How To Install Linux, Nginx, MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04

Introduction

The LEMP software stack is a group of software that can be used to serve dynamic web pages and web applications written in PHP. This is an acronym that describes a Linux operating system, with an Nginx (pronounced like “Engine-X”) web server. The backend data is stored in the MySQL database and the dynamic processing is handled by PHP.

This guide demonstrates how to install a LEMP stack on an Ubuntu 20.04 server. The Ubuntu operating system takes care of the first requirement. We will describe how to get the rest of the components up and running.

Prerequisites

In order to complete this tutorial, you will need access to an Ubuntu 20.04 server as a regular, non-root sudo user, and a firewall enabled on your server. To set this up, you can follow our initial server setup guide for Ubuntu 20.04.

Step 1 — Installing the Nginx Web Server

In order to display web pages to our site visitors, we are going to employ Nginx, a high-performance web server. We’ll use the apt package manager to obtain this software.

Since this is our first time using apt for this session, start off by updating your server’s package index. Following that, you can use apt install to get Nginx installed:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

When prompted, enter Y to confirm that you want to install Nginx. Once the installation is finished, the Nginx web server will be active and running on your Ubuntu 20.04 server.

If you have the ufw firewall enabled, as recommended in our initial server setup guide, you will need to allow connections to Nginx. Nginx registers a few different UFW application profiles upon installation. To check which UFW profiles are available, run:

sudo ufw app list

Output
Available applications:
  Nginx Full
  Nginx HTTP
  Nginx HTTPS
  OpenSSH

It is recommended that you enable the most restrictive profile that will still allow the traffic you need. Since you haven’t configured SSL for your server in this guide, you will only need to allow regular HTTP traffic on port 80.

Enable this by typing:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'

You can verify the change by running:

sudo ufw status

This command’s output will show that HTTP traffic is now allowed:

Output
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
Nginx HTTP                 ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
Nginx HTTP (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

With the new firewall rule added, you can test if the server is up and running by accessing your server’s domain name or public IP address in your web browser.

If you do not have a domain name pointed at your server and you do not know your server’s public IP address, you can find it by running the following command:

ip addr show eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2; }' | sed 's/\/.*$//'

This will print out a few IP addresses. You can try each of them in turn in your web browser.

As an alternative, you can check which IP address is accessible, as viewed from other locations on the internet:

curl -4 icanhazip.com

Type the address that you receive in your web browser and it will take you to Nginx’s default landing page:

http://server_domain_or_IP

If you see this page, it means you have successfully installed Nginx and enabled HTTP traffic for your web server.

Step 2 — Installing MySQL

Now that you have a web server up and running, you need to install the database system to be able to store and manage data for your site. MySQL is a popular database management system used within PHP environments.

Again, use apt to acquire and install this software:

sudo apt install mysql-server

When prompted, confirm installation by typing Y, and then ENTER.

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

MySQL Failed! Error: SET PASSWORD has no significance for user ‘root’@’localhost’ as the authentication method used doesn’t store authentication data in the MySQL server.

Open the terminal application.

sudo killall -9 mysql_secure_installation

Start the mysql client:

sudo mysql

Run the following SQL query:

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'SetRootPasswordHere';
exit

Then run the following command to secure it:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

mysql -u root -p

When promoted for the password enter the SetRootPasswordHere (or whatever you set when you ran the above SQL query)

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.