How To Install LAMP Stack On RHEL

The LAMP Stack is considered one of the most & best popular free & open-source software stacks. LAMP Stack is responsible for powering dynamic websites in addition to web applications. In this tutorial, we are going to explore LAMP Stack components, benefits, and how to set it up on your local machine or even remotely to have your ready and running environment to operate any web application whether it’s a static or dynamic web application.

Important Note: Please Note That the Following Tutorial 100% could be applied on any Linux Distribution based on RHEL whether it’s CentOS, Rocky, or Alma Linux.

What does LAMP Stack stand for?

LAMP Stack stands for: Linux, Apache, MariaDB, and PHP. As we all know Linux represents the operating system that will hold all the other components. Apache is a Web Server that serves web pages of the website, it also handles different kinds of requests in addition to supporting SSL/TLS encryption. The MariaDB is the Database Management System and It’s a Relational Database, and its main function is to ensure efficient data storage. Finally, PHP is the Programming Language that enables server-side scripting and it is also responsible for generating all the dynamic content in addition to interacting with the MariaDB.

Benefits of LAMP Stack

It’s worth mentioning that LAMP Stack is completely free & open-source which means it’s a cost-effective software stack that reduces development cost. It’s considered to be Highly customizable and can integrate with various frameworks.

Requirements

To get the best of this tutorial you need to have a RHEL machine with a valid subscription in order to download the required software & packages. If You don’t have a RHEL Subscription You can follow our tutorials from the link below to get your free RHEL Subscription

How To Obtain a RHEL Subscription For Free: Complete Guide

Also If You need to set up LAMP Stack with a registered domain name, our team highly recommends you buy your domain name from NameCheap, their price is low and gives you a whois protection for free.

The Minimum Requirements for the Machine is as follows:

2 CPUs

2 or more GB of Memory

5 GB of disk space or more

This depends on the size of your web site.

Steps To Install LAMP Stack:

Open up the terminal and execute the following commands

1- Ensure that you attached your rhel subscription to your machine

First Remove any old subscriptions

subscription-manager remove –all

subscription-manager clean

Then Add Your Subscription

sudo subscription-manager register --org=OrganizationID --activationkey="KeyNameHere"

2- Update Your Machine

sudo dnf update

3-After updating your machine if there’s a new Linux Kernel downloaded, We highly recommend rebooting your machine so that your machine can operate with the Newly Downloaded Linux Kernel, just type

reboot

You can check your current RHEL release from the following

cat /etc/redhat-release

4- Add the EPEL Repo

sudo subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-9-$(arch)-rpms

sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm

5- Add The Remi Repo [ For Multiple Versions Of PHP ]

URL : https://rpms.remirepo.net

sudo dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-9.rpm

6- List all The Available Modules

sudo dnf module list

You’ll find that multiple modules in your machine are ready to be installed, So Let’s Continue.

7- Now It’s Time to Install The Apache Web Server

sudo dnf install httpd httpd-tools mod_ssl

8- Enable The Apache Web Start to start while the machine boots up

sudo systemctl enable --now httpd.service

9- Make sure that the Apache status is started with no errors

sudo systemctl is-active httpd.service

sudo systemctl status httpd.service

The Output will be like this

● httpd.service – The Apache HTTP Server

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; enabled; preset: disabled)

Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-01-10 08:59:05 EET; 1min 21s ago

Docs: man:httpd.service(8)

Main PID: 4617 (httpd)

Status: “Total requests: 0; Idle/Busy workers 100/0;Requests/sec: 0; Bytes served/sec: 0 B/sec”

Tasks: 177 (limit: 26355)

Memory: 34.2M

CPU: 300ms

CGroup: /system.slice/httpd.service

├─4617 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

├─4618 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

├─4619 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

├─4620 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

└─4621 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

10- Check The Apache Installed Version

httpd -v

11- Enable both http & https in the firewall

sudo firewall-cmd --add-service={http,https} --permanent

sudo firewall-cmd –reload

sudo firewall-cmd –list-all

You will see in the services line that http & https now exist and both are allowed

12- Next we will install MariaDB

sudo dnf install mariadb-server mariadb

13- Enable the Mariadb Service to auto start at system boot time

sudo systemctl enable --now mariadb.service

14- Check Mariadb Status

sudo systemctl is-active mariadb.service

sudo systemctl status mariadb.service

The Output will be like this

● mariadb.service – MariaDB 10.5 database server

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; enabled; preset: disabled)

Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-01-16 16:59:46 EET; 1min 58s ago

Docs: man:mariadbd(8)

Process: 3524 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/mariadb-check-socket (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Process: 3546 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir mariadb.service (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Process: 3653 ExecStartPost=/usr/libexec/mariadb-check-upgrade (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Main PID: 3632 (mariadbd)

Status: “Taking your SQL requests now…”

Tasks: 8 (limit: 26355)

Memory: 78.0M

CPU: 776ms

CGroup: /system.slice/mariadb.service

└─3632 /usr/libexec/mariadbd –basedir=/usr

15- Setting Mariadb Character Sets and Collations

The default character set in Mariadb is latin1, You can get the current Character Set in MariaDB By listing all the variables using the following command

sudo mariadb -e "show variables\G"

