In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Lighttpd with PHP and MariaDB on your CentOS 7 server. For those of you who didn’t know, Lighttpd is a fast and secure web server that has been optimized for high-performance environments. With a small memory footprint compared to other web servers, effective management of the CPU load, and an advanced feature set (FastCGI, SCGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting, and many more) Lighttpd is the perfect solution for every server that is suffering load problems.
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 and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the LLMP Server (Linux, Lighttpd, MariaDB & PHP) on a CentOS 7 server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
- 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 useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Lighttpd With PHP and MariaDB on CentOS 7
Step 1. First, you need to enable the EPEL repository on your system and make sure that all packages are up to date.
yum install epel-release yum -y update
Step 2. Installing Lighttpd on CentOS 7.
Install Lighttpd using the following command:
yum install lighttpd
To start up the Lighttpd web server, run the commands below:
systemctl start lighttpd.service
Step 3. Installing MariaDB on CentOS 7.
MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL. It is a robust, scalable, and reliable SQL server that comes a rich set of enhancements. We will also be using yum to install MariaDB:
yum install mariadb mariadb-server mysql
By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB 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
To log into MariaDB, use the following command (note that it’s the same command you would use to log into a MySQL database):
mysql -u root -p
To start the database, run the commands below:
systemctl start mariadb.service
Step 4. Installing PHP on CentOS 7.
Finally, run the commands below to install PHP along with other good-to-have modules:
yum install php php-mysql
You may want to install some other PHP extensions required by your applications. Here is the list:
php-bcmath : A module for PHP applications for using the bcmath library php-cli : Command-line interface for PHP php-common : Common files for PHP php-dba : A database abstraction layer module for PHP applications php-devel : Files needed for building PHP extensions php-embedded : PHP library for embedding in applications php-enchant : Enchant spelling extension for PHP applications php-fpm : PHP FastCGI Process Manager php-gd : A module for PHP applications for using the gd graphics library php-intl : Internationalization extension for PHP applications php-ldap : A module for PHP applications that use LDAP php-mbstring : A module for PHP applications which need multi-byte string handling php-mysql : A module for PHP applications that use MySQL databases php-mysqlnd : A module for PHP applications that use MySQL databases php-odbc : A module for PHP applications that use ODBC databases php-pdo : A database access abstraction module for PHP applications php-pear.noarch : PHP Extension and Application Repository framework php-pecl-memcache : Extension to work with the Memcached caching daemon php-pgsql : A PostgreSQL database module for PHP php-process : Modules for PHP script using system process interfaces php-pspell : A module for PHP applications for using pspell interfaces php-recode : A module for PHP applications for using the recode library php-snmp : A module for PHP applications that query SNMP-managed devices php-soap : A module for PHP applications that use the SOAP protocol php-xml : A module for PHP applications which use XML php-xmlrpc : A module for PHP applications which use the XML-RPC protocol
Step 5. Configure firewall on CentOS 7.
Because everything is blocked by default on CentOS 7, you must enable HTTP/HTTPS traffic through the firewall. To enable web traffic, run the commands below:
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Lighttpd. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing LLMP Server (Linux, Lighttpd, MariaDB & PHP) in CentOS 7 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Lighttpd, MariaDB, and PHP website.
