Install LAMP

LAMP is common and popular web service stack. You can use LAMP for building dynamic web sites and web applications.

LAMP is acronym:

• L stands for Linux operating system.
• A stands for Apache HTTP Server.
• M stands for MySQL relational database or its fork MariaDB.
• P stands for PHP PHP programming language.

In this tutorial, we will see how to prepare ubuntu for PHP development.

step 1 - Install apache2 package

user@demo:~# sudo apt install -y apache2
...

step 2 - Install mariadb package

user@demo:~# sudo apt install -y mariadb-server
...

step 3 - Install PHP and mod-php

We install PHP and mod-php apache2 module which allow to serve PHP pages.

user@demo:~# sudo apt install -y php libapache2-mod-php
...

step 4 - Install commnon php extensions

user@demo:~# sudo apt install -y php-mysql php-dom php-zip
...

step 5 - Install composer

Composer is the defacto dependency management tool for PHP and have gain popularity with PHP developers, Let’s install it.

user@demo:~# sudo apt install -y composer

step 6 - Install phpMyAdmin

While you can use mysql command line client or mysql workbench visual tool for database administration, I prefer to use phpMyAdmin web application for this task. Let’s install it.

user@demo:~# sudo apt install -y phpmyadmin

Follow the install wizard:

| Please choose the web server that should be automatically configured to   │
│ run phpMyAdmin.                                                           │
│                                                                           │
│ Web server to reconfigure automatically:                                  │
│                                                                           │
│    [*] apache2                                                            │
│    [ ] lighttpd                                                           │
│                                                                           │

Select apache2 and click OK

| The phpmyadmin package must have a database installed and configured      │
│ before it can be used. This can be optionally handled with                │
│ dbconfig-common.                                                          │
│                                                                           │
│ If you are an advanced database administrator and know that you want to   │
│ perform this configuration manually, or if your database has already      │
│ been installed and configured, you should refuse this option. Details on  │
│ what needs to be done should most likely be provided in                   │
│ /usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin.                                                │
│                                                                           │
│ Otherwise, you should probably choose this option.                        │
│                                                                           │
│ Configure database for phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common?                   |

Click Yes.

Now provide the the password and verify

│ Please provide a password for phpmyadmin to register with the database    │
│ server. If left blank, a random password will be generated.               │
│                                                                           │
│ MySQL application password for phpmyadmin:                                |

| Password confirmation:                                                    |

We want to phpmyadmin to serve at port 8080. To do so, Edit /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf:

• Comment the exising directives at the begining of the file (alias and directory)
• Add the virtual host and Listen directives

# phpMyAdmin default Apache configuration

## Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin

## <Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin>
##    Options SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
##    DirectoryIndex index.php

##    # limit libapache2-mod-php to files and directories necessary by pma
##    <IfModule mod_php7.c>
##        php_admin_value upload_tmp_dir /var/lib/phpmyadmin/tmp
##        php_admin_value open_basedir /usr/share/phpmyadmin/:/etc/phpmyadmin:/var/lib/phpmyadmin/:/usr/share/php/php-gettext/:/usr/share/php/php-php-gettext/:/usr/share/javascript/:/usr/share/php/tcpdf/:/usr/s>
##    </IfModule>

## </Directory>

# Disallow web access to directories that don't need it
<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/templates>
    Require all denied
</Directory>
<Directory /usr/share/phpmyadmin/libraries>
    Require all denied
</Directory>

Listen 8080
<VirtualHost *:8080>
    TransferLog  "/var/log/apache2/phpmyadmin_access.log"
    ErrorLog     "/var/log/apache2/phpmyadmin_errors.log"
    DocumentRoot "/usr/share/phpmyadmin"
</VirtualHost>

Now restart apache2

user@demo:~# sudo service apache2 restart

Now you can connect to phpmyadmin at port 8080.

step 7 - Start Developing

Now , we can start develop our site in PHP.

Your document root is under /var/www/html.

Let’s check whether we successfully configure apache. Open /var/www/html/main.php in favorite editor and enter the following content:

<?php phpinfo()

Now, access http://demo/main.php in your webbrowser. You should see the familiar page: