Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On CentOS 6.2 (LAMP)

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Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
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Last edited 01/31/2012

LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on a CentOS 6.2 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

2 Installing MySQL 5

To install MySQL, we do this:

yum install mysql mysql-server

Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MySQL server:

chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
/etc/init.d/mysqld start

Set passwords for the MySQL root account:

mysql_secure_installation

[root@server1 ~]# mysql_secure_installation




NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MySQL
      SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE!  PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!


In order to log into MySQL to secure it, we'll need the current
password for the root user.  If you've just installed MySQL, and
you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.

Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on...

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MySQL
root user without the proper authorisation.

Set root password? [Y/n] <-- ENTER
New password: <-- yourrootsqlpassword
Re-enter new password: <-- yourrootsqlpassword
Password updated successfully!
Reloading privilege tables..
 ... Success!


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? [Y/n] <-- ENTER
 ... Success!

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? [Y/n] <-- ENTER
 ... Success!

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? [Y/n] <-- ENTER
 - Dropping test database...
 ... Success!
 - Removing privileges on test database...
 ... Success!

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

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] <-- ENTER
 ... Success!

Cleaning up...



All done!  If you've completed all of the above steps, your MySQL
installation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MySQL!


[root@server1 ~]#

3 Installing Apache2

Apache2 is available as a CentOS package, therefore we can install it like this:

yum install httpd

Now configure your system to start Apache at boot time...

chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

... and start Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Now direct your browser to http://192.168.0.100, and you should see the Apache2 placeholder page:

Apache's default document root is /var/www/html on CentOS, and the configuration file is /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Additional configurations are stored in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory.

4 Installing PHP5

We can install PHP5 and the Apache PHP5 module as follows:

yum install php

We must restart Apache afterwards:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

5 Testing PHP5 / Getting Details About Your PHP5 Installation

The document root of the default web site is /var/www/html. We will now create a small PHP file (info.php) in that directory and call it in a browser. The file will display lots of useful details about our PHP installation, such as the installed PHP version.

vi /var/www/html/info.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Now we call that file in a browser (e.g. http://192.168.0.100/info.php):

As you see, PHP5 is working, and it's working through the Apache 2.0 Handler, as shown in the Server API line. If you scroll further down, you will see all modules that are already enabled in PHP5. MySQL is not listed there which means we don't have MySQL support in PHP5 yet.

6 Getting MySQL Support In PHP5

To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php-mysql package. It's a good idea to install some other PHP5 modules as well as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP5 modules like this:

yum search php

Pick the ones you need and install them like this:

yum install php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-mbstring php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc

Now restart Apache2:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Now reload http://192.168.0.100/info.php in your browser and scroll down to the modules section again. You should now find lots of new modules there, including the MySQL module:

7 phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a web interface through which you can manage your MySQL databases.

First we enable the RPMforge repository on our CentOS system as phpMyAdmin is not available in the official CentOS 6.2 repositories:

Import the RPMforge GPG key:

rpm --import http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt

On x86_64 systems:

yum install http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm

On i386 systems:

yum install http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.i686.rpm

phpMyAdmin can now be installed as follows:

yum install phpmyadmin

Now we configure phpMyAdmin. We change the Apache configuration so that phpMyAdmin allows connections not just from localhost (by commenting out the <Directory "/usr/share/phpmyadmin"> stanza):

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

#
#  Web application to manage MySQL
#

#<Directory "/usr/share/phpmyadmin">
#  Order Deny,Allow
#  Deny from all
#  Allow from 127.0.0.1
#</Directory>

Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin
Alias /mysqladmin /usr/share/phpmyadmin

Next we change the authentication in phpMyAdmin from cookie to http:

vi /usr/share/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

[...]
/* Authentication type */
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'http';
[...]

Restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Afterwards, you can access phpMyAdmin under http://192.168.0.100/phpmyadmin/:

8 Links

• Apache: http://httpd.apache.org/
• PHP: http://www.php.net/
• MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/
• CentOS: http://www.centos.org/
• phpMyAdmin: http://www.phpmyadmin.net/