So, I thought why not move to Ubuntu since it has just announced 10.04LTS (Long Term Support) in April 2010. Folks at iWeb were really nice to do a reinstall without any charges and also process a memory upgrade request at an amazing 50% discount.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

• Apache 2 version is 2.2.14
• PHP version is 5.3.2
• MySQL version is 5.1.41-3ubuntu12
• SVN (Subversion) version is 1.6.6

As a comparison CentOS 5.4 has the following versions

• Apache 2 version is 2.2.3
• PHP version is 5.1.6
• MySQL version is 5.0.77
• SVN (Subversion) version is 1.4.2

So if you are a PHP developer looking to deploy a Linux flavour on your new box, choose Ubuntu

Installing from source is bad idea; there are many reasons for this but the major one is that you will be spending a lot of time keeping the system updated. If you love installing from source then I would suggest using a different distribution e.g. Gentoo.

You can build from source if the package is not available in yum but still, try to use “yum” (or “apt-get” on Ubuntu) because it will save a lot of your time when upgrading your packages.

So here is the procedure to Install Apache, PHP and MySQL on a CentOS box.

First of all edit the following file using “vi” or any other editor you prefer (I prefer nano)

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo

Find the line under [centosplus] that reads something like this

enabled = 0

Change it to

enabled = 1

Then do

yum install httpd php mysql-server php-mysql php-gd

This will install Apache, PHP, MySQL and many other common packages

All you need now is to start Apache (httpd) and MySQL (mysqld)

/etc/init.d/httpd start
/etc/init.d/mysqld start

Wow, that was easy, so you got Apache, PHP and MySQL running on your system but still needs to be configured to auto-run on server boot (or reboot). Just punch in the following command and it will be done for both Apache and MySQL (you don’t need to do this for PHP since it is already bind to Apache)

/sbin/chkconfig httpd --level 345 on
/sbin/chkconfig mysqld --level 345 on

345 are basically run level 3, 4 and 5. If you want to study more about Run Levels please consult this article.

That’s it, these simple steps will give install Apache, PHP, MySQL and all the common packages that you will require. Most importantly, you can update these packages with just

yum update

(You may try this command right now but it will not work since you already got all the updated stuff installed)

Updating your system is a breeze now

Note 1: Please change the password for “root” user in MySQL.

Note 2: Your “DocumentRoot” is /var/www/html.

Update: Added instructions to auto-start Apache and MySQL when system starts / restarts.

Installing phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu server is even easier, you just need to

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

but what if we accidently skip the configuration screen where phpmyadmin makes modifications to apache?

Dont worry just do the following

Edit Apache’s configuration file (assuming you are using apache2)

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
# better to use the following command instead of the one above
#gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add the following line of code inside apache2.conf:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Now restart Apache:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Go to /phpmyadmin/ and login with your mysql username and password.

After trying to install Apache, MySQL and PHP on Ubuntu 8.10 via several methods listed over the web. I opted for xampp package for linux.

It is as easy as ABC

Download the xampp linux package from their official website

wget http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xampp/xampp-linux-1.7.tar.gz

(I have selected NCHC, Taiwan as the mirror to download this package, you may try another)

Extract the files

sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.tar.gz -C /opt

Chmod the files to have nobody ownership

sudo chown -R nobody:root /opt/lampp/

Configure xampp security

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp security

Start xampp with this command

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

Stop xampp

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop

Restart xampp

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp restart

Login to ftp using the username nobody and the password that you have set up in the “xampp security”

To uninstall xampp

sudo rm -fr /opt/lampp

Enjoy!!