My brother called to talk about moving his company’s web development and testing environment in-house. They had already downloaded Ubuntu but didn’t know how to get Apache, MySQL, or PHP installed. I sent him one command and 5 minutes later, they had a fully functional LAMP stack running.
THIS POST IS VERY OLD. THERE ARE BETTER RESOURCES OUT THERE LIKE: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-the-apache-web-server-on-ubuntu-22-04
Below is a laundry list of commands to help you configure the perfect Ubuntu server.
Last Update: 12/16/2019 – local copy and user permission updates
First things first: update
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
LAMP Stack (Apache, Mysql, PHP)
This will install the LAMP stack in one command. (Note: this will not include the latest versions of things, but is the easiest way. See below to obtain bleeding edge things)
$ sudo apt-get install lamp-server^
PHP 7.1
$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install -y php7.1
http://askubuntu.com/questions/705880/how-to-install-php-7
Apache 2.4+
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install apache2
MySQL 5.7+
$ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/mysql-5.7 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.7
NGINX
NGINX is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy, as well as an IMAP/POP3 proxy server.
$ sudo apt-get install nginx
NGINX doesn’t start on its own, so:
$ sudo service nginx start
Learn about configuring NGINX as a front-end proxy with Apache
phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin allows you to manage your MySQL Database via web browser.
$ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
Choose Apache and then YES for dbconfig-common. If you ever need to edit phpMyAdmin config:
$ sudo nano /etc/dbconfig-common/phpmyadmin.conf
Webmin
Webmin is an open-source server management tool much like cPanel.
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Scroll to the bottom and paste the following lines then save:
$ deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib $ deb http://webmin.mirror.somersettechsolutions.co.uk/repository sarge contrib
Import the key
$ wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc $ sudo apt-key add jcameron-key.asc
Update the sources list
$ sudo apt-get update
Run the install
$ sudo apt-get install webmin
Start Webmin
$ sudo /etc/webmin/start
When it’s finished, open Firefox or Chrome and type:
http://localhost:10000/ (or if on a network) http://your-server-ip:10000/
If you’ve installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu (or if you don’t know your password) you can set a new one:
$ sudo passwd ubuntu
You’ll be prompted to enter your new password twice. Now, you can login to Webmin.
ProFTPd
ProFTPd is a high-performance FTP server.
sudo apt-get install proftpd
(I always select “standalone”) Turn on Passive FTP via Webmin: Servers –> ProFTPD server –> Virtual Servers –> Default Server –> Networking Options
Masquerade as address = your-server-outside-ip
PASV Port Range: 1024-1088
Sendmail
sudo apt-get install sendmail
PostFix Mail
sudo apt-get install postfix
Select “Internet Site” and then enter the domain name you want the Reverse DNS entry to be. BTW: To avoid your server being blacklisted, get a reverse DNS entry!
Alternative PHP Cache (APC)
APC is a PHP opcode cacher and works by caching PHP objects, functions, and database queries into your server’s RAM. If you run a WordPress website – then it takes full advantage of APC out-of-the-box. See my post on The Perfect APC Configuration Note, APC is no longer available in PHP 5.5+ as it’s now called opcache.
sudo apt-get install php-apc
By default, Ubuntu will install this from a repository that has an outdated version. To install the latest version of APC:
sudo apt-get install make
sudo apt-get install libpcre3-dev
sudo apt-get install php-pear
sudo pecl install apc
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Uninstall APC
sudo pecl uninstall apc
Memcached
Memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system. However, it can work together with multiple servers (unlike APC).
sudo apt-get install memcached sudo apt-get install php-pear sudo pecl install memcache
Check to see if Memcached is running
ps aux | grep memcached
Fail2Ban
Fail2Ban scans log files (e.g. /var/log/apache/error_log) and automatically bans IPs that show malicious signs for exploits.
sudo apt-get install fail2ban
RSYNC
RSYNC is an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer.
sudo apt-get install rsync
Server-to-server transfers with RSYNC
rsync -zvr /path/to/local/folder [email protected]:path/to/remove/folder
ImageMagick
ImageMagick is a software suite to create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images.
