Installing a LAMP stack: Linux – Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Fedora Core

Assuming you already have Linux and Yum installed.

1. Install Apache (httpd), PHP, MySQL (server and client), and the component that allows
php to talk to mysql.

 yum -y install httpd php mysql mysql-server php-mysql

2. Configure the new services to start automatically

  /sbin/chkconfig httpd on
  /sbin/chkconfig --add mysqld         [this is not required with FC4 and above]
  /sbin/chkconfig mysqld on

  /sbin/service httpd start
  /sbin/service mysqld start

3. IMPORTANT! Set up the mysql database root password. Without a password, ANY user on the box can login to mysql as database root. The mysql root account is a separate password from the machine root account.

 mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'           [quotes are required]

4. Make additional security-related changes to mysql.

 mysql -u root -p

 mysql> DROP DATABASE test;                            [removes the test database]
 mysql> DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE user = '';        [Removes anonymous access]
 mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

5. Following the above steps, the document root for Apache is /var/www/html/

Create a test PHP script (such as phpinfo.php) and place it in the document root. A useful
test script sample:

 <?php
    phpinfo();
 ?>

6. Create a database and database user for your data. You will use this database and user name
in your database connection string. The GRANT statement actually creates a new MySQL user account.

 mysql> CREATE DATABASE web_db;
 mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON web_db.* TO 'web_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'thepassword';

Instead of copying a large tar file over ssh then extracting, take care of the whole process with one command:

PUSH METHOD:

cat  tarfile | ssh –C user@remotehost “(cd targetdirectory && tar –xf -)”

This will stream the tarfile over a compressed ssl tunnel and the other side will only extract if the target directory exists. The “cd targetdirectory” piece I used as a good prevention to blowing files all over an undesired/unexpected location.

PULL METHOD:

ssh -C user@remotehost”cd sourcedirectory; tar -cvf – dir_or_file” > outputfile

This is the opposite method, obviously.  Please note, the output of the SSH needs to be redirected to an output file.