How to Install Nginx, MariaDB and PHP7 (LEMP Stack) on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

PHP7 is available from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus so you no longer have to rely on third-party PPA to get PHP7 installed on Ubuntu 16.04. In this tutorial, we are going to look at how to install Nginx, MariaDB and PHP7-FPM (LEMP stack) on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus.

Step 1: Update Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Before we install any software, it’s always a good idea to update repository and software packages. SSH into your Ubuntu 16.04 server and enter the below commands.

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Step 2: Install Nginx Web Server

Nginx is a high performance web server. It also can be used as a reverse proxy. Enter this command to install Nginx Web server.

sudo apt install nginx

After it’s installed, we can enable Nginx to auto start when Ubuntu is booted by running the following command.

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Then start Nginx with this command:

sudo systemctl start nginx

Now check out its status.

systemctl status nginx

Output:

● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2016-06-04 08:31:23 EDT; 1 day 2h ago
 Main PID: 298 (nginx)
   CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
     ├─298 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on
     └─299 nginx: worker process

“enabled” indicates that auto start at boot time is enabled and we can see that Nginx is running.

Now in your browser’s address bar, type the public IP address of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server. You should see the “Welcome to nginx!” Web page which means Nginx Web server is running correctly.

You can use the following command to fetch the public IP address of Ubuntu 16.04 server.

sudo apt install curl

curl http://icanhazip.com

If you are installing LEMP on your local Ubuntu 16.04 box, just type 127.0.0.1 or localhost in the browser address bar.

Finally, we need to make www-data (Nginx user) as the owner of web root directory.

sudo chown www-data /usr/share/nginx/html -R

Step 3: Install MariaDB

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL. It is developed by former members of MySQL team who concerned that Oracle might turn MySQL into a closed-source product. Many Linux distributions (Arch Linux, Fedora etc), companies and organizations (Google, Wikipedia) have migrated to MariaDB. So we’re going to install MariaDB instead of MySQL.

sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After it’s installed, MariaDB server should be automatically started. Use systemctl to check its status.

systemctl status mysql

Output:

● mysql.service - LSB: Start and stop the mysql database server daemon
 Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/mysql; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
 Active: active (running) since Wed 2016-04-20 18:52:01 EDT; 1min 30s ago
 Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)

If it’s not running, start it with this command:

sudo systemctl start mysql

To enable MariaDB to automatically start when Ubuntu 16.04 is rebooted:

sudo systemctl enable mysql

Now run the post installation security script.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When it asks you to enter MariaDB root password, press enter because you have not set the root password yet. Then enter y to set the root password for MariaDB server.

Next you can just press Enter to answer all the remaining questions. This will remove anonymous user, disable remote root login and remove test database. This step is a basic requirement for MariaDB database security.

Step 4: Install PHP7

Enter the following command to install PHP7 and PHP7 extensions.

sudo apt install php7.0-fpm php7.0-mbstring php7.0-xml php7.0-mysql php7.0-common php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-cli php7.0-curl

PHP extensions are commonly needed for content management systems (CMS) like WordPress. For example, if your installation lacks php7.0-xml, then some of your WordPress site page may be blank and you can find an error in Nginx error log like:

PHP message: PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function xml_parser_create()

Installing these PHP extensions ensures that your CMS runs smoothly.

Now start php7.0-fpm.

sudo systemctl start php7.0-fpm

Check status:

systemctl status php7.0-fpm

Sample output:

● php7.0-fpm.service - The PHP 7.0 FastCGI Process Manager
 Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/php7.0-fpm.service; enabled; vendor pre
set: enabled)
 Active: active (running) since Wed 2016-04-20 19:21:05 EDT; 2s ago

Step 5: Create a Default Nginx Server Block File

Remove the default symlink in sites-enabled directory.

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Then create a new default server block file under /etc/nginx/conf.d/ directory.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

Paste the following text into the file. Replace 12.34.56.78 with your actual server IP.

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name 12.34.56.78;
  root /usr/share/nginx/html/;
  index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
  }

  error_page 404 /404.html;
  error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;

  location = /50x.html {
    root /usr/share/nginx/html;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
  }

  location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
  }
}

Save and close the file. Then test nginx configuration and reload it.

sudo nginx -t

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Step 6: Test PHP

To test the cli version of PHP7, we just need to enter this command:

php --version

Sample output:

PHP 7.0.15-7ubuntu2 (cli) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
  with Zend OPcache v7.0.6-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2016, by Zend Technologies

To test PHP-FPM, first create a test.php file in the Web root directory.

sudo nano /usr/share/nginx/html/test.php

Paste the following PHP code into the file.

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save and close the file. Now in the browser address bar, enter server-ip-address/test.php. Replace sever-ip-address with your actual IP. You should see your server’s PHP information. This means PHP processing is fine.

How to Install PHP7.2

PHP7.2 is the latest stable version of PHP, released on November 30, 2017 and it has minor performance boost over PHP7.0. We can add the PPA from Ondrej Sury to install PHP7.2 on Ubuntu 17.10. That guy is also the maintainer of Certbot PPA.

sudo apt install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php -y 

sudo apt update

Then we can install PHP7.2 and common extensions by using the following command.

sudo apt install php7.2 php7.2-fpm php7.2-mysql php-common php7.2-cli php7.2-common php7.2-json php7.2-opcache php7.2-readline php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xml php7.2-gd php7.2-curl

Now start PHP7.2-FPM.

sudo systemctl start php7.2-fpm

Enable auto-start at system boot time.

sudo systemctl enable php7.2-fpm

Check its status:

systemctl status php7.2-fpm

Using PHP7.2-FPM with Nginx

To make Nginx use PHP7.2-FPM instead of PHP7.0-FPM, we need to edit the Nginx server block file.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

Find the following line.

fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;

Change php7.0-fpm to php7.2-fpm.

fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;

Save and close the file. Then reload Nginx for the change to take effect.

sudo systemctl reload nginx

If you refresh the server-ip-address/info.php page, you will see Nginx is now using PHP7.2-FPM.

PHP7.0 can coexist with PHP7.2. If you don’t want to use PHP7.0, then you can remove it. Please beware that some web application may not be compatible with PHP7.2 like NextCloud 12. In my test, WordPress runs well with PHP7.2.

For your server’s security, you should delete test.php file now.

Congrats! You have successfully installed Nginx, MariaDB and PHP7 (LEMP stack) on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus. Comments, questions or suggestions are always welcome. If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on social media! Stay tuned for more Linux tutorials.