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
Image Optimization
First, install both jpegoptim and optipng.
sudo apt-get install jpegoptim optipng
CD into a directory that has images and type:
jpegoptim *.jpg -p -v -t -T 10
Optimize PNGs
optipng *.png
Icecast2
Icecast is a streaming audio server. If you ever wanted to have your own web radio station (like Shoutcast) this is the software.
sudo apt-get install icecast2
Configure Icecast2. Mainly, setting up your passwords and default port.
sudo nano /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml
Enable init.d script. Scroll to the bottom and change enable=true
sudo nano /etc/default/icecast2/
Start icecast2
sudo /etc/init.d/icecast2 start
If you left the default port as 8000 then you can view your Icecast2 Server
http://your-server.com:8000/
Munin
Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool that can help analyze resource trends and “what just happened to kill our performance?” problems.
sudo apt-get install php-cli
Now, this is a single server setup, so let’s install munin and munin-node
sudo apt-get install munin munin-node
Configure Munin:
sudo nano /etc/munin/munin.conf
The first thing you should see is the operating directories. We need to change one of them:
# dbdir /var/lib/munin # htmldir /var/cache/munin/www # logdir /var/log/munin # rundir /var/run/munin
to
# dbdir /var/lib/munin htmldir /var/www/munin # logdir /var/log/munin # rundir /var/run/munin
Now let’s edit apache.conf
sudo nano /etc/munin/apache.conf
Delete everything inside apache.conf and just add:
Alias /munin /var/www/munin
Move the web files to /var/www/munin
sudo mv /var/cache/munin/www/ /var/www/munin
Set permissions
sudo chown munin.munin -R /var/www/munin
Restart Munin
sudo /etc/init.d/munin-node restart
Finally, restart Apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
http://your-server.com/munin
Cacti
Cacti graphical server monitor provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box.
sudo apt-get install cacti-spine
Choose YES for dbconfig-common and Apache2. When finished you need to configure:
http://your-server-ip-address/cacti
Default user & pass: admin / admin Remove cacti
sudo apt-get remove cacti
BMON
bmon is a bandwidth monitor capable of retrieving statistics from various input modules.
sudo apt-get install bmon
When it’s finished installing:
bmon
Zip and Unzip
In my experience ZIP is great for creating archives for sharing via email or ftp. It’s a universal format that almost everyone can open. I would NOT use ZIP for file backups. For large backups, see 7ZIP or TAR below.
sudo apt-get install zip
Zip up a folder:
zip uploads-backup.zip /wp-content/uploads
Unzip (extract) an archive:
unzip uploads-backup.zip /wp-content/uploads
7ZIP
7ZIP is a very popular archiving program with excellent compression. Plus, it’s open source and supports multiple operating systems.
sudo apt-get install p7zip
Create an archive
7za a uploads-backup.7z /wp-content/uploads
Extract an archive
7za e uploads-backup.7z /wp-content/uploads
TAR (Tape Archive)
TAR – is the preferred way to handle file backups. I’ve read, the maximum allowed file size only depends on your hard drive. A disk formatted with FAT32 for example only allows 2GB. You can also compress TAR using GZIP or BZ2.
tar -cvf uploads-backup.tar /wp-content --exclude='uploads/*'
GZIP – good compression, is very fast. Note: .tar.gz and .tgz are the same:
tar -cvzf uploads-backup.tgz /wp-content --exclude='uploads/*'
BZ2 – excellent compression, but slower. I find BZ2 works best if you’re archiving a smaller directory. Note: .tar.bz2 and .tbz are the same:
tar -cvfj plugins-backup.tbz /wp-content --exclude='uploads/*'
Untar (extract) an archive and if tarball already contains a directory name, strip it:
tar -xvf -backup.tar -C /DESTINATION/FOLDER --strip-components=1
If you want to tarball the directory you’re currently in, with say, gzip:
tar -cvzf backup.tar.gz .
Other handy commands:
View all running services
service --status-all
Create a MySQL database backup
mysqldump --databases db1 db2 db3 > database_backup.sql
Restart PHP 7.0
sudo restart php7.0-fpm
Move files from one directory to another
mv -v /source-dir/* /destination-dir/
Copy files from one directory to another
cp -a /source-dir/. /destination-dir/
Note: You may need to reset permissions since they will be copied over also.
sudo chmod -R 775 /PATH/TO/FOLDER
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /PATH/TO/FOLDER
Set the server timezone
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
Add a user to the list of sudoers (you have to be logged in as root, or now the sudo password)
sudo adduser username sudo
Download files
wget http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/uploads-backup.tar
Local-to-server transfers with SCP
scp path/to/local-file [email protected]:/path/to/server/folder
Server-to-local transfers with SCP (transfer entire directories)
scp -r use[email protected]:/path/to/server/folder /path/to/local/folder
Server-to-local transfers with SCP (transfer single file)
scp u[email protected]:/path/to/server/file /path/to/local/folder
Server-to-server transfers with SCP
scp -P 22 -r u[email protected]:path/to/remote/folder path/to/local/folder
Server-to-server transfer with SCP into the current directory (Read more about SCP)
scp -P 22 -r [email protected]:path/to/remote/folder .
