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!
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”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe by email
In command line there is such error (...-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install lamp-server^):
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package lamp-server^
E: Couldn't find task 'lamp-server'
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'lamp-server^'
Please, help me to start installing
Is tasksel installed on your system? Try
You don't need the "^" in this version of the command. If tasksel is not installed, install it with
then try again.
no, it didn't help/
The problem was solved when I selected all repositories' checks at Software Ubuntu Center (Edit->Software Sources)
Thanks for letting us know the solution.
Thanks for the very clear directions. So, if I were setting up a Linux/MySQL/PHP server for a public site, how would these directions differ? It seems like the applications and installs would be the same, but perhaps some steps or best practices would be different?
Forgive the dumb question. I'm relatively new to Ubuntu and I'd love to hear any suggestions for setting up and tuning a production box.
thank you
The best article ever, thank you so much!
everything works fine until i try to test phpadmin. it says not found on this server
any ideas?
Take a look at this post: http://tuxtweaks.com/2012/05/fixing-common-problems-with-lamp-on-ubuntu/
It should help you get things straightened out.
This is exactly what I was looking for. I just hope it works. Thank you for covering that this is used for a local environment!
Thanks for such clear directions
Hello,
How do change the location of my Sites folder, I keep getting permission errors; I was following a tutorial on another site. I must be misunderstanding something; when Change the DocumentRoot and Directory to point to the new location I get permission errors in my web browser.
Instead of the default site location /var/www/ I want my Sites folder to be /home/accountname/Sites/
This post may provide what you're looking for:
http://tuxtweaks.com/2009/07/how-to-configure-apache-linux/
This is exactly what i was searching. Really a precise method to configure LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, Php) on ubuntu 12.04
Thanks for clear description,
I completely followed the above instructions, but i can't open phpmyadmin. When i'm trying to open, it says 404 error. How could i get phpmyadmin
Check out this page. It should get it working for you.
http://tuxtweaks.com/2012/05/fixing-common-problems-with-lamp-on-ubuntu/
Hi Linerd,
Thanks for your response. But still my problem is alive. I can run http://localhost/testing.php but not PHPMYADMIN at localhost., when i'm trting this command
echo "ServerName localhost" | sudo tee /etc/apache2/conf.d/fqdn
It says,
tee: apache2/conf.d/fqdn No such file directory
What can i do?
If it is a simple problem,then I'm Sorry to ask, Because I'm fresher for UBANTU 12.04
Finally I got it by using
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow phpmyadmin
sudo ln -s /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Thanks!!! Your comment saved my time
Getting this message:
p@laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install tasksel
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
p@laptop:~$
How can I install tasksel?
thank you very much. it was a very well written and smooth tutorial. thank you again.
Awesomeness, thx so much!
Thanks,it worked very well!
Hi every one,
I'm using ubuntu 12.04, and i'.m trying to save .php files on the root folder i.e., file:///var/www/
But, when i'm going to save my file it's shows the following errors., i.e., it doesn't saves my file.
What can I do?
The errors are.,,
Could not save file hi.php
Error opening file '/var/www/hi.php': Permission denied
File disappeared from disk
File name: file:///var/www/hi.php
Great! Thanks so much. Took me all of ten minutes to set up my local sites thanks to your fine directions,,,
I tried the above method, but when I test my "localhost/testing.php" the shown window does not appear, instead the "testing.php" file gets saved in my Downloads folder.
Any ideas how can I fix this?
Make sure to restart apache:
You may need to restart your web browser as well.
The next screen will ask if you want to configure phpMyAdmin with a database called dbconfig-common. Select "Yes" and hit .
Following instructions on another website, I selected "No". Thereafter, I discovered the phpmyadmin not available. Please what can I do?
Try
and you should get the opportunity to say yes this time.
Take a look at http://tuxtweaks.com/2012/05/fixing-common-problems-with-lamp-on-ubuntu/ for screenshots and full instructions.
Thanks man. It worked alright. I owe you one.
thanks....
Thanks for this post, Can anyone tell me how can i make permission for var/www folder, so that i can easily create and edit any file of www folder?
The folder is owned by a user/group called www-data. Adding your user ID to that group should give you permission to create and edit files there.