Set up a LAMP Server on CentOS 5.

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Author: Sam Kleinman1
Published: October 19, 2009
Revised: May 1, 2010

This guide provides step-by-step instructions for installing a full-featured LAMP stack on a
CentOS 5.3 system.

In this guide, you will be instructed on setting up Apache, MySQL, and PHP. If you don't feel
that you will need MySQL or PHP, please don't feel obligated to install them.

These instructions work with the Linode platform. If you don't have a Linode yet, sign up for
a Linux VPS and get started today.

System Configuration
It is important to make sure that your system is properly configured before installing
Apache. In particular, you need to make sure that your system is up to date and that you
have set the correct timezone, hostname, and hosts in your hosts file. If you haven't
configured these, you should follow the directions in the getting started guide3.

If your system is configured and up to date, you may need to tweak the default firewall on
Centos before installing Apache.

This guide assumes that you are logged in as the root superuser on your Linode.

Install and Configure the Apache Web Server

The Apache Web Server is a very popular choice for serving web pages. While many
alternatives have appeared in the last few years, Apache remains a powerful option that we
recommend for most uses.

To install the current version of the Apache web server (in the 2.x series) use the following
command:

yum update
yum install httpd

The configuration for Apache is contained in the httpd.conf file, which is located at:
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. We advise you to make a backup of this file into your
home directory, like so:

cp /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ~/httpd.conf.backup

By default all files ending in the .conf extension in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ are treated as
Apache configuration files, and we recommend placing your non-standard configuration
options in files in these directories. Regardless how you choose to organize your
configuration files, making regular backups of known working states is highly
recommended.

Now we'll configure virtual hosting so that we can host multiple domains (or subdomains)

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with the server. These websites can be controlled by different users, or by a single user, as
you prefer.

Before we get started, we suggest that you combine all configuration on virtual hosting into
a single file called vhost.conf located in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory. Open this file
in your favorite text editor, and we'll begin by setting up virtual hosting.

Configure Virtual Hosting

There are different ways to set up Virtual Hosts, however we recommend the method below.

By default, Apache listens on all IP addresses available to it. We must configure it to listen
only on addresses we specify. Even if you only have one IP, it is still a good idea to tell
Apache what IP address to listen on in case you decide to add more.

Begin by adding the following line to the virtual hosting configuration file:

File excerpt: /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf

NameVirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80

Be sure to replace 12.34.56.78 with your own IP address.

Configure Virtual Hosts

Now we will create virtual host entries for each site that we need to host with this server.
Here are two examples for sites at "ducklington.org" and "bucknell.net".

File excerpt: /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf

<VirtualHost ducklington.org:80>
ServerAdmin squire@ducklington.org
ServerName ducklington.org
ServerAlias www.ducklington.org
DocumentRoot /srv/www/ducklington.org/public_html/
ErrorLog /srv/www/ducklington.org/logs/error.log
CustomLog /srv/www/ducklington.org/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost bucknell.net:80>
ServerAdmin squire@bucknell.net
ServerName bucknell.net
ServerAlias www.bucknell.net
DocumentRoot /srv/www/bucknell.net/public_html/
ErrorLog /srv/www/bucknell.net/logs/error.log
CustomLog /srv/www/bucknell.net/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Notes regarding this example configuration:

All of the files for the sites that you host will be located in directories that exist
underneath /srv/www You can symbolically link these directories into other locations if
you need them to exist in other places.
ErrorLog and CustomLog entries are suggested for more fine-grained logging, but
are not required. If they are defined (as shown above), the logs directories must be
created before you restart Apache.

Before you can use the above configuration you'll need to create the specified directories.
For the above configuration, you can do this with the following commands:

mkdir -p /srv/www/ducklington.org/public_html
mkdir -p /srv/www/ducklington.org/logs

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 mkdir -p /srv/www/ducklington.org/logs
mkdir -p /srv/www/bucknell.net/public_html
mkdir -p /srv/www/bucknell.net/logs

After you've set up your virtual hosts, issue the following command to run Apache for the
first time:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Assuming that you have configured the DNS for your domain to point to your Linode's IP
address, Virtual hosting for your domain should now work. Remember that you can create
as many virtual hosts with Apache as you need.

If you want to run Apache by default when the system boots, which is a typical setup,
execute the following command:

/sbin/chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

Use the chkconfig command to setup runlevels 4 as needed.

