May 19, 2013 · 10 min read · #code

How To: Install LAMP on Ubuntu

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.

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 7.4

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y php7.4

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 a web browser 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 which 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 a 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 user@server.com: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

# 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 SFTP. 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/uploadslanguage-bash

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.x

sudo restart php7.x-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 user@remote-server.com:/path/to/server/folder

Server-to-local transfers with SCP (transfer entire directories)

scp -r user@remote-server.com:/path/to/server/folder /path/to/local/folder

Server-to-local transfers with SCP (transfer single file)

scp user@remote-server.com:/path/to/server/file /path/to/local/folder

Server-to-server transfers with SCP

scp -P 22 -r user@remote-server.com: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 user@remote-server.com: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-5.7 mysql-server-core-5.7
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

Greg is the Director of Engineering at WebDevStudios. He also moonlights at Dummies writing and editing books. Follow him on Twitter for lots of pictures of pepperoni pizza and tidbits about Next.js.