Lighting up LAMP in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

This guide will help newbies set up a fully working LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server using on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. This will allow you to use various PHP applications such as the popular phpBB forums and WordPress blog in addition to the basic HTML pages and files.

Install Packages

First, install the required packages by typing the following into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

This will install Apache, PHP, MySQL, their respective modules, and phpMyAdmin. Enter your preferred root password for mySQL when prompted and choose apache2 to be automatically configured.

If you’d like, you can test whether if Apache is working properly by going to http://localhost/ in your web browser.

Optionally, if you want computers on the same network to connect to the server you may want to edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf by invoking the command:

sudo gedit /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Then, replace the following line with your own IP address.

bind-address = 127.0.0.1

Configuring

To enable PHP and MySQL to work together, edit the php.ini file:

sudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Then un-comment the following line. Save and close the file.

;extension = mysql.so

Accessing PHPMyAdmin

Edit the Apache configuration file:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add the following line to the bottom of the file. Save and close.

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Restart Apache.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Testing PHP

Create and edit a file called testphp.php in your /var/www/ folder:

sudo gedit /var/www/testphp.php

Insert the following text inside that file and save:

Go back to your web browser and navigate to:

http://localhost/testphp.php

The PHP page should display. If a download window appears instead, something went wrong. Try reinstalling php5 and libapache2-mod-php5.

Testing phpMyAdmin

Navigate your web browser to:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

If the phpMyAdmin login page displays, then… You are done. That wasn’t so hard.

Now that you have LAMP running, why not try some applications?

Note: The root directory of your web server is /var/www/