How to Install the LAMP Stack on Your Fresh CentOS 7 VPS

sudo yum update -y

Step 2 – Installing “A”pache or Apache on the system and installing essential tools needed

We’re going to use Yum package manager to install Apache on your VPS. To install, use the command below:

sudo yum install httpd wget nano -y

Now after installation, we have to turn on the Apache to test if it is working well. To do so, make sure your port 80 is enabled. To see if it is working, copy your VPS’s IP and paste it into the web browser and visit the IP. If you see the page displayed below, it means it is working well!

Now to enable the Apache service on boot use the command below:

systemctl enable httpd.service

Now whenever your server reboots, Apache will be started at the boot so you don’t have to always connect to your VPS and turn it on after every restart. This will be more beneficial if you’re running a test environment where you require a lot of reboots.

Step 3 – Installing MariaDB

Now it’s time to install the database management system MariaDB on your VPS. To do that, we’ll use the Yum package manager once again. To do so, use the command below:

sudo yum install mariadb-server mariadb -y

Confirm the installation by pressing Y and the enter/return button.

Now since MariaDB is installed on your system, we will turn it on. To do that, use the command mentioned below:

systemctl start mariadb

Step 4 – Securing MariaDB

By default, MariaDB isn’t secure because the anonymous user is enabled on installation and the password is not yet set up. To begin setting up the installation, use the command mentioned below:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You will be prompted to enter your MariaDB password. Since we’re doing a fresh installation, we do not need to enter the MariaDB password. Just press Enter to continue. Now you will be asked if you want to set up a MariaDB admin/root password. For security reasons, you should press “Y” and then press Enter to set the password. Do not confuse between your MariaDB password and your server’s root password. They both are different.

For your easy, we have written down questions that will be asked to you with answers you’ve to insert accordingly.

1. Set root password? [Y/n] Y
2. New password: Enter your password here
3. Re-enter new password: repeat your password
4. Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y
5. Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] Y
6. Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y
7. Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Y

At the last after every setup of MariaDB, you will see the below-written message which means it is installed correctly

.... Success!
Cleaning up...

All done! If you’ve completed all of the above steps, your MariaDB installation should now be secure.

Everything is set up for MariaDB. Now we’ll have to enable it for boot. To do that, we will use the below-mentioned command:

sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Step 5 – Installing PHP

PHP is one of the most used web programming languages on the Internet. It is a server-side web page programming language that works well with HTML and other basic web languages. It is also used to integrate the web page with the MariaDB server to store data from your web page to the database and to even fetch it. So let’s begin installing PHP on your CentOS 7 server.

To install PHP 7.4, we need to install EPEL Release and Remi repository. Along with that, we need a few more things to allow PHP 5.6 installation to take place. To do that, use the below-mentioned commands.

yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
yum-config-manager --enable remi-php74

So let’s install PHP and it’s MySQL extension. To do that, use the command mentioned below:

yum install php php-mcrypt php-cli php-gd php-curl php-mysql php-ldap php-zip php-fileinfo -y

Confirm the installation process by pressing the Y and then the Enter button.

Now since we’ve installed PHP, we will have to make it go into effect with the webserver. To do that, we would have to reboot. Use the command mentioned below to reboot your web server Apache.

sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Now PHP is installed on the webserver. If you wish to read a detailed installation article on PHP 7.4 installation, read our article on how to install or upgrade to PHP 7.4 on CentOS 7.

Testing PHP

Now even PHP is installed. Let’s test if it is working properly. To do that, you have to write the commands mentioned below:

cd /var/www/html

Now we’re in the public directory where your website’s file is updated. The command “cd” is used to navigate to the directory you wanted to visit ie “/var/www/html”. Now we will have to make a test PHP file to see if it is working properly through a web browser. To do that, we would need a command-line text editor. Since we’ve already installed “nano” in the first step, we will directly use it to make a new file. We will name the file as “test.php”.

nano test.php

Now paste the code as mentioned below.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

The above code is a parameter in PHP used to check all modules and everything in detail about the current PHP installation in your server. To save the file, press “CTRL + X” and press Y, and then Enter to save it.

To test if it is working, copy the IP address of the server and enter it into the browser. You will see something like below on the screen. If you see so, it works well and everything went fine.

Now it is showing all PHP information. Everything now works fine.

Now for security reasons, you might wanna delete this phpinfo file because it can be used to exploit your webserver if left like this.

rm -rf test.php

Installing PHPMyAdmin

We have a separate article on how to install PHPMyAdmin in your CentOS 7 system.

Conclusion

We’ve successfully installed LAMP Stack on your CentOS 7 server. Now you can use it to host a web application on your server. We’ll be coming back soon with a new tutorial on something amazing! Till then, enjoy your own new webserver environment!

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