How to Install the LAMP Stack on Windows WSL

This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install the LAMP stack on Windows 10 WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) 2 with Ubuntu OS.

LAMP is an acronym for Linux (Ubuntu), Apache2 HTTP Server, MariaDB or MySQL Database Server, and PHP Scripting Language. It is a group of open-source software and building blocks of many web applications and most content management systems (CMS) today.

Installing the LAMP stack on Windows WSL can be useful for several reasons. First, it allows you to run a full Linux operating system inside Windows, which can be helpful if you need to use Linux-based tools or software.

Additionally, the LAMP stack is a popular software bundle used for web development and hosting, so installing it on your Windows machine can allow you to create and test web applications on your local machine.

Finally, since WSL 2 comes with a performance boost and complete system call compatibility, it can provide a more seamless and efficient experience for running Linux-based applications on your Windows machine.

If you have a machine that meets the requirements above to run WSL 2, continue below.

To get started with running LAMP on Windows with WSL, follow the steps below:

Enable WSL in Windows

To enable WSL in Windows, you will want to open the PowerShell terminal as administrator. Click on Start, then begin typing PowerShell.

Next, right-click the Windows PowerShell app and choose to run as administrator.

When the console opens, run the commands below:

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux /all /norestart

After installing, you should get a success message similar to the lines below:

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.19041.844

Image Version: 10.0.19042.844

Enabling feature(s)
[==========================100.0%==========================]
The operation completed successfully.

Enable Virtual Machine Platform

WSL 2 requires Windows 10 Virtual Machine Platform to be enabled. This is not Hyper-V. To enable the VM platform feature in Windows, run the commands below from the same PowerShell administrator’s console.

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:VirtualMachinePlatform /all /norestart

If you’re using Windows 10 version lower than 2004, then use the commands below:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform -NoRestart

When you’re done running the commands above, restart your computer for all the configuration changes to apply. If you don’t restart, the below command might not be recognized.

After restarting your computer, log back in and launch PowerShell as administrator. Then, run the commands below to configure WSL 2 as the default version of WSL.

wsl --set-default-version 2

Install Ubuntu on Windows 10

Now that WSL 2 is installed and ready to be used, open the link below to download and install a copy of Ubuntu 20.04 from the Windows store.

Get Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Microsoft Store

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Windows allows you to use Ubuntu Terminal and run Ubuntu command line utilities, including bash, ssh, git, apt, and many more.

Click the Get button and install. After installing Ubuntu, you’ll want the option to launch Ubuntu from the Windows WSL environment.

After launching, Ubuntu should install and prompt you to create your account.

Installing, this may take a few minutes.
Please create a default UNIX user account. The username does not need to match your Windows username.
For more information visit: https://aka.ms/wslusers
Enter new UNIX username: richard
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Installation successful!
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-19041-Microsoft x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Mon Apr 12 17:57:37 CDT 2021

  System load:    0.52      Processes:             7
  Usage of /home: unknown   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage:   26%       IPv4 address for eth0: 10.0.2.15
  Swap usage:     0%

1 update can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable

That should do it!

Some troubleshooting commands to run when you run into the issues above. These run below and try to relaunch the Ubuntu image.

wsl --set-default-version 1
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto start

Now that the Windows 10 WSL environment is ready continue below to install Apache, MariaDB, and PHP and configure LAMP.

Prepare Ubuntu Linux

L in LAMP stands for Linux, in this case, Ubuntu. Since we’ve installed Ubuntu above inside Windows WSL, continue below to update Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is installed above. The commands below help manage and update Ubuntu OS.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt autoremove

There are many other configurations and settings to apply to Ubuntu servers, but we’re not going to cover all here. Since Ubuntu is installed above, continue below to install the other components of the LAMP stack.

Install Apache HTTP Server

The A in LAMP stands for Apache HTTP server. Apache is the most popular open-source web server powering most websites online.

To install Apache on Ubuntu, run the commands below:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2

After installing Apache2, the commands below can be used to stop, start and restart Apache2 services.

sudo service apache2 stop
sudo service apache2 start
sudo service apache2 restart

To validate that Apache is installed and functioning, open your web browser and browse to the server’s hostname or IP address.

You should get a test page if everything works.

http://localhost

Install MariaDB Database Server

M in LAMP stands for MySQL or MariaDB database server. For this tutorial, we’re going to be installing MariaDB instead.

MariaDB is a truly open-source database server you can run with your projects. It is fast, secure, and the default server for almost all Linux.

To install MariaDB, run the commands below:

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start, and restart MariaDB services.

sudo service mysql stop
sudo service mysql start
sudo service mysql restart

Next, run the commands below to secure the database server with a root password if you were not prompted to do so during the installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.

Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
New password: Enter password
Re-enter new password: Repeat password
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y

To verify and validate that MariaDB is installed and working, log in to the database console using the commands below:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Type the root password when prompted.

Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 46
Server version: 10.3.29-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 Ubuntu 20.04
Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
MariaDB [(none)]>

The server was successfully installed if you see a similar screen.

PHP and Related Modules

The P in LAMP stands for PHP. PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that glues all the other components of the stack.

To install PHP and recommended modules, run the commands below.

sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-common php-mysql php-gmp php-curl php-intl php7.4-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-gd php-xml php-cli php-zip

That should get PHP installed with recommended PHP modules that you can run with many PHP-based applications.

To validate that PHP is installed, run the commands below:

php -v

You should see an output like the one below:

PHP 7.4.3 (cli) (built: Oct  6 2020 15:47:56) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.4.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

You can also test with a test PHP script and display the installed version and related modules that are enabled or disabled.

To do that, run the commands below to create a PHP test file called phpinfo.php

sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

Then, type the content below and save the file.

<?php phpinfo( ); ?>

Save the file.

Open your browser and browse to your server hostname followed by phpinfo.php

Restart Apache, then type the address and browse the file.

http://example.com/phpinfo.php

You should see the PHP default test page.

That’s it!

Conclusion:

This post showed you how to install the LAMP stack in Windows WSL. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report.

Comments

Christophe
November 18, 2021
Thanks for this guide, this exactly what I was looking for.
One more thing: after installing php you will need to restart the apache2 service.
Nicolas Aramboles
June 29, 2022
Excellent material, this and other online tutorials, where very detailed.
Steven Cooper
January 9, 2023
Good until the very end. Example.com? Are you serious? Exactly how does one set that up? It’s one thing to just install all of these components; anyone with 2 brain cells can figure that part out. Without initial setup that at least explains how to launch a PHP page on localhost and connect to the Database, what value does any of this have? Nothing. What a waste of time.