Installing LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Web Server

Step 1: Install Apache
Apache is a free open source software which runs over 50% of the world’s web servers.

To install apache, open terminal and type in these commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2

That’s it. To check if Apache is installed, direct your browser to your server’s IP address (eg. http://server). The page should display the words “It works!" like this.

Step 2: Install MySQL
MySQL is a powerful database management system used for organizing and retrieving data 

To install MySQL, open terminal and type in these commands:

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

During the installation, MySQL will ask you to set a root password. If you miss the chance to set the password while the program is installing, it is very easy to set the password later from within the MySQL shell.

Once you have installed MySQL, we should activate it with this command:

sudo mysql_install_db

Finish up by running the MySQL set up script:

sudo /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

The prompt will ask you for your current root password. 

Type it in.

Enter current password for root (enter for none): 
OK, successfully used password, moving on...

Then the prompt will ask you if you want to change the root password. Go ahead and choose N and move on to the next steps. 

It’s easiest just to say Yes to all the options. At the end, MySQL will reload and implement the new changes.

By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone
to log into MySQL without having to have a user account created for
them.  This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation
go a bit smoother.  You should remove them before moving into a
production environment.

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y                                            
 ... Success!

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'.  This
ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
... Success!

By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can
access.  This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed
before moving into a production environment.

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
 - Dropping test database...
 ... Success!
 - Removing privileges on test database...
 ... Success!

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far
will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y
 ... Success!

Cleaning up...

Once you're done with that you can finish up by installing PHP.

Step 3: Install PHP
PHP is an open source web scripting language that is widely use to build dynamic webpages. 

To install PHP, open terminal and type in this command.

sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mcrypt  php5-ldap

After you answer yes to the prompt twice, PHP will install itself.

It may also be useful to add php to the directory index, to serve the relevant php index files:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf

Add index.php to the beginning of index files. The page should now look like this:

<IfModule mod_dir.c>

          DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml index.htm

</IfModule>

Step 4 : Test PHP
Although LAMP is installed, we can still take a look and see the components online by creating a quick php info page

To set this up, first create a new file:

sudo nano /var/www/info.php

Add in the following line:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Then Save and Exit. 

Restart apache so that all of the changes take effect:

sudo service apache2 restart

Finish up by visiting your php info page (make sure you replace the example ip address with your correct one): http://12.34.56.789/info.php

It should look similar to this.