LEMP: is an open-source web application stack used to develop web applications. The term LEMP is an acronym that represents L for the Linux Operating system, Nginx (pronounced as engine-x, hence the E in the acronym) web server, M for MySQL database, and P for PHP scripting language.
Linux: Linux is an open-source operating system that you can install and configure to meet different application requirements. Linux sits at the first level of the LEMP stack and supports other components on the upper layers. It is used in deploying other components.
Nginx: It is a web server that follows an event-driven approach and handles multiple requests within one thread. It is the second layer of the LEMP stack and supports all Unix-like OS and windows partially. Web browser requests are handled by Nginx aiding communication with server and database.
MySQL: A relational database management system and is the third layer of the LEMP stack. The LEMP model uses MySQL for storing, managing, and querying information in relational databases.Query refers to special instructions for manipulating data in a relational database with the SQL language.
PHP: It is a scripting language that allows websites to run the elements of LEMP stack dynamically.
First step: Log on to the AWS Cloud Services and Create an EC2 Ubuntu Virtual Machine(VM) instance. When creating the instance, choose keypair aunthentication and download private key (*.pem) on your local computer.
A security group is a group of rules that acts as a virtual firewall to the type of traffic that enters or leaves an instance-inbound and outbound traffics respectively.
We need to enable our inbound traffic from anywhere in order to ensure our webpage accessibility on the internet.
We can check the web server accessibility on the internet with curl alongside the IP address or DNS name of our local host.
curl http://localhost:80 or curl http://127.0.0.1:80
We install Nginx, our web server for displaying webpages through Ubuntu package manager apt
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx
To verify successful Nginx install
sudo systemctl status nginx
To test how our Nginx server can respond to requests from the Internet, open a web browser of your choice and try to access following url
http://<Public-IP-Address>:80
The above page shows nginx is properly installed and accessible through firewall
To check the ip address without always opening the instance page, run the below code line
curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4
MySQL is a relational database which we use to store and manage data on the site
Use sudo apt install mysql command to install it and when prompted if you want to continue, type Y for yes
Use sudo mysql_secure_installation command remove unwanted default permissions and enable database protection
To access the mysql Database, enter this on the terminal
sudo mysql
The page below will appear showing that mysql is properly installed and connect from the administrative root
simply type exit to leave the MYSQL terminal
PHP serves as the programming language responsible for dynamically displaying contents of the webpage to users who make request to the server
Nginx requires an external program to handle PHP processing and act as a bridge between the PHP interpreter itself and the web server. This allows for a better overall performance in most PHP-based websites, but it requires additional configuration. Also, we need to install php-fpm, which stands for “PHP fastCGI process manager”, and tell Nginx to pass PHP requests to this software for processing. Additionally, we need php-mysql, a PHP module that allows PHP to communicate with MySQL-based databases. Core PHP packages will automatically be installed as dependencies. This code will download all of the two
sudo apt install php-fpm php-mysql
we can create server blocks (similar to virtual hosts in Apache) to encapsulate configuration details and host more than one domain on a single server. In this guide, we will use projectLEMP as an example domain name.
First, we create the directory for projectLEMP using the mkdir command
sudo mkdir /var/www/projectLEMP
Next, we assign ownership of the directory with the current system user:
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/projectLEMP
Then, create and open a new configuration file in Nginx sites-available directory using nano command line editor
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/projectLEMP
copy and paste the following bare-bones configuration in the directory;
#/etc/nginx/sites-available/projectLEMP
server {
listen 80;
server_name projectLEMP www.projectLEMP;
root /var/www/projectLEMP;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
Ater this, type ctrl O to save, enter and ctrl X to exit
Activate the configuration by linking to the config file from Nginx’s sites-enabled directory:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/projectLEMP /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
This will tell Nginx to use the configuration next time it is reloaded. Type sudo nginx -t to check for syntax error. The page below confirms there is no syntax error
We also need to disable default Nginx host that is currently configured to listen on port 80, for this run:
sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
Next, reload nginx with sudo systemctl reload nginx
To test that the server is working as expected, we create an index.html file in location /var/www/projectLEMP;
sudo echo 'Hello LEMP from hostname' $(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-hostname) 'with public IP' $(curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4) > /var/www/projectLEMP/index.html
Now, open any browser of your choice and type in
http://<public_ip_address>:80
The above page shows the server working properly.
Now that LEMP stack is fully installed, test to see if it can handle .php files properly
To do this, we use the nano command editor to create a test php file in the document root
Create the file sudo nano /var/www/projectLEMP/info.php
Paste this in the open file
<?php
phpinfo();
Now enter http://server_domain_or_IP/info.php
This page shows the info of the php page
We create a database next so that the Nginx website will be able to query data from the database and display
We will create a database named example_database and a user named example_user
Connect mysql
sudo mysql
Create a new database by entering this command into the mysql console
CREATE DATABASE example_database;
Next, create a new user and grant him full privileges on the database you have just created. Enter this into the mysql console
CREATE USER 'example_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password12';
Enter the following into mysql consoleto grant the created user full priviledge
GRANT ALL ON example_database.* TO 'example_user'@'%';
Type exit to exit the mysql console
Next You can test if the new user has the proper permissions by logging in to the MySQL console again by using custom user credentials:
mysql -u example_user -p. Enter the required password
Now acess your database with SHOW DATABASES;
The page below displays the database
Next, we’ll create a test table named todo_list. From the MySQL console, run the following statement:
CREATE TABLE example_database.todo_list (
item_id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
content VARCHAR(255),
PRIMARY KEY(item_id)
);
We add a few lines to the table by typing into the mysql console:
INSERT INTO example_database.todo_list (content) VALUES ("lemp1code");
INSERT INTO example_database.todo_list (content) VALUES ("lemp2code");
INSERT INTO example_database.todo_list (content) VALUES ("last lemp message");
Then run SELECT * FROM example_database.todo_list; to view the db which will bring the page below
exit mysql by typing in exit in the console
Now we can create a PHP script that will connect to MySQL and query for our content. Create a new PHP file in the custom web root directory using nano editor:
nano /var/www/projectLEMP/todo_list.php
Next, copy and paste in the file:
<?php
$user = "example_user";
$password = "password";
$database = "example_database";
$table = "todo_list";
try {
$db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=$database", $user, $password);
echo "<h2>TODO</h2><ol>";
foreach($db->query("SELECT content FROM $table") as $row) {
echo "<li>" . $row['content'] . "</li>";
}
echo "</ol>";
} catch (PDOException $e) {
print "Error!: " . $e->getMessage() . "<br/>";
die();
}
Save and close then visit
http://<Public_domain_or_IP>/todo_list.php
The following page display shows the contents of the file created
with this, we have successfully used Nginx as web server and Mysql as database to provide PHP websites and visitors' applications.
END