Leonard Austin

So I been getting rather annoyed with CentOs recently, mainly due to the lack of PHP support above 5.1.6, especially with all the cool features of 5.3. Also I always seem to have massive trouble installing anything like Mcypt or Memcache.

So I thought I’d give Ubuntu a go and I’m now a convert! Everything went smoothly, not one issue or problem. The support forums are brilliant and almost all questions have already been answered. I dont know whether I’ve just got lucky (I guess only time will tell) but Ubuntu is now my first port of call when setting up a new server.

Below is a line by line tutorial on how I got setup with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid. I don’t go into too much details on how to edit the files using nano or vi but you can have a look on my previous posts or online, otherwise you can sftp in using root and change the files that way, (my preferred method).

Install Lamp on Ubuntu

sudo tasksel install lamp-server
You will need to enter a root mysql password for mysql

Change Apache Default Web Location on Ubuntu

If you need to change the default root location from /var/www to something else you can do so in the following file location. This is useful for using frameworks such as Zend Framework.

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Create file and add Fully Qualified Domain Name to Apache config (auto adds all in conf.d)

Create a new file call fqdn in:

/etc/apache2/conf.d/

In the top of the file write the following where mydomain.com is the domain name pointing to this server.

servername mydomain.com

Enable mod_rewrite on Ubuntu

a2enmod rewrite

Edit “AllowOverride None” for default site (usually the first 2 found on line 4 and line 10). Change to the following

AllowOverride All

Found in:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Disable Directory Listing on Ubuntu

Inside: /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
Add "-" before the word Indexes

Options -Indexes

Restart Apache on Ubuntu

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Install Memcached on Ubuntu

apt-get install memcached
apt-get install php5-memcache

Install Mcrypt on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install php5-mcrypt

Install APC on Ubuntu

apt-get install php-apc
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

When you get erros you need to type

apt-get install re2c
apt-get install gawk

Restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Other Useful Info on Ubuntu

PHP.ini Location in Ubuntu

/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

For some reason my install of XAMPP didn’t have mod_rewrite automatically enabled? Not really sure why  but basically below are the instructions on how to enable .htaccess mod_rewrite in xampp.

1. Go to the directory of installation <C:\xampp>\apache\conf

2. Open and edit httpd.conf in a text editor

3. Find the line which contains

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

and (uncomment) change to

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

4. Find all occurrences of

AllowOverride None

and change to

AllowOverride All

I think it appears 2 or 3 times on the configuration file.

5. Restart xampp

That’s it you should be good to go.

Type:

1. “cd /etc”
2. “ls”

Check that there is the php.ini listed if not you will have to ask your hosting provider where it is.

3. “vi php.ini”

Find the bit in php.ini you would like to edit.

4. “i” – This enables you to edit the php.ini file

5. After changing the file, please Esc.

6: “:wq” – (w = saves the file, q = quit)

7. reboot your server and your done.

Could figure out how to actually write the .htaccess file in windows as when i tried to rename the txt file I created to .htaccess it popped up an error saying “You must type a file name”.

The solution:

1. Open up notepad

2. Write the contents of your .htaccess

3. Save as

4. “.htacess” – Make sure you keep the speech marks.

5. Sorted

Ok so one of my servers is with 1and1 and they provide free backup space via ftp. However you can only access it via the server you have with them, this means logging into your server using putty (SSH) from your desktop then logging into the backup server.

To do this:
1. From a command prompt you would use the ftp command ‘ftp backup_server_name.info’
2. Enter the username, then the password.
3. Use the make directory command to create a directory: ‘mkdir
testDirectory’

The reason I wanted to make a directory is so I can automate the server backup per domain via the plesk control panel.