This tutorial shows how to install an Apache web
server on CentOS 7 server with PHP (mod_php) and MySQL database.
The acronym LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.
This updated tutorial shows the installation of the latest PHP
versions (7.0, 7.1 and 7.2) on CentOS 7.4.
1 Preliminary Note
In this tutorial, I use the hostname server1.example.com with
the IP p 192.168.1.100.
These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them
where appropriate.
I will add the EPEL repo here to install latest phpMyAdmin as
follows:
rpm --import
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY*
yum -y install epel-release
To edit files on the shell, I'll install the nano editor. If you
prefer vi for file editing, then skip this step.
yum -y install nano
2 Installing MySQL / MariaDB
MariaDB is a MySQL fork of the original MySQL developer Monty
Widenius. MariaDB is compatible with MySQL and I've chosen to use
MariaDB here instead of MySQL. Run this command to install MariaDB
with yum:
yum -y install
mariadb-server mariadb
Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL
starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MySQL
server:
systemctl start
mariadb.service
systemctl enable mariadb.service
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
MariaDB
SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP
CAREFULLY!
In order to log into MariaDB to secure it, we'll need the
current
password for the root user. If you've just
installed MariaDB, 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
MariaDB
root user without the proper authorisation.
Set root password? [Y/n] New password:
Re-enter new password:
Password updated successfully!
Reloading privilege tables..
... Success!
By default, a MariaDB installation has an anonymous user, allowing
anyone
to log into MariaDB 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]
... 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]
... Success!
By default, MariaDB 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]
- 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]
... Success!
Cleaning up...
All done! If you've completed all of the above
steps, your MariaDB
installation should now be secure.
Thanks for using MariaDB!
[root@server1 ~]#
3 Installing Apache
CentOS 7 ships with Apache 2.4. Apache is directly available as a
CentOS 7 package, therefore we can install it like this:
yum -y install httpd
Here a screenshot of the installation process.
Now configure your system to start Apache at boot time...
systemctl start
httpd.service
systemctl enable
httpd.service
To be able to access the web server from outside, we have to open
the HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443) ports in the
firewall. The default firewall on CentOS is
firewalld which can be configured with the firewalld-cmd
command.
firewall-cmd --permanent
--zone=public --add-service=http firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
firewall-cmd --reload
Now direct your browser to the IP address of your server, in my
case http://192.168.1.100,
and you should see the Apache placeholder page:
4 Installing PHP
The PHP version that ships with CentOS as default is quite old (PHP
5.4). Therefore I will show you in this chapter
some options to install newer PHP versions like PHP 7.0 or 7.1 from
Remi repository.
Add the Remi CentOS repository.
rpm
-Uvh http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
Install yum-utils as we need the yum-config-manager utility.
yum -y install
yum-utils
and run yum update
yum update
Now you have to chose which PHP version you want to use on the
server. If you like to use PHP 5.4, then proceed to chapter 4.1. To
install PHP 7.0, follow the commands in chapter 4.2, for PHP 7.1
chapter 4.3 and for PHP 7.1, use chapter 4.4 instead. Follow just
one of the 4.x chapters and not all of them as you can only use one
PHP version at a time with Apache mod_php.
4.1 Install PHP 5.4
To install PHP 5.4, run this command:
yum -y
install php
4.2 Install PHP 7.0
We can install PHP 7.0 and the Apache PHP 7.0 module as
follows:
yum-config-manager --enable
remi-php70
yum -y
install php php-opcache
4.3 Install PHP 7.1
If you want to use PHP 7.1 instead, use:
yum-config-manager --enable
remi-php71
yum -y
install php php-opcache
4.4 Install PHP 7.2
If you want to use PHP 7.2 instead, use:
yum-config-manager
--enable remi-php72
yum -y
install php php-opcache
In this example and in the downloadable virtual machine, I'll use
PHP 7.2.
We must restart Apache to apply the changes:
systemctl
restart httpd.service
5 Testing PHP / Getting Details About Your PHP Installation
The document root of the default website is /var/www/html. We will
create a small PHP file (info.php) in that directory and call it in
a browser to test the PHP installation. The file will display lots
of useful details about our PHP installation, such as the installed
PHP version.
nano
/var/www/html/info.php