This article will cover installing Nginx (with HTTPS), PHP and Mysql on a Ubuntu 17.10 Server. The first step is to install Ubuntu Server, my installation was done on a virtual machine within Hyper-V however the installation should be the same for pretty much every scenario. SSH was installed when prompted during the installation and LEMP wasn’t (just so it could be covered in more detail here).
All commands will be performed via SSH however you can just run these directly.
Install Nginx
sudo apt-get install nginx
As part of installing nginx you should configure the firewall, see this link for help with that. From this point onwards we will assume this has been done correctly.
Create new Directory for new site
My nginx server will host multiple different sites, because of this we will do things slightly different. We will setup virtual hosts for each site so each site needs a directory.
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html
Set permissions
sudo chown -R tom:www-data /var/www/example.com/public_html
sudo chmod 755 /var/www
Create the Page
sudo nano /var/www/example.com/public_html/index.html
<html>
<head>
<title>www.example.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success: You Have Set Up a Virtual Host</h1>
</body>
</html>
Create virtual host file
sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com
Setup virtual host file
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com
server {
listen 80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
#listen [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6
root /var/www/example.com/public_html;
index index.html index.htm;
# Make site accessible from http://localhost/
server_name example.com;
}
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo service nginx restart
If all has worked correctly you should be able to navigate to the url specified in your virtual host file and see your page. This is all done over HTTP and ideally we want HTTPS so the next step used LetsEncrypt to setup HTTPS
Install Certbot
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
Configure Nginx
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com
Change to the following (make sure you have an DNS A Record for www. setup)
# Make site accessible from http://localhost/ server_name example.com www.example.com;
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx
Allow HTTPS in
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo ufw delete allow 'Nginx HTTP'
Obtain an SSH certificate
sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com
This should also prompt you for various options, simply select what you want and continue. If everything has gone as planned we should now be using HTTPS (open your site in your browser to confirm)
Install MySQL
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
You will be prompted for a password so choose something strong. Run the following command to secure the installation
mysql_secure_installation
Install PHP
sudo apt-get install php-fpm php-mysql
Open the following file and modify
sudo nano /etc/php/7.1/fpm/php.ini
Uncomment cgi.fix_pathinfo and set to 0, it should look like this
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
Save and exit
sudo systemctl restart php7.1-fpm
Modify Nginx to use PHP
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com
Add index.php before index.html, add the following location blocks
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
Save and exit. Verify everything is working with the following command
sudo nginx -t
If all is okay then reload nginx
sudo systemctl reload nginx
You should now have a functioning LAMP box that supports server blocks.