Installing a LAMP Server on Ubuntu
Ubuntu LAMP Server
When working on web development, I prefer to work within the privacy of my own development environment located on my computer. I'd rather make the majority of my mistakes where no one else can see them rather than out in the wild of the Internet. In order to have that private development environment, I install a LAMP configuration. If you're not familiar with LAMP, it stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, php (and/or Perl). LAMP is one of the most common web hosting platforms on the Internet, so it's a great environment to build and test your website.
Follow these step by step instructions to install and configure LAMP on Ubuntu 12.04-Precise Pangolin. This process has also been tested and works on Linux Mint 13, Linux Mint 14, Ubuntu 12.10-Quantal Quetzal and Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail. If you have a reasonably fast broadband connection, you should be done in less than half an hour.
Ubuntu LAMP Installation
The developers at Ubuntu have made it really easy to install and configure the packages for LAMP with a single terminal command. So open up a terminal window and let's get started.
Yes, you read that right. Don't leave out the caret (^) at the end. The command won't work without it. It's magical!
sudo apt-get install lamp-server^
The apt package manager will now show the packages to be installed and ask for confirmation. Hit <Enter> to confirm and continue with the install.
Install LAMP packages
After some time downloading packages, you will be prompted to set a password for the root user for MySQL.
Set MySQL root password
Enter the password you want to use for MySQL. Do not leave it blank. You'll be prompted a second time to confirm your password.
Confirm MySQL root password
After confirming your password, apt will continue installing the remaining packages.
Remaining LAMP package installation
Your LAMP installation is now complete. Wow, that was easy! Now there's just a few more steps to get things configured to make it easy to work with your system.
Test Apache
Open a web browser window and enter the address http://localhost/. You should see a web page that says "It Works!"
Apache works
Test php
Now that you've confirmed that the Apache web server works, you want to make sure that your php installation is working. To do that you need to create a file in /var/www called testing.php. You can use your favorite text editor as root, or you can use the following terminal command:
After that you need to restart the Apache web server.
Go back to your web browser and enter the address http://localhost/testing.php/ and you should see a page displaying information about your php installation.
php information
Fix Apache fully qualified domain name
You may have noticed an error message from Apache about the server's fully qualified domain name.
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
This is not a big deal, but if it bothers you, you can fix it with the following commands.
Now reload the Apache web server.
You should no longer see the error message.
Configure MySQL
Since this tutorial is for setting up a local web development environment, the MySQL needs to be bound to the localhost IP address. By default this should be 127.0.0.1 on your system. Just in case, you can verify it with these commands.
You should see something like
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
You now want to verify that you have the correct bind address in MySQL's my.cnf file.
You should see:
bind-address = 127.0.0.1
If the bind address doesn't match the one set for localhost on your system, you'll need to edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf as root to correct it.
Install phpMyAdmin
You don't need to install phpMyAdmin, but unless you're a wizard with SQL, you'll want it to do administrative tasks on your MySQL databases.
You can install phpMyAdmin with this terminal command:
You'll be prompted to confirm that you want to install the packages. Hit <Enter> to continue.
Install phpMyAdmin packages
You'll next be prompted to select a web server to configure with phpMyAdmin. This is important! Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to highlight apache2 and then used the space bar to select it. Then hit <Enter> to continue. Make sure to click the picture below to see it in full size to see what I'm describing.
Configure phpMyAdmin for Apache
The next screen will ask if you want to configure phpMyAdmin with a database called dbconfig-common. Select "Yes" and hit <Enter>.
phpMyAdmin configure dbconfig-common
You'll next be prompted to enter the MySQL root password you created earlier so that the new database can be created. So enter your MySQL root password and hit <Enter>.
Enter MySQL root password
The next prompt is to create a MySQL application password for phpMyAdmin. You can hit <Enter> if you want a random password to be created. I usually use the same password that I used for the MySQL root password. It's probably not the greatest idea in terms of security, but since this is for a closed development environment, it's probably low risk.
phpMyAdmin MySQL application password
Finally, you'll be prompted to confirm your MySQL application password. Type the same password as the previous step and hit <Enter>.
