Installing LAMP on debian 6 is refreshingly easy. This guide covers a typical LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) installation on Debian 6. I had to set it up yesterday, so I thought I’d share some of the steps on the way. Since I have also needed a TeamSpeak3 server, there will be a follow-up on that, too. I will use example.org as a server domain, but replace it as appropriate for your needs when following the guide.

Basic Setup

At first, make sure your package lists are up-to-date:

apt-get update

The first thing that is obviously needed is the webserver itself. Fortunately, Debian offers packages for almost all our needs.

apt-get install apache2

And that’s it for the webserver. If you now navigate to the IP-address of your server, you will see the default “It works!” message from Apache.

After that I decided to go for the MySQL server and also the client for maintenance etc.:

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

You will be asked to enter the password for the root user.

Now for PHP. I chose to install PHP5, the Apache PHP mod and the PHP-MySQL-Extension all at once:

apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql

After that, you will probably want to customize your PHP installation a bit. I have considered these PHP extensions as useful:

apt-get install php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl

Now, let’s check out if everything is working. First of all we need to restart apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Then we create a file that outputs the phpinfo(); into a web page:

cat > /var/www/info.php
<?php phpinfo(); ?>

To save this file , press Ctrl+D.

Now open http://example.org/info.php in your browser. It should display the PHP-Info page and show all the modules we have just installed.

And that’s it. You have an operable webserver with PHP and MySQL.

Further notes

phpMyAdmin

Operating the webserver without at least some tools will be a pain in the neck. A commonly used tool for database administration is phpMyAdmin. Fortunately, there is also a debian package for phpMyAdmin available:

apt-get install phpmyadmin

You will get a dialog asking you for the usedweb server, something like this:

 ┌────────────────────────┤ Configuring phpmyadmin ├─────────────────────────┐  
 │ Please choose the web server that should be automatically configured to   │  
 │ run phpMyAdmin.                                                           │  
 │                                                                           │  
 │ Web server to reconfigure automatically:                                  │  
 │                                                                           │  
 │    [ ] apache2                                                            │  
 │    [ ] lighttpd                                                           │  
 │                                                                           │  
 │                                                                           │  
 │                                  <Ok>                                     │  
 │                                                                           │  
 └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Make sure to hit [] apache2. After that you will be asked if you want to configure phpmyadmin via dbconfig-common.

This will, however, not work out-of-the box. You will need to create a symlink that links the phpMyAdmin configuration to apache:

ln -s /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If you now navigate to http://example.org/phpmyadmin/ in your web browser, you should see the phpMyAdmin login page.

Mod_rewrite

Mod_rewrite is disabled in the default apache2 configuration. You can easily enable it with a2enmod rewrite. Mod_rewrite is extremly useful for URL rewriting and widely used on web pages.

Configuring virtual hosts

By default, apache servers all request from the default vHost that is hosted in /var/www/. If you want to serve multiple websites from your server, this configuration is unfavorable.

The configuration for availabe sites is stored in /etc/apache2/sites-available/. The name of the default site is default. If you open it, it should look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

	DocumentRoot /var/www/
	
	<Directory />
		Options FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride None		
	</Directory>
	<Directory /var/www/>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
		AllowOverride None
		Order allow,deny
		allow from all		
	</Directory>

	ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
	<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
		AllowOverride None
		Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
	</Directory>

	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

	# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
	# alert, emerg.
	LogLevel warn

	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

I recommend moving the document root from /var/www/ to /var/www/vhost/default/ and changing the ServerAdmin to an appropriate value.

You can use the file above as a template for new web pages - create a new folder in /var/www/vhosts/<new site> and create a new config file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/<new site>, which you can enable by running a2ensite <new site> and disable if not needed with a2dissite <new site>. Make sure to include RewriteEngine On, which is appropriate if you want to use Mod_rewrite.

You can find ample information on how to create virtual hosts in the apache documentation.

This concludes this quick guide and I hope it was helpful for you. You can leave comments by filing an issue on GitHub.