List size of directories
du -a -h --max-depth=1 | sort -hr
Set a password
sudo passwd ubuntu
Edit PHP.ini
sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
Restart Apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Set Recursive Permissions for your websites directory
sudo chmod -R 775 /PATH/TO/FOLDER
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /PATH/TO/FOLDER
Block IP address using IPTABLES
Single IP
sudo iptables -I INPUT -s 192.168.100.1 -j DROP
IP Range
sudo iptables -I INPUT -s 192.168.100.0/24 -j DROP
You can also manage IPTABLES (e.g., the linux firewall) via Webmin under Networking -> Linux Firewall
Manage packages
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get autoremove
Remove LAMP
sudo apt-get purge libapache2-mod-auth-mysql phpmyadmin sudo apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server-core-5.1 sudo apt-get purge apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5 sudo apt-get autoremove
Serve your websites from an EBS volume
This practice has saved my butt on more than one occasion. Rather than use the given storage attached to the EC2 instance, I always create a 1TB EBS volume and mount it as /public_html/. That way, if your EC2 instance crashes…you’re web site files will not. For this, we’ll assume our attached EBS volume is /xvdf/.
Check out the official documentation from Amazon AWS
First you must be logged in as root:
su
Make sure you’re in the file system root:
cd
Now, let’s list all the attached drives. You should see /dev/xvda1, /dev/xvdb, /dev/xvdf/ etc…
sudo fdisk -l
Let’s make a directory (such as /public_html/)
mkdir /public_html/
Finally, let’s mount our EBS volume:
mount -t ext4 /dev/xvdf /public_html/
Now you can serve your websites from an EBS volume!
Benchmark the CPU
time for i in {0..10000}; do for j in {0..1000}; do :; done; done
More resources:
- What is Amazon EC2? (official user guides for Amazon AWS)
- Setup Virtual Hosts in Webmin
- http://www.ubuntugeek.com/step-by-step-ubuntu-11-04-natty-lamp-server-setup.html
- http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies
- http://www.techtickle.com/how-to-setup-lamp-on-ubuntu.html
- List of PHP accelerators
- Distributed Caching with Memcached
- Run your own webradio station with Icecast
- How to recover a Linux EC2 Instance after being locked out
- Install LAMP on Amazon EC2
- Install and configure Cacti Monitor Tool in Ubuntu
- Install NGINX instead of Apache
- Install/Setup WordPress on Amazon EC2
- RSYNC for transfers
- RSYNC commands
- Using Fail2Ban with IP Tables
- http://www.tecmint.com/optimize-and-compress-jpeg-or-png-batch-images-linux-commandline/
Sweet …
Really excellent information you’ve pulled together here. Thanks much.
Thanks a lot Greg. Very comprehensive and helpful. ~Brian
Awesome! Wish I had found this a few remote server set-up’s ago. This was the easiest tutorial I’ve ever followed, and everything worked perfectly. Thank you Greg!
Had an issue with installing APC.
Every time I ran pecl install apc, I’d get a compiling error – “ERROR: ‘make’ failed
Found this on PHP.net, updated 2013-Sept-13: APC doesn’t support PHP 5.5. PHP 5.5 comes bundled with an opcode cache now.
May be useful to update the info, unless you know another work-around.
I actually wrote a post about the death of APC in PHP 5.5 a while back. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll link them up in the APC (and PHP 5.5) section above.
did you forget anything… hmmm wait let me check.. hhmmm oh yeah.. oh that’s there… OMG… its complete.
amazing post.. reloaded salvo fire.
This is awesome. Do you have any suggestions for managing FTP accounts via a GUI like cPanel or Plesk but something that doesn’t cost a fortune and is more for internal use than commercial ?
Webmin. http://webmin.com/
Wow, very nice tutorial. I followed the steps and successfully installed everything on my server at RoseHosting and now I am ready to develop. Thank you so much.
Amazing guide! Thank you soooo much for sharing! You saved me a big headache 🙂
Good work, check out mine also
http://zatackcoder.com/installing-lamp-on-ubuntu/