How To Install OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on Rocky Linux 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on Rocky Linux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenLiteSpeed is a fast open-source web server application that comes with a built-in fast PHP module. Compared to Nginx or Apache, OpenLiteSpeed is known for its speed and performance. It also provides a web-based interface to easily manage virtual hosts, modules, and websites.

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 OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on Rocky Linux. 8.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems:  Rocky Linux 8.
• 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 OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on Rocky Linux 8

Step 1. The first step is to update your system to the latest version of the package list. To do so, run the following commands:

sudo dnf check-update
sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install epel-release

Step 2. Installing OpenLiteSpeed on Rocky Linux 8.

By default, OpenLiteSpeed is available on Rocky Linux 8 base repository. Now run the following command below to add OpenLiteSpeed ​​to our repository:

sudo rpm -Uvh http://rpms.litespeedtech.com/centos/litespeed-repo-1.1-1.el8.noarch.rpm

Then, install the OpenLiteSpeed web server by running the following command below:

sudo dnf install openlitespeed

After successfully installation, enable OpenLiteSpeed (to start automatically upon system boot), start the webserver, and verify the status using the commands below:

sudo systemctl enable lsws
sudo systemctl start lsws
sudo systemctl status lsws

Step 3. Setup OpenLiteSpeed Admin Password.

OpenLiteSpeed is installed now. You need to run some commands to change the default password in the OpenLiteSpeed dashboard:

/usr/local/lsws/admin/misc/admpass.sh

You will be asked to define the admin username and password as shown below:

Please specify the user name of administrator.
This is the user name required to login the administration Web interface.

User name [admin]: admin

Please specify the administrator's password.
This is the password required to login the administration Web interface.

Password: 
Retype password: 
Administrator's username/password is updated successfully!

Step 4. Configure Firewall Settings.

OpenLiteSpeed listens on ports 8088 and 7080, so we must allow these ports access. To do so we can do the following:

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=8088/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=7080/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 5. Accessing OpenLiteSpeed Web UI.

Once successfully installed, open your web browser and access the OpenLiteSpeed using the URL http://your-IP-address:7080. You should get the following page in your Internet Browser:

Provide your admin username and password and click on the Login button.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed OpenLiteSpeed. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the OpenLiteSpeed Web Server on your Rocky Linux 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official OpenLiteSpeed website.