A “LAMP” stack is a group of open-source software that is typically installed together in order to enable a server to host dynamic websites and web apps written in PHP. This term is an acronym which represents the Linux operating system, with the Apache web server. The site data is stored in a MySQL database, and dynamic content is processed by PHP.
In this guide, we’ll install a LAMP stack on an Ubuntu 20.04 server.
Step 1 — Installing Apache and Updating the Firewall
The Apache web server is among the most popular web servers in the world. It’s well documented, has an active community of users, and has been in wide use for much of the history of the web, which makes it a great default choice for hosting a website.
Install Apache using Ubuntu’s package manager, apt:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2
If this is the first time you’re using sudo within this session, you’ll be prompted to provide your user’s password to confirm you have the right privileges to manage system packages with apt. You’ll also be prompted to confirm Apache’s installation by pressing Y, then ENTER.
Once the installation is finished, you’ll need to adjust your firewall settings to allow HTTP traffic. UFW has different application profiles that you can leverage for accomplishing that. To list all currently available UFW application profiles, you can run:
sudo ufw app list
We will use Apache Full because this profile opens both port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic) and port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic).
sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full"
You can verify the change with:
sudo ufw status
If you do not know what your server’s public IP address is, there are a number of ways you can find it. Usually, this is the address you use to connect to your server through SSH.
There are a few different ways to do this from the command line. First, you could use the iproute2 tools to get your IP address by typing this:
ip addr show eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2; }' | sed 's/\/.*$//'
This will give you two or three lines back. They are all correct addresses, but your computer may only be able to use one of them, so feel free to try each one.
Step 2 — Installing MySQL
Now that you have a web server up and running, you need to install the database system to be able to store and manage data for your site. MySQL is a popular database management system used within PHP environments.
Again, use apt to acquire and install this software:
sudo apt install mysql-server
When prompted, confirm installation by typing Y, and then ENTER.
When the installation is finished, it’s recommended that you run a security script that comes pre-installed with MySQL. This script will remove some insecure default settings and lock down access to your database system. Start the interactive script by running:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When you’re finished, test if you’re able to log in to the MySQL console by typing:
sudo mysql
This will connect to the MySQL server as the administrative database user root, which is inferred by the use of sudo when running this command.
To exit the MySQL console, type:
mysql> exit;
Notice that you didn’t need to provide a password to connect as the root user, even though you have defined one when running the mysql_secure_installation script. That is because the default authentication method for the administrative MySQL user is unix_socket instead of password. Even though this might look like a security concern at first, it makes the database server more secure because the only users allowed to log in as the root MySQL user are the system users with sudo privileges connecting from the console or through an application running with the same privileges. In practical terms, that means you won’t be able to use the administrative database root user to connect from your PHP application. Setting a password for the root MySQL account works as a safeguard, in case the default authentication method is changed from unix_socket to password.
For increased security, it’s best to have dedicated user accounts with less expansive privileges set up for every database, especially if you plan on having multiple databases hosted on your server.
Your MySQL server is now installed and secured. Next, we’ll install PHP, the final component in the LAMP stack.
Step 3 — Installing PHP
You have Apache installed to serve your content and MySQL installed to store and manage your data. PHP is the component of our setup that will process code to display dynamic content to the final user. In addition to the php package, you’ll need php-mysql, a PHP module that allows PHP to communicate with MySQL-based databases. You’ll also need libapache2-mod-php to enable Apache to handle PHP files. Core PHP packages will automatically be installed as dependencies.
To install these packages, run:
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql
Once the installation is finished, you can run the following command to confirm your PHP version:
php -v
At this point, your LAMP stack is fully operational, but before you can test your setup with a PHP script, it’s best to set up a proper Apache Virtual Host to hold your website’s files and folders. We’ll do that in the next step.