Anytime you change an option in your vhost.conf file, or any other Apache configuration
remember to reload the configuration with the following command:

/etc/init.d/httpd reload

Install and Configure MySQL Database Server

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) and is a popular component in
contemporary web development tool-chains. It is used to store data for many popular
applications, including Wordpress and Drupal.

Install MySQL

The first step is to install the mysql-server package, which is accomplished by the following
command:

yum install mysql-server

In CentOS 5.3 this provides version 5.0.45 of MySQL. Before you can use MySQL some
configuration is required.

If you want to run MySQL by default when the system boots, which is a typical setup,
execute the following command:

/sbin/chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on

Now you can start the mysql daemon (mysqld) with the following command (as root):

/etc/init.d/mysqld start

At this point MySQL should be ready to configure and run. While you shouldn't need to
change the configuration file, note that it is located at /etc/my.cnf for future reference.

Configure MySQL and Set Up MySQL databases

After installing MySQL, it's recommended that you run mysql_secure_installation, a

program that helps secure MySQL. While running mysql_secure_installation, you will

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be presented with the opportunity to change the MySQL root password, remove
anonymous user accounts, disable root logins outside of localhost, and remove test
databases. It is recommended that you answer yes to these options. If you are prompted to
reload the privilege tables, select yes. Run the following command to execute the program:

mysql_secure_installation

Next, we'll create a database and grant your users permissions to use databases. First, log
in to MySQL:

mysql -u root -p

Enter MySQL's root password, and you'll be presented with a prompt where you can issue
SQL statements to interact with the database.

To create a database and grant your users permissions on it, issue the following command.
Note, the semi-colons (;) at the end of the lines are crucial for ending the commands. Your
command should look like this:

create database lollipop;

grant all on lollipop.* to 'foreman' identified by '5t1ck';

In the example above, lollipop is the name of the database, foreman is the username,
and 5t1ck password. Note that database user names and passwords are only used by
scripts connecting to the database, and that database user account names need not (and
perhaps should not) represent actual user accounts on the system.

With that completed you've successfully configured MySQL and you may now pass these
database credentials on to your users. To exit the MySQL database administration utility
issue the following command:

quit

With Apache and MySQL installed you are now ready to move on to installing PHP to provide
scripting support for your web pages.

Installing and Configuring PHP

PHP makes it possible to produce dynamic and interactive pages using your own scripts and
popular web development frameworks. Furthermore, many popular web applications like
WordPress are written in PHP. If you want to be able to develop your websites using PHP,
you must first install it.

CentOS includes packages for installing PHP from the terminal. Issue the following
command:

yum install php php-pear

Once PHP5 is installed we'll need to tune the configuration file located in /etc/php.ini to
enable more descriptive errors, logging, and better performance. These modifications
provide a good starting point if you're unfamiliar with PHP configuration.

Make sure that the following values are set, and relevant lines are uncommented (comments
are lines begining with a semi-colon (;)):

File excerpt: /etc/php.ini

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 error_reporting = E_COMPILE_ERROR|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR|E_ERROR|E_CORE_ERROR
display_errors = Off
log_errors = On
error_log = /var/log/php.log
max_execution_time = 300
memory_limit = 64M
register_globals = Off

If you need support for MySQL in PHP, then you must install the php5-mysql package with
the following command:

yum install php-mysql

More Information
You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic.
While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot
vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

CentOS Linux Home Page5

Apache HTTP Server Documentation6
MySQL Documentation7
PHP Documentation8

License
This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works
3.0 United States License9 . Please feel free to redistribute unmodified copies of it as
long as attribution is provided, preferably via a link to this page.

Citations
1. <http://library.linode.commailto:docs@linode.com> Sam Kleinman
2. <http://www.linode.com/?r=f4ac5ae5f59e43a8b31de8077ceab27bd1e60c80> Linux
VPS
3. <http://library.linode.com/getting-started/> getting started guide
4. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runlevel> runlevels
5. <http://www.centos.org/> CentOS Linux Home Page
6. <http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/> Apache HTTP Server Documentation
7. <http://dev.mysql.com/doc/> MySQL Documentation
8. <http://www.php.net/docs.php> PHP Documentation
9. <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/> Creative Commons Attribution-
No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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