Setting Up Apache 2.4, MariaDB, and PHP 7 with Ubuntu 16.04 on a Digital Ocean VPS

PHP LAMP web development Apache MariaDB Ubuntu

• Setup Digital Ocean droplet
• Create an SSH key
• Login and adjust sshd_config file
  • Set PermitRootLogin no
  • Set PasswordAuthentication no
  • Restart SSH systemctl restart sshd.service
  • View status of SSH systemctl status ssh.service
• Create a user: adduser user
• Add user to sudo group: usermod -aG sudo user
• Setup user's .ssh directory and authorized_keys file
  • mkdir ~/.ssh
  • chmod 700 ~/.ssh
  • sudo cp /root/.ssh/authorized_keys ~/.ssh/
  • chown user:user ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
• Test ability to login via SSH using newly created user
• Setup firewall using ufw
  • Allow SSH: sudo ufw allow 22
  • Allow Web Server: sudo ufw allow proto tcp from any to any port 80,443
  • Enable: sudo ufw enable
  • Check status: sudo ufw status
• Download, install, and setup Apache 2.4
  • Install: sudo apt-get install apache2
  • Start after reboot: systemctl enable apache2
  • Check status: systemctl status apache2
  • Set KeepAlive Off in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
  • Disable mpm_event module: sudo a2dismod mpm_event
  • Enable mpm_prefork module: sudo a2enmod mpm_prefork
  • Enable mod_rewrite module: sudo a2enmod rewrite
  • Add ServerName directive to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf using public IP or FQDN
  • Check config syntax: apache2ctl -t
  • Disable default VirtualHost: sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
  • Remove default web page: sudo rm /var/www/html/index.html
  • Restart Apache: sudo systemctl restart apache2.service
• Download, install, and setup MariaDB in place of MySQL
  • Install: sudo apt-get install mariadb-server
  • Check status: systemctl status mysql
  • Start after reboot: sudo systemctl enable mysql
  • Secure the service: sudo mysql_secure_installation
• Download, install, and setup PHP 7
  • Install: sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mcrypt php-mysql php-gd php-json php-cli php-curl php-mbstring php-xml php-xmlrpc
  • Set DirectoryIndex index.php index.html in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf

Additional Steps to Setup Server

• Setup unattended-updgrades package for automatic updates

Helpful Links

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-16-04
• https://www.linode.com/docs/websites/lamp/install-lamp-on-ubuntu-16-04