Confirm MySQL application password
Installing and configuring phpMyAdmin is now complete.
Testing phpMyAdmin
The last step is to make sure that phpMyAdmin is working. Open a web browser and enter the address http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. You should see a page that looks like this.
phpMyAdmin login screen
You should now be able to log in with the username root and the root password that you created earlier.
phpMyAdmin logged in
Congratulations, you are now done installing and configuring LAMP and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 12.04. You can now start building the local version of your website. If you are only working on one site, you can place your files in /var/www. Note that /var/www is owned by the user and group root, so you will either need to copy files over as root, or change the ownership and/or permissions of that directory so you can write your files there. As an alternative, you can do some additional Apache configuration so that you can keep your files somewhere under your home directory. You can even set up multiple sites that way.
If you've run into some problems, check out Fixing Common Problems with LAMP on Ubuntu. If things seem horribly broken and you want to start fresh, try Uninstalling LAMP from Ubuntu.
Comments
100 Responses to “Installing a LAMP Server on Ubuntu”
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excellent post. thank you
Excellent Tutorial.
How to set access permission for my website folder?
"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /ddusa/ on this server."
Good tutorial. Works for me 100%. Thanks
Hi...
Grt work.. How to use phpadmin in this..
Thanks!
excellent
Hi, Great tutorial. I recently reinstalled phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 12.04 and came across an issue with the configuration with Apache. I’ve written a post about it http://blog.peterfisher.me.uk/2012/06/27/solution-to-phpmyadmin-throwing-a-404-error/ basically the phpMyAdmin conf file was not inside the Apache configuration folder as the site was throwing 404 errors so I needed to symlink the phpMyAdmin conf to the the Apache config folder.
Yeah, phpMyAdmin will throw a 404 error if you forget to mark apache2 during installation. You can fix it easily by following this process: http://tuxtweaks.com/2012/05/fixing-common-problems-with-lamp-on-ubuntu/
There's no need to manually create a symlink.
Thank you so much!
I almost lost my job and your tutorial saved me. God bless your soul
!
James
You're very welcome. That's the best comment I've gotten to date!
Thank you sooooo much!!!
Iv'e used a couple different methods and this one is by far the best! If you could make a tut for setting up multi-sites with their own docRoots that would be Awesome....
Anthony
Thanks,
Good tutoriel. It worked find for me
I followed to the letter and got this in the web page while testing php:
Not Found
The requested URL /testing.php/ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80
Can someone help?
Try restarting Apache.
You might also need to clear your browser cache to make it display properly.
Thanks for responding, I did a apache2 restart and it came back with 'OK'. Cleaned the browser cache. Still got the same response as above. In the file testing.php it's supposed to read correct? And should I be making the php file exe? I didn't. Thanks.
hmm, that should have read:
In the file testing.php it's supposed to read "", correct?
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
OK so I used Chrome instead of Firefox and testing php worked. I got the php information screen above. but, I installed phpMyAdmin and when I type http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ as the url i get. I am positive I did it correctly.
Not Found
The requested URL /phpmyadmin/ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80
It works!! I hit enter with a block in the apache2 selection, and not a star. Anyway thanks very much!!
Glad you got it working. Enjoy
Hi again, do you see any issues installing WordPress after this?
WordPress runs pretty well on this setup. The only issue I've had was that automatic updates weren't working, but I think that's been resolved.
I've got an older post about installing it, but it's not the latest version. http://tuxtweaks.com/2009/11/how-to-install-wordpress-on-ubuntu-part-1/
Awesome, thank you again.
very very gooooooooooooooooood
tnx you for your post
it is very help me
Thanks a ton and god bless all of us for sharing and caring.
By far the best walk-through hands down. And Fast. Thanks again.
So simply explained (both, page one and two)
thanks a lot this is what i needed