Installing LAMP on Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 (Lucid Lynx, Maverick Meerkat)
If you're developing websites, it's nice to be able to test your code in the privacy of your own computer rather that out in the public internet. In order to do that, you'll need to install a web server on your development computer. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, php) is one of the most common web hosting platforms, so it's a perfect environment for you to build and test your website code. If you carefully follow these step by step instructions, you'll have your own Ubuntu LAMP web server on installed, configured, and running in no time.
Install LAMP Web Server on Ubuntu
The Ubuntu developers have made it easy to install and configure the LAMP server packages with a single command. Simply open a terminal window and enter the following.
No, that's not a typo. Please make sure to include the caret (^). The command will not work without it.
The apt package manager will show all the packages that need to be installed. Hit <Enter> to confirm that you want to install them.
You will then be prompted to change the password for the root user on the MySQL database.
Set MySQL root password
Enter the password you want. You'll be prompted to enter it a second time to confirm.
After you confirm your password, apt will continue to install the rest of the packages.
Congratulations, your LAMP installation is now complete! That was the easy part, now you need to get a few things configured to make your system easy to work with.
Test Apache
Open a web browser and enter the address http://localhost/. You should see a web page that says "It Works!"
Test php
Now that you know Apache works, you'll want to test the php installation. You'll need to create a file in /var/www called testing.php. Open a terminal and enter:
Enter the following line into the text editor, save the file and exit.
Next, restart Apache with the following terminal command:
Now go back to your web browser and enter the address http://localhost/testing.php/. You should see a page displaying version information for your php installation.
php Information
Configure MySQL
Since I'm installing LAMP for a web development environment, I want the MySQL database to be bound to the localhost IP address. This should be 127.0.0.1 for your system. You can verify it with this terminal command.
You'll now want to verify that the correct bind address is set up in MySQL's my.cnf file.
You should see a line that looks like this:
bind-address = 127.0.0.1
If the IP address doesn't match the one for your system, you'll need to edit the my.cnf file to correct it.
Install phpMyAdmin
You don't need to install phpMyAdmin, but it's a much easier way to get in and adjust things in your MySQL database if you're not familiar with MySQL's commands. You can install phpMyAdmin from the command line with:
The installation will prompt you to select a web server for automatic configuration.
phpMyAdmin Setup
This is important! Use the space bar on your keyboard to select apache2. Make sure there's a * next to apache2 like the picture below and then hit <Enter>. (Click the picture to enlarge it and see what I'm talking about.)
phpMyAdmin Setup: select apache2
The next screen will explain some information about database configuration. Hit the <Enter> key to move on.
phpMyAdmin database config
Another screen will come up asking if you want to configure a new database called dbconfig-common. Since this is a fresh installation, use the <Tab> key to select Yes and hit <Enter>.
phpMyAdmin dbconfig-common
You'll be prompted next to enter the MySQL root password. Enter the MySQL root password that you created earlier, hit <Tab> to select Ok and hit <Enter>.
MySQL root password
You'll then be prompted to enter a MySQL application password for phpmyadmin. You can hit <Enter> and a random password will be generated. I chose to use the same password that I used for the root MySQL password.
MySQL application password
If you enter your own password, a password confirmation screen will come up. Confirm your password.
MySQL application password confirmation
Your phpMyAdmin installation and configuration is now complete.
Testing phpMyAdmin
Open your web browser and enter the address http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. You should see a page like this.
phpMyAdmin log in
You can log in with the username root and the root password that you created earlier.
Logged into phpMyAdmin
Congratulations, you're now ready to start building your local website. If you're only working on one site you can put all of your files into /var/www. If you'll be working on multiple sites you may want to consider some additional Apache configuration to keep things neat and clean on you system.
Comments
499 Responses to “Installing LAMP on Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 (Lucid Lynx, Maverick Meerkat)”
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Excellent, easy and accurate - good job m8!
Wow, fastest LAMP installation in history. Thanks.
Excellent. This is it! Thank you.
Excellent Tank You And Kissssss
great tut but i got a problem. i did as it is here, now it says that i got latest version of phpmyadmin, but when i navigate to localhost/phpmyadmin in my browser, i see as follows
Not Found
The requested URL /phpmyadmin/ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.16 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80
Can you please tell me why is that? help me please
Follow the directions in this comment: http://tuxtweaks.com/2010/04/installing-lamp-on-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/comment-page-1/#comment-2952
Thank you Linerd for your reply. I selected apache2 during the installation, but i did the instructions sudo dpkg-reconfigure phpmyadmin and reloaded apache with sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload and still the same. Everything is installed, but does not work. I am kinda new to ubuntu, maybe it is a wrong directory or something? Thanks again
Thanks a lot. Great job. Works perfectly.
A nice trough tutorial.
Very well explained, and fitting to most flavours of linux.
I learnt, while at the same time was able to quickly finish the installation process.
I'm bookmarking this site.
Thank you, it worked flawlessy even on LUBUNTU
Thank you very much
Can confirm that works even with Lubuntu 11.04
Short and to the point. The simplest LAMP installation i've found so far. It works great for a development box. Thank!
Good! I followed all steps, however i had issues with testing.php file. When i navigate to http://localhost/testing.php the file just downloads. So, PhP is not really interpreting the file?
After cleaning the browser's cache it worked
Worked perfectly for me. Thanks very much.
Worked great, thanks for the help
I can feel the true spirit of open source in you. good job!
Worked great, Thanks a lot
Is there any way to install it to usb drive
I followed this cookbook but the "test php" step failed. Namely, when I browsed to localhost/testing.php I got a blank screen. I found that the permissions on testing.php were 600. When I changed them to 644 it worked. Now I'm not sure if they are supposed to be 644 or if it's supposed to work with 600 permissions and something is wrong with my installation.
On my system, the test.php file already was set to 644 permissions. When I changed the permissions to 600, I also got a blank screen. I believe that permissions of 644 are correct.
Thanks a million worked great