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
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
phpMyAdmin Setup: select apache2
The next screen will explain some information about database configuration. Hit the
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
phpMyAdmin dbconfig-common
You'll be prompted next to enter the MySQL root password. Enter the MySQL root password that you created earlier, hit
MySQL root password
You'll then be prompted to enter a MySQL application password for phpmyadmin. You can hit
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.
