How To Install LEMP on Ubuntu 16.04

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of LEMP on your Ubuntu 16.04 server. For those of you who didn’t know, A LEMP software stack is a group of open-source software that is typically installed together to enable a server to host dynamic websites and web apps. This term is actually an acronym that represents the Linux operating system, with the Nginx webserver (which replaces the Apache component of a LAMP stack). The site data is stored in a MySQL database (using MariaDB), and dynamic content is processed by PHP.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you the step-by-step installation LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx, MariaDB, and PHP) on Ubuntu 16.04 server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install LEMP on Ubuntu 16.04

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Note: If another web server like Apache2 was installed in your system, remove it first to avoid conflicts. To uninstall Apache, run the following commands:

sudo service apache2 stop
sudo apt-get remove --purge apache2 apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2-common -y
sudo apt-get autoremove -y
sudo apt-get autoclean -y

Step 2. Installing Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04.

Install Nginx with apt-get, which is the default package manager for Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install nginx

Start the Nginx service using the following command:

sudo systemctl start nginx

You can verify that Nginx is really running by opening your favorite web browser and entering the URL http://your-server’s-address, if it is installed, then you will see this:

Step 3. Configure the Nginx web server.

To get Nginx to work with PHP correctly, we need to make changes to the Nginx configuration file. In this guide we will be using a simple Nginx config file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Copy the following into your text editor:

    server {
            listen       80;
            server_name  your_domain_name.com;
            root /usr/share/nginx/html;
            index index.php index.html;
            location / {
                    try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
            }
            error_page 404 /404.html;
            error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
                    root /var/www/html;
            }
            location ~ \.php$ {
                    try_files $uri =404;
                    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                    fastcgi_index index.php;
                    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                    include fastcgi_params;
            }
    }

Once you have finished editing the file restart Nginx with:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 4. Installing MySQL on Ubuntu 16.04.

To install MySQL in Ubuntu 16.04 run the following command:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql

Once complete, you can verify MySQL is installed by running the below command:

systemctl status mysql

By default, MySQL is not hardened. You can secure MySQL using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and below each step carefully which will set a root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MySQL:

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- 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 log in to MySQL, use the following command (note that it’s the same command you would use to log into a MySQL database):

mysql -u root -p

Step 5. Installing and Configuring PHP on Ubuntu 16.04.

Install PHP on Ubuntu 16.04 with the following command to begin the install:

sudo apt-get install php php-fpm php7.0-mysql

Once the installation is finished, edit the server php.ini file and change the cgi.fix_pathinfo parameter value to 0. By default, it will be commented out with a semi-colon and the value set to 1 which practically ensures that PHP will attempt to execute the closest file available when a requested PHP file can’t be found. This is a bad security practice, so let’s change it. Execute the below command:

nano /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini

Now find the cgi.fix_pathinfo line, uncomment it, and set the value to 0. Save and close the file.

Your server should restart Nginx automatically after the installation of both MySQL and PHP. If it doesn’t, execute this command:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

To test PHP, create a test file named info.php with the content below. Save the file, then browse to it to see if PHP is working:

nano /usr/share/nginx/html/info.php

Copy the following into your text editor:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Try to access it at http://your_server_ip/info.php. If the PHP info page is rendered in your browser then everything looks good and you are ready to proceed further.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed the LEMP stack. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing LAMP (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, and PHP) in Ubuntu 16.04 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Nginx, MySQL, and PHP websites.