and password “tooba”. Replace the password “howtoforge” with a secure password in the commands below!

CREATE USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'tooba';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Afterward, you can access phpMyAdmin under https://localhost.phpmyadmin/