How to install Apache, PHP and MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04

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PHP is one of the most common server-side programming languages; it is used in many common CMS and frameworks, including WordPress, Magento, and Laravel. Many of the popular CMSs use MySQL as the database as well.
This tutorial will take you through installing PHP & MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04 and integrating it with Apache from your terminal.

At the time of this article, the PHP version is 7.4.3, and the MySQL version is 8.0.23.

Installing Apache

Apache is included within the Ubuntu repositories.
Installing Apache is straightforward on Ubuntu. The Apache package and the service is called apache2.

Use the following two commands to update the package index and install Apache:

sudo apt update  
sudo apt install apache2  

After the installation completes, the Apache service will start automatically.
To verify that the service is running, type the following:

sudo systemctl status apache2  

This command should show a message like this

apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server  
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)  
Active: active (running) since Mon 2021-03-01 09:22:49 GMT; 20min ago  

Notice that it says (running)

Since Apache ships with a default one virtual host enabled, you can head to the following directory /var/www/html and add your website inside it.
Head to your browser and type http://YOUR_IP/ http://localhost/ or you can add the port 80, which Apache listens to. e.g. http://localhost:80

If you like to setup your the VirtualHost Configuration File check this page

Installing PHP 7.4 with Apache

Head to your terminal and run the following commands to install PHP and Apache PHP module.
Please notice that you don’t need to update again if you are doing this process directly after you installed Apache.

sudo apt update  
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php  

Once the packages are installed, restart Apache to load the PHP module:

sudo systemctl restart apache2  

To test your PHP installation, create a new file named info.php inside the /var/www/html and put the following code inside it:

<?php  
phpinfo();  
?>  

This code displays the PHP information on your device.
Save the file, and open the following URL in your browser: http://localhost/info.php
You should see the information page.

Installing MySQL

Type the following in your terminal to install the mysql-server package:

sudo apt update  
sudo apt install mysql-server  

MySQL is not installed, but it’s insecure as you were not prompted for a password.
To configure your MySQL installation, run the security script with sudo:

sudo mysql_secure_installation  

Follow the prompts to select your settings. In my case, I selected to keep root and set a new password for it with LOW password policy, option 0 because it’s my local setup, and it won’t be accessible from the internet.

To connect to MySQL from the terminal, I had to use sudo as follows:

sudo mysql -u root -p  

then enter MySQL password when prompted.

Extra Step

Note: This is weak security settings only for local setups.

To get rid of the sudo you have to do the following:

Connect to MySQL

sudo mysql -u root -p  

Check the validate password policy

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'validate_password%';  

This showed

+--------------------------------------+--------+  
| Variable_name | Value |  
+--------------------------------------+--------+  
| validate_password.check_user_name | ON |  
| validate_password.dictionary_file | |  
| validate_password.length | 8 |  
| validate_password.mixed_case_count | 1 |  
| validate_password.number_count | 1 |  
| validate_password.policy | MEDIUM |  
| validate_password.special_char_count | 1 |  
+--------------------------------------+--------+  
7 rows in set (0.01 sec)  

I lowered the policy to LOW by typing

mysql> SET GLOBAL validate_password.policy = 0;  

Then changed the user to have a new weak password as

mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'NEW_PASSWORD_HERE';  
mysql> exit  

Restart MySQL like

sudo service mysql restart  

Now you can connect to MySQL without the sudo

mysql -u root -p  

After these steps, your installation should be working perfectly.