Then to get the value of the specific variable which is “character_set_database” & “character_set_server” by typing the following command

sudo mariadb -e "show variables like 'character_set_database' ";

sudo mariadb -e "show variables like 'character_set_server' ";

The Output from both these two commands will be like this

character_set_server | latin1

And to get the collation for that character set you’ve to type the following command

sudo mariadb -e "show collation like 'latin1%' ";

So we will set the character set to utf8mb4, and the collation to utf8mb4_general_ci

To do that open the mariadb configuration file

sudo vim /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf

and Add these two lines under the Global [mysqld] Configuration Group

character_set_server = ‘utf8mb4’

collation_server = ‘utf8mb4_general_ci’

Then save & quit

Also, You’ve to change the default character set in the MariaDB Client Configuration file

vim /etc/my.cnf.d/client.cnf

Add the following line under the Global [client] Configuration Group

default-character-set=utf8mb4

Then save & quit

Now restart Mariadb to apply the above configurations

sudo systemctl restart mariadb.service

Check if the character set variable has changed to utf8mb4 and the collation to utf8mb4_general_ci is the default collation

mariadb -e "show variables like 'character_set_database' "

mariadb -e "show collation like 'utf8mb4_general_ci%' "

16- Now we need to run the MariaDB Security Script, type the following

sudo mariadb-secure-installation

Press Enter in all the steps and in the following step

Change the root password? [Y/n]

Press Enter also, and create a password for the MariaDB root account, Then Press Enter in all the other steps

Now try to log in to the MariaDB shell by typing the following command

mariadb -u root -p

The Output will be like this

Enter password:

Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.

Your MariaDB connection id is 22

Server version: 10.5.22-MariaDB MariaDB Server

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]>

To exit from the MariaDB Shell, Just type

exit;

17- Time to Install PHP

First You’ve to list all the available PHP versions in the repos, Type the following command

sudo dnf module list php

we will use the PHP Packages available in Remi’s Modular repository for Enterprise Linux 9 – x86_64

For Example, If You want to install and use PHP Version 8.3, type the following command

dnf module enable php:remi-8.3

Next, install the following PHP Packages and Modules

sudo dnf install php83-php php83-php-pecl-imagick-im7 php83-php-bcmath php83-php-cli php83-php-fpm php83-php-mbstring php83-php-opcache php83-php-pdo php83-php-sodium php83-php-xml php83-php-mysqlnd php83-php-pecl-mysql php83-php-gd php83-php-pecl-zip php83-php-common php83-php-ioncube-loader php83-php-pear php83-php-intl php83-php-soap php83-php-pecl-xmlrpc

18- Enable The PHP-FPM to auto start at system boot time

sudo systemctl enable --now php83-php-fpm.service

19- Check PHP-FPM status

sudo systemctl is-active php83-php-fpm.service

sudo systemctl status php83-php-fpm.service

The Output will be like this

● php83-php-fpm.service – The PHP FastCGI Process Manager

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/php83-php-fpm.service; enabled; preset: disabled)

Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-01-16 21:14:16 EET; 3min 10s ago

Main PID: 6541 (php-fpm)

Status: “Processes active: 0, idle: 5, Requests: 0, slow: 0, Traffic: 0.00req/sec”

Tasks: 6 (limit: 26355)

Memory: 18.5M

CPU: 88ms

CGroup: /system.slice/php83-php-fpm.service

├─6541 “php-fpm: master process (/etc/opt/remi/php83/php-fpm.conf)”

├─6542 “php-fpm: pool www”

├─6543 “php-fpm: pool www”

├─6544 “php-fpm: pool www”

├─6545 “php-fpm: pool www”

└─6546 “php-fpm: pool www”

Important Note: In RHEL 9, the Apache web Server allows you to run PHP as a FastCGI process server. The FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) is an alternative PHP FastCGI daemon that enables the website to manage high loads. By default, in RHEL 9 PHP uses FastCGI Process Manager.

20- Install SELinux Required Packages For Debugging

sudo dnf install setroubleshoot setroubleshoot-server policycoreutils-devel

By default the SELinux disallows the Apache Web Server from making outgoing network connections, so we need to enable the following SELinux Boolean to allow HTTP scripts and modules to initiate a connection to a network or remote port

First You can list all the SELinux by typing the following command

sudo semanage boolean -l

You can list only the httpd Booleans by typing the following command

sudo semanage boolean -l | grep -i http

Now Enable the httpd_can_network_connect Boolean which allows HTTPD scripts and modules to connect to the network using TCP.

sudo semanage boolean --modify --on httpd_can_network_connect

To make sure that this Boolean is on, run the following command

sudo semanage boolean -l | grep -i httpd_can_network_connect

You should see that it’s on

httpd_can_network_connect (on, on)

21- Testing PHP Files

To test PHP-FPM with the Apache web server, we have to create a php file, for example, info.php in the following location

sudo vim /var/www/html/info.php

Then Paste the following PHP code

<?php  phpinfo();

Then Save and Close the file

Now in your browser type your server IP or local IP Address followed by the php file as follows

http://YourServerIPAddress/info.php

Conclusion

In this guide, we have walked you through installing a LAMP stack on RHEL 9. This platform is ideal for web development and hosting. With this setup, you can create and manage web applications using a variety of programming languages and frameworks.