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Installing LAMP(Apache Web Server/PHP/MySQL) in Debian/Ubuntu

Binny V A — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:10:07 +0000

Installing the LAMP environment on a Linux system is easy if you are comfortable with using the native package management software. If you on a Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS system, that will be yum – and for Debian/Ubuntu systems, that will be apt. This tutorial shows you how to install Apache 2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5 in Debian using apt.

Before installation, a few points to remember. These instruction are not for a production environment – this is for a development environment. To install the software, you need root access. You can get that using this command…

su -
[Enter root password]

Installing Apache 2

Use this command to install Apache 2.

apt-get install apache2

Make sure you specify ‘apache2′ – or else, apache 1.3 will be installed.

Install PHP 5

Now, install the PHP 5 packages…

apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-cgi

No go to the folder /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ and edit the file in that directory(usually 000-default). Find the line that says
RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/
and remove it.

Now your document root is /var/www/ – place all your HTML documents and scripts in this folder. If you want to make some other configuration changes, edit the configuration files at /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

I also had to make the following changes…

Changed the owner of /var/log/apache2 to www-data – I used the command chown www-data:www-data apache2
Created an empty file at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

This was to fix a few errors I saw on my system – you may not have to do it.

Install MySQL

This is the command to install MySQL server, its client and PHP’s MySQL libraries…

apt-get install mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server php5-mysql

Finally, Install the other packages you need as well

apt-get install php5-sqlite php5-gd ...

Testing the System

Go to your document root(/var/www) and create a php files called ‘info.php’ and put this code inside that…

info();

Start the Servers

First, turn on the MySQL database server…

/etc/init.d/mysql start

Then, start the Apache Web Server…

/etc/init.d/apache2 start

Now fire up a browser and go to localhost – you should see a file listing page with a ‘info.php’ in the list. Click on that link – if you see a PHP information page, your web server is setup correctly.

To make sure MySQL-PHP connection is working, install phpMyAdmin – or write a database connection script – whatever is easier for you.

Case Sensitivity in URLs

Binny V A — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:16:29 +0000

I am an open source guy – so naturally I prefer the flagship OSS software Apache to the proprietary Microsoft IIS. But there is one area where IIS does a better job than Apache – the case sensitivity of URLs.

Are URLs Case Sensitive?

They should not be – but they sometimes are. Domain names are not case sensitive – for example http://www.apache.org/ and http://WWW.Apache.Org/ goes to the same location. But in the LAMP platform, the path is case sensitive…

But in the case of Microsoft IIS server, this is not true – try…

Reason: Linux Filesystem is Case Sensitive

The root cause of this is that the filesystem in the Linux OS is case sensitive – while FAT32/NTFS filesystems in Windows are not.

Dynamic URLs

Now Dynamic/friendly/clean URLs are appearing in many CMS tools. A good example for this is the ‘permalink structure’ in WordPress. These dynamic URLs could be case sensitive or not – it depends on the software. In WordPress they are case insensitive. Del.icio.us is also case insensitive. TinyURL is another service that uses case insensitive URLs. But it is possible for the tool to make the URLs case sensitive.

From the SEO perspective

If the search bot visits two urls say, example.com/MyWebPage/Index and example.com/mywebpage/index , will the bot index both page contents? If they are same, will one get the duplicate content penalty? Or will google just index the URL with lower case and ignore the other – remember, in Linux/Apache, both pages may have different content.

Conclusion

The RFC for URL says they must be case insensitive.

For resiliency, programs interpreting URLs should treat upper case letters as equivalent to lower case in scheme names (e.g., allow “HTTP” as well as “http”).

Apache must not use the filesystem as an excuse – I really hope they provide case insensitive URLs

Between Web Application and Desktop Applications

Binny V A — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 17:39:10 +0000

There is a distinct line between web application and desktop applications. But over the last few years, this line is becoming thinner. Due to faster internet connection and technologies like ajax, web applications are becoming much faster and more responsive. And, if you have a local web server installed, a ‘web’ application can become desktop application.

I have a web server(Apache), and a database server(MySQL) running at all times on my local system. Since LAMP is my preferred platform of development, if I need a new software, I will create it on LAMP. A good example of this is Nexty. Over time, I have discovered that web application can be used as desktop applications. All you need is a web server, a database server and a browser.

There must be some changes to the current model to make this system work. These are a few I could think of…

Web Server must run as the current user. That way, you can read/write to any file using PHP(or equivalent).
The application must not be available over the network. Or, the web server must only accept connections from 127.0.0.1
An installer for these kind of applications must be made.

Advantages

Familiarity: People are already used to web applications – so it will be easy to switch.
User Customizable: Users can change the appearance of the application(user stylesheets), and to a limited extent, the functionality(GreaseMonkey).
Open Source: If the code is in PHP or Ruby on Rails, or anything similar, the code will be available for study or even modification.
Cross Platform: The same program can be installed in Windows or Linux or whatever – as long as it has a Web server.

Disadvantages

Imaginary: As of yet no such system exists.
High Level: The system will not be able to do low level system operations.
Limited: There will be some very serious limitation to the application unless the current systems are modified. For example, the browser cannot read or write to the filesystem.

I have been using some web applications as desktop applications for a while now – these include WordPress(for keeping notes), activeCollab(project management), Nexty(to do list), and Tiker(time tracker).