How to Install LEMP on Ubuntu Linux

How to install Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu Linux is a popular choice for servers, especially when you plan to install a LEMP stack. Before you begin setting up LEMP, make sure you have Ubuntu Linux installed. Once it’s ready, the very first command you should run is `sudo apt update` to make sure your system has the latest software information.

A Linux machine serves as the initial requirement for LEMP configuration. Users can install Ubuntu Linux by following the detailed steps provided in a separate guide.

Once Ubuntu is installed, run the commands below to update it.

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove

There are lots of other settings and configurations to apply that apply to Ubuntu. However, the post is only concerned with installing LEMP.

How to install Nginx on Ubuntu Linux

Nginx is the web server software that makes up the ‘N’ in your LEMP setup, and it’s quite straightforward to install on Ubuntu. To get Nginx running, you’ll first refresh your package list with `sudo apt update`, and then install Nginx itself using the command `sudo apt install nginx`.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

After installing Nginx, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable the Nginx service to always start up when the server starts.

sudo systemctl stop nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

To see if Nginx is installed, open a web browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address.

http://localhost

If you see the above Nginx welcome page, it means Nginx is installed and functioning.

How to install MariaDB on Ubuntu Linux

MariaDB acts as the database server, the ‘M’ in your LEMP stack, and installing it on Ubuntu is a simple process. First, update your software list by running `sudo apt update`. Then, you can install the MariaDB server with the command `sudo apt install mariadb-server`.

For this post, we will install MariaDB instead of MySQL.

To install MariaDB, run the commands below.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server

After installing, you can run the commands below to view the MariaDB service status.

sudo systemctl status mariadb

After running the command above, it should output similar lines.

mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.3.31 database server
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-09-15 16:40:20 CDT; 22s ago
       Docs: man:mysqld(8)
             https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/systemd/
   Main PID: 3007 (mysqld)
     Status: "Taking your SQL requests now..."
      Tasks: 31 (limit: 4651)
     Memory: 65.6M
     CGroup: /system.slice/mariadb.service
             └─3007 /usr/sbin/mysqld

Sep 15 16:40:20 ubuntu2004 /etc/mysql/debian-start[3045]: mysql
Sep 15 16:40:20 ubuntu2004 /etc/mysql/debian-start[3045]: performance_schema

MariaDB and MySQL have a script allowing you to perform security operations.

Run the commands below to invoke the script and perform some recommended tasks to secure the database.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

MariaDB and MySQL servers have the root user set to use the auth_socket authentication method by default.

The auth_socket plugin authenticates users that connect from the local host through the Unix socket file. You can’t authenticate as a root by providing a password.

Simply run the command below to log on to MariaDB and MySQL servers as root. You don’t need a password since it’s using the auth_socket method.

To log on to MariaDB, run the commands below.

sudo mysql

The server console should come up.

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8
Server version: 8.0.26-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or 'h' for help. Type 'c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> 

How to install PHP on Ubuntu Linux

PHP is the ‘P’ in LEMP, and to make it work with Nginx, you need to install PHP-FPM on Ubuntu. Unlike Apache, Nginx doesn’t handle PHP files directly. PHP-FPM acts as a special manager that helps Nginx process PHP code correctly.

Nginx doesn’t have built-in support for processing PHP files and is not tightly integrated as Apache. To add PHP support for Nginx, you must install and use PHP-FPM (FastCGI process manager) to handle the PHP files.

If you’re using the Nginx web server, the commands below are used to install PHP.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php-fpm

Because PHP isn’t tightly integrated with Nginx, if you make changes to PHP, you must restart or reload PHP and Nginx separately for the changes to apply.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm
sudo systemctl restart nginx

server {

    location ~ .php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;
    }
}

To install the latest PHP versions unavailable in the Ubuntu repository, run the commands below to install a third-party PPA repository that includes multiple versions of PHP.

At the time of this writing, the latest version of PHP is 8.0.

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

After adding the repository above, you can then install another PHP version.

sudo apt install php8.0 php8.0-common php8.0-cli php8.0-gd php8.0-curl php8.0-mysql

That should do it!

For more on LEMP, read individual posts on the LEMP components

• How to install Ubuntu Linux
• How to install Nginx
• How to install MariaDB or MySQL
• How to install PHP

Conclusion:

This guide explains installing the LEMP stack on Ubuntu Linux. Users can report errors or add information using the comment form below the guide.