Installing Nginx, MySQL, PHP (LEMP) Stack on Ubuntu 18.04

Prerequisites

You should use a non-root user account with sudo privileges.

1. Install Nginx

Let’s begin by updating the package lists and installing Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04. Below we have two commands separated by &&. The first command will update the package lists to ensure you get the latest version and dependencies for Nginx. The second command will then download and install Nginx.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx

Once installed, check to see if the Nginx service is running.

sudo service nginx status

If Nginx is running correctly, you should see a green Active state below.

● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-05-09 20:42:29 UTC; 2min 39s ago
     Docs: man:nginx(8)
  Process: 27688 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 27681 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 27693 (nginx)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 1153)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
           ├─27693 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
           └─27695 nginx: worker process

You may need to press q to exit the service status.

2. Configure Firewall

If you haven’t already done so, it is recommended that you enable the ufw firewall and add a rule for Nginx. Before enabling ufw firewall, make sure you add a rule for SSH, otherwise you may get locked out of your server if you’re connected remotely.

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH

If you get an error “ERROR: could find a profile matching openSSH”, this probably means you are not configuring the server remotely and can ignore it.

Now add a rule for Nginx.

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

Rule added
Rule added (v6)

Enable ufw firewall.

sudo ufw enable

Press y when asked to proceed.

Now check the firewall status.

sudo ufw status

Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

That’s it! Your Nginx web server on Ubuntu 18.04 should now be ready.

3. Test Nginx

Go to your web browser and visit your domain or IP. If you don’t have a domain name yet and don’t know your IP, you can find out with:

sudo ifconfig | grep -Eo 'inet (addr:)?([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*' | grep -Eo '([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*' | grep -v '127.0.0.1'

Welcome to Nginx test page

You can find this Nginx default welcome page in the document root directory /var/www/html. To edit this file in nano text editor:

sudo nano /var/www/html/index.nginx-debian.html

To save and close nano, press CTRL + X and then press y and ENTER to save changes.

Your Nginx web server is ready to go! You can now add your own html files and images the the /var/www/html directory as you please.

However, you should acquaint yourself with and set up at least one Server Block for Nginx as most of our Ubuntu 18.04 guides are written with Server Blocks in mind. Please see article Installing Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 with Multiple Domains. Server Blocks allow you to host multiple web sites/domains on one server. Even if you only ever intend on hosting one website or one domain, it’s still a good idea to configure at least one Server Block.

If you don’t want to set up Server Blocks, continue to the next step to set up MySQL.

4. Install MySQL

Let’s begin by updating the package lists and installing MySQL on Ubuntu 18.04. Below we have two commands separated by &&. The first command will update the package lists to ensure you get the latest version and dependencies for MySQL. The second command will then download and install MySQL.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install mysql-server

Press y and ENTER when prompted to install the MySQL package.

Once the package installer has finished, we can check to see if the MySQL service is running.

sudo service mysql status

If running, you will see a green Active status like below.

● mysql.service - MySQL Community Server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since since Wed 2018-05-09 21:10:24 UTC; 16s ago
 Main PID: 30545 (mysqld)
    Tasks: 27 (limit: 1153)
   CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
           └─30545 /usr/sbin/mysqld --daemonize --pid-file=/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

You may need to press q to exit the service status.

5. Configure MySQL Security

You should now run mysql_secure_installation to configure security for your MySQL server.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

If you created a root password in Step 1, you may be prompted to enter it here. Otherwise you will be asked to create one. (Generate a password here)

You will be asked if you want to set up the Validate Password Plugin. It’s not really necessary unless you want to enforce strict password policies for some reason.

Securing the MySQL server deployment.

Connecting to MySQL using a blank password.

VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin?

Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No:

Press n and ENTER here if you don’t want to set up the validate password plugin.

Please set the password for root here.

New password:

Re-enter new password:

If you didn’t create a root password in Step 1, you must now create one here.

Generate a strong password and enter it. Note that when you enter passwords in Linux, nothing will show as you are typing (no stars or dots).

By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.

Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :

Press y and ENTER to remove anonymous users.

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :

Press y and ENTER to disallow root login remotely. This will prevent bots and hackers from trying to guess the root password.

By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.

Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :

Press y and ENTER to remove the test database.

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes
made so far will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :

Press y and ENTER to reload the privilege tables.

All done!

