This guide describes how to prepare the web server for the installation of AtroCore Applications.
Installation guide is based on Ubuntu 20.04.
The Apache web server is among the most popular web servers in the world. It’s well documented, has an active community of users, and has been in wide use for much of the history of the web, which makes it a great default choice for hosting a web application.
Install Apache using Ubuntu’s package manager, apt:
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install apache2
Enable mod_rewrite:
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2
If you have the ufw firewall enabled, you’ll need to adjust your firewall settings to allow HTTP traffic. UFW has different application profiles that you can leverage for accomplishing that. To list all currently available UFW application profiles, you can run:
sudo ufw app list
You’ll see output like this:
Available applications:
Apache
Apache Full
Apache Secure
OpenSSH
Here’s what each of these profiles mean:
- Apache: This profile opens only port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic).
- Apache Full: This profile opens both port 80 (normal, unencrypted web traffic) and port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic).
- Apache Secure: This profile opens only port 443 (TLS/SSL encrypted traffic).
So, to allow traffic on port 80 and 443, use the Apache profile:
sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full"
Note: In case if you just enable firewall, don't forget to allow ssh connection, because it can be your last connection :)
sudo ufw allow in "OpenSSH"
You can verify the change with:
sudo ufw status
You’ll see output like this:
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
Apache Full ALLOW Anywhere
OpenSSH ALLOW Anywhere
Apache Full (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
OpenSSH (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
Traffic on port 80 and 443 is now allowed through the firewall. You can do a spot check right away to verify that everything went as planned by visiting your server’s public IP address in your web browser:
http://your_server_ip
You’ll see the default Ubuntu 20.04 Apache web page. It should look something like this:
Now, after you have the web server up and running, you need to install the database system to be able to store and manage data for your web application. MySQL is a popular database management system used within PHP environments.
Again, use apt to acquire and install this software:
sudo apt -y install mysql-server
When the installation is finished, it’s recommended that you run a security script that comes pre-installed with MySQL. This script will remove some insecure default settings and lock down access to your database system. Start the interactive script by running:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
This will ask if you want to configure the VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN.
Note: Enabling this feature is something of a judgment call. If enabled, passwords which don’t match the specified criteria will be rejected by MySQL with an error. It is safe to leave validation disabled, but you should always use strong, unique passwords for database credentials.
Answer Y for yes, or anything else to continue without enabling.
VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin?
Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No:
If you answer “yes”, you’ll be asked to select a level of password validation. Keep in mind that if you enter 2 for the strongest level, you will receive errors when attempting to set any password which does not contain numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and special characters, or which is based on common dictionary words.
Regardless of whether you chose to set up the VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN, your server will next ask you to select and confirm a password for the MySQL root user. This is not to be confused with the system root. The database root user is an administrative user with full privileges over the database system.
If you enabled password validation, you’ll be shown the password strength for the root password you just entered and your server will ask if you want to continue with that password. If you are happy with your current password, enter Y. For the rest of the questions, press Y and hit the ENTER key at each prompt.
When you’re finished, test if you’re able to log in to the MySQL console by typing:
sudo mysql
This will connect to the MySQL server as the administrative database user root, which is inferred by the use of sudo when running this command. You should see output like this:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 9
Server version: 8.0.25-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 (Ubuntu)
Copyright (c) 2000, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql>
To exit the MySQL console, do:
Ctrl + D
You have Apache installed to serve your content and MySQL installed to store and manage your data. PHP is the component of our setup that will process code to display dynamic content to the final user. In addition to the php package, you’ll need php-mysql, a PHP module that allows PHP to communicate with MySQL-based databases. You’ll also need libapache2-mod-php to enable Apache to handle PHP files and others required modules for AtroCore Application.
To install these packages, run:
sudo apt -y install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-zip php-imagick
Once the installation is finished, you can run the following command to confirm your PHP version:
php -v
You should see output like this:
PHP 7.4.3 (cli) (built: Oct 6 2020 15:47:56) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.4.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies
After PHP is installed, you need to configure it.
run for it:
sudo printf "post_max_size = 20M\nupload_max_filesize = 20M\nmax_execution_time = 180\nmax_input_time = 180\nmemory_limit = 256M" >> /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini
sudo service apache2 restart
Note: If you are using a another version of PHP, provide the correct path to php.ini
When using the Apache web server, you can create virtual hosts to encapsulate configuration details and host more than one domain from a single server. In this guide, we’ll set up a domain called your_domain, but you should replace this with your own domain name.
Apache on Ubuntu 20.04 has one server block enabled by default that is configured to serve documents from the /var/www/html directory. While this works well for a single site, it can become unwieldy if you are hosting multiple sites. Instead of modifying /var/www/html, we’ll create a directory structure within /var/www for the your_domain site, leaving /var/www/html in place as the default directory to be served if a client request doesn’t match any other sites.
Create the directory for your_domain as follows:
sudo mkdir /var/www/your_domain
Create an index.html file in that location so that we can test that the virtual host works as expected:
nano /var/www/your_domain/index.html
Include the following content in this file:
<html>
<head>
<title>Your website</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
<p>This is the landing page of <strong>your_domain</strong>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Save and close the file when you’re done. If you’re using nano, you can do that by pressing CTRL+X, then Y and ENTER.
Next, assign ownership of the directory:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/your_domain
Ubuntu and Debian use www-data as a standard user for the webserver. This can also be one of the following: www, apache2, psacln etc
Then, open a new configuration file in Apache’s sites-available directory using your preferred command-line editor. Here, we’ll use nano:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.conf
This will create a new blank file. Paste in the following bare-bones configuration:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName your_domain
ServerAlias www.your_domain
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/your_domain
<Directory var/www/your_domain/>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Now use a2ensite to enable the new virtual host:
sudo a2ensite your_domain
You might want to disable the default website that comes installed with Apache. This is required if you’re not using a custom domain name, because in this case Apache’s default configuration would overwrite your virtual host. To disable Apache’s default website, type:
sudo a2dissite 000-default
To make sure your configuration file doesn’t contain syntax errors, run:
sudo apache2ctl configtest
Finally, reload Apache so these changes take effect:
sudo systemctl reload apache2
Now go to your browser and access your server’s domain name or IP address once again:
http://your_domain
Note: Make sure that you configured your domain name
You’ll see a page like this:
If you see this page, it means your Apache virtual host is working as expected.
Now your server is prepared for the installation of the AtroCore Application. Go to install guide.