Installing LAMP on Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10

If you're developing websites, it's nice to be able to test your code in the privacy of your own computer rather that out in the public internet. In order to do that, you'll need to install a webserver on your development computer. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, php) is one of the most common web hosting platforms, so it's a perfect environment for you to build and test your website code. If you carefully follow these step by step instructions, you'll have your own LAMP setup running in no time.
Install LAMP on Ubuntu

The Ubuntu developers have made it easy to install the LAMP server packages with a single command. Simply open a terminal window and enter the following.
sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

No, that's not a typo. Please make sure to include the caret (^). The command will not work without it.



sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

The apt package manager will show all the packages that need to be installed. Hit to confirm that you want to install them.


LAMP packages

You will then be prompted to change the password for the root user on the MySQL database.


Set MySQL root password

Enter the password you want. You'll be prompted to enter it a second time to confirm.

After you confirm your password, apt will continue to install the rest of the packages.

Congratulations, your LAMP installation is now complete! That was the easy part, now you need to get a few things configured to make your system easy to work with.
Test Apache

Open a web browser and enter the address http://localhost/. You should see a web page that says "It Works!"


Testing Apache
Test php

Now that you know Apache works, you'll want to test the php installation. You'll need to create a file in /var/www called testing.php. Open a terminal and enter:
sudo nano /var/www/testing.php

Enter the following line into the text editor, save the file and exit.


Next, restart Apache with the following terminal command:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now go back to your web browser and enter the address http://localhost/testing.php/. You should see a page displaying version information for your php installation.


php Information
Configure MySQL

Since I'm installing LAMP for a web development environment, I want the MySQL database to be bound to the localhost IP address. This should be 127.0.0.1 for your system. You can verify it with this terminal command.
cat /etc/hosts | grep localhost

You'll now want to verify that the correct bind address is set up in MySQL's my.cnf file.
cat /etc/mysql/my.cnf | grep bind-address

You should see a line that looks like this:

bind-address = 127.0.0.1


If the IP address doesn't match the one for your system, you'll need to edit the my.cnf file to correct it.
Install phpMyAdmin

You don't need to install phpMyAdmin, but it's a much easier way to get in and adjust things in your MySQL database if you're not familiar with MySQL's commands. You can install phpMyAdmin from the command line with:
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql phpmyadmin

The installation will prompt you to select a web server for automatic configuration.


phpMyAdmin Setup

This is important! Use the space bar on your keyboard to select apache2. Make sure there's a * next to apache2 like the picture below and then hit . (Click the picture to enlarge it and see what I'm talking about.)


phpMyAdmin Setup: select apache2

The next screen will explain some information about database configuration. Hit the key to move on.


phpMyAdmin database config

Another screen will come up asking if you want to configure a new database called dbconfig-common. Since this is a fresh installation, use the key to select Yes and hit .


phpMyAdmin dbconfig-common

You'll be prompted next to enter the MySQL root password. Enter the MySQL root password that you created earlier, hit to select Ok and hit .


MySQL root password

You'll then be prompted to enter a MySQL application password for phpmyadmin. You can hit and a random password will be generated. I chose to use the same password that I used for the root MySQL password.


MySQL application password

If you enter your own password, a password confirmation screen will come up. Confirm your password.


MySQL application password confirmation

Your phpMyAdmin installation and configuration is now complete.
Testing phpMyAdmin

Open your web browser and enter the address http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. You should see a page like this.


phpMyAdmin log in

You can log in with the username root and the root password that you created earlier.


Logged into phpMyAdmin

Congratulations, you're now ready to start building your local website. If you're only working on one site you can put all of your files into /var/www. If you'll be working on multiple sites you may want to consider some additional Apache configuration to keep things neat and clean on you system.