As a test, you can log into the MySQL server and run the version command.

sudo mysqladmin -p -u root version

Enter the MySQL root password you created earlier and you should see the following:

mysqladmin  Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.7.22, for Linux on x86_64
Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Server version          5.7.22-0ubuntu18.04.1
Protocol version        10
Connection              Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket             /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Uptime:                 4 min 28 sec

Threads: 1  Questions: 15  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 113  Flush tables: 1  Open tables: 106  Queries per second avg: 0.055

You have now successfully installed and configured MySQL for Ubuntu 18.04! Continue to the next step to install PHP.

6. Install PHP

Unlike Apache, Nginx does not contain native PHP processing. For that we have to install PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager). FPM is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for heavy-loaded sites.

Let’s begin by updating the package lists and installing PHP-FPM on Ubuntu 18.04. We will also install php-mysql to allow PHP to communicate with the MySQL database. Below we have two commands separated by &&. The first command will update the package lists to ensure you get the latest version and dependencies for PHP-FPM and php-mysql. The second command will then download and install PHP-FPM and php-mysql. Press y and ENTER when asked to continue.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install php-fpm php-mysql

Once installed, check the PHP version.

php --version

If PHP was installed correctly, you should see something similar to below.

PHP 7.2.3-1ubuntu1 (cli) (built: Mar 14 2018 22:03:58) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.2.3-1ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Above we are using PHP version 7.2, though this may be a later version for you.

Depending on what version of Nginx and PHP you install, you may need to manually configure the location of the PHP socket that Nginx will connect to.

List the contents for the directory /var/run/php/

ls /var/run/php/

You should see a few entries here.

php7.2-fpm.pid php7.2-fpm.sock

Above we can see the socket is called php7.2-fpm.sock. Remember this as you may need it for the next step.

7. Configure Nginx for PHP

We now need to make some changes to our Nginx server block.

The location of the server block may vary depending on your setup. By default, it is located in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.

However, if you have previously set up custom server blocks for multiple domains in one of our previous guides, you will need to add the PHP directives to each server block separately. A typical custom server block file location would be /etc/nginx/sites-available/mytest1.com.

For the moment, we will assume you are using the default. Edit the file in nano.

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

Press CTRL + W and search for index.html.

Now add index.php before index.html

/etc/nginx/sites-available/default

        index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

Press CTRL + W and search for the line server_name.

Enter your server’s IP here or domain name if you have one.

/etc/nginx/sites-available/default

        server_name YOUR_DOMAIN_OR_IP_HERE;

Press CTRL + W and search for the line location ~ \.php.

You will need to uncomment some lines here by removing the # signs before the lines marked in red below.

Also ensure value for fastcgi_pass socket path is correct. For example, if you installed PHP version 7.2, the socket should be: /var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock

If you are unsure which socket to use here, exit out of nano and run ls /var/run/php/

/etc/nginx/sites-available/default

...
        location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        #
        #       # With php-fpm (or other unix sockets):
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
        #       # With php-cgi (or other tcp sockets):
        #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        }
...

Once you’ve made the necessary changes, save and close (Press CTRL + X, then press y and ENTER to confirm save)

Now check the config file to make sure there are no syntax errors. Any errors could crash the web server on restart.

sudo nginx -t

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

If no errors, you can reload the Nginx config.

sudo service nginx reload

8. Test PHP

To see if PHP is working correctly on Ubuntu 18.04, let’s a create a new PHP file called info.php in the document root directory. By default, this is located in /var/www/html/, or if you set up multiple domains in a previous guide, it may be located in somewhere like /var/www/mytest1.com/public_html

Once you have the correct document root directory, use the nano text editor to create a new file info.php

sudo nano /var/www/html/info.php

Type or paste the following code into the new file. (if you’re using PuTTY for Windows, right-click to paste)

/var/www/html/info.php

<?php
phpinfo();

Save and close (Press CTRL + X, then press y and ENTER to confirm save)

You can now view this page in your web browser by visiting your server’s domain name or public IP address followed by /info.php: http://your_domain_or_IP/info.php

phpinfo() outputs a large amount of information about the current state of PHP. This includes information about PHP compilation options and extensions, the PHP version and server information.

You have now successfully installed PHP-FPM for Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).

Make sure to delete info.php as it contains information about the web server that could be useful to attackers.

sudo rm /var/www/html/info.php