Lighttpd is a secure, fast and event-based web server alternative to Nginx. It can be used to serve up pages for high-traffic websites. It also has very small memory footprint which makes it a great webserver for busy websites on low-end systems.
This brief tutorial is going to show you how to install Lighttpd with support for PHP7 and MySQL (LLMP) on Ubuntu 17.04. After the configurations are done, you should then be able to serve up pages very fast from your Ubuntu machine using Lighttpd.
To get the server installed and configured correctly, please follow the steps below:
Step 1: Install Lighttpd on Ubuntu
To get Lighttpd installed on Ubuntu, please run the commands below
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install lighttpd
After installing, run the commands below to stop, start and enable the webserver to always start up when the computer boots up.
sudo systemctl stop lighttpd.service sudo systemctl start lighttpd.service sudo systemctl enable lighttpd.service
Step 2: Install PHP7 and Related Modules
Next, run the commands below to install PHP7 and related modules on Ubuntu. These are required modules to enable Lighttpd to support dynamic PHP based applications.
sudo apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-cgi php7.0-mysql
After running the above commands, other PHP-based dependencies will also be installed.
Step 3: Enabling PHP modules for Lighttpd
After installing PHP modules, run the commands below to enable the basic PHP modules.
sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php
Finally, restart Lighttpd to load the configurations.
sudo systemctl restart lighttpd.service
Step 4: Installing MySQL
After installing PHP, run the commands below to install MySQL database server. MySQL can be installed by running the commands below
sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
During the installation, you’ll be prompted to create and confirm a MySQL root user password. Please do.
You’ll always need the password to manage MySQL server so don’t forget.
You can also stop, start and enable MySQL server by running the commands below.
sudo systemctl stop mysql.service sudo systemctl start mysql.service sudo systemctl enable mysql.service
Step 5: Verify Lighttpd and PHP
The final step is to validate that Lighttpd and PHP are both functioning. To do a test, run the commands below to create a file in Lighttpd default root directory on Ubuntu.
sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php
Then type the line below in the file and save it.
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
Now, open your browser and browse to the Ubuntu server hostname or IP address followed by /phpinfo.php.
Example:
You should see something like the one below.
Summary:
This post shows you how to install Lighttpd with support for PHP7 and MySQL (LLMP) on Ubuntu 17.04 systems. If the above steps are followed properly, in no time you should be serving web pages over Lighttpd, including PHP based applications , like WordPress.
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