Introduction

This is a step by step guide for installing and setting up a webdev server on a ubuntu machine. I will show you how to install the lampp stack using XAMPP version 1.7.1 on Ubuntu 9.10.

You can follow the exact same steps for setting up XAMPP version 1.7.2

Follow these steps to install XAMPP:

1. For starters you need to go to the official XAMPP website and download XAMPP for Linux version 1.7.1,  click here to download XAMPP for Linux version 1.7.1

Make sure you download XAMPP 1.7.1  if you want to use it together with wordpress.  XAMPP 1.7.2 uses PHP 5.3.0 which causes some problems when used in combination with wordpress 2.8.4

2. Place the downloaded .tar.gz archive on your desktop if it wasn’t already saved there by default.

3. Open a terminal ( Applications > Accessoires > Terminal )

4. Go to your desktop (or any other location where you placed the downloaded file)

cd Dekstop

 
5. Login as the super admin

sudo -s

 
6. Untarball the compressed file to the /opt directory

tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz -C /opt

 
The above command installs xampp in the /opt/lampp directory

7. Start xampp by giving the command

/opt/lampp/lampp start

 
8. After starting xampp open a browserwindow and go to localhost

If all went well you’ll see this page

9. After choosing your language you’ll be forwarded to the welcome page

10. Go to the security page by clicking Security in the left menu.

You’ll see that everything is unsecured at the moment

When XAMPP will be used for local development these settings won’t matter much. It is good practice however to set it up securely.

Next I’ll show you how to setup security

 
11. Copy the code on the bottom of the security page and then paste it into a terminal

/opt/lampp/lampp security

 
This will start an interactive program to help you configure security settings

12. Type yes when prompted to enter a password and enter a secure password twice

13. Turn off MySQL network accesibility by entering yes, MySQL will now restart so the setting can take effect

14. You’ll be prompted to set a password for phpMyAdmin, do so.

15. And again for setting a MySQL root password, make sure you write this one down or you’ll be in trouble later on.

16. Now set a password for user nobody.

This should complete the security setup procedure.

To confirm everything went ok, open a browserwindow and go to localhost

17. You’ll be prompted for a username and password.

the username is ‘lampp’
the password is the one you entered in step 12

18. Go the the security pages

This should show all subjects are now secured..

Place content you want to add to the webserver in the root web directory located in

/opt/lamp/htdocs

 
To make things easier we’ll add a link to the htdocs folder to a folder in our home directory.

You can do this in a terminal by typing

mkdir ~/public_html

 
Or just right-click in your home folder and create a new folder named ‘public_html’

19. Now we’ll make a link from the new folder to /opt/lampp/htdocs , open a terminal and enter

sudo ln -s ~/public_html /opt/lampp/htdocs/

 
20. To setup permissions for the htdocs folder, go to the terminal (still logged in as super user) and type

chown  yourusername -R /opt/lampp/htdocs

 
This changes the ownership of the htdocs folder to your user, the -R option makes the command recursive so all permissions of folders and files inside htdocs are changed aswell.
 

Congratulations that was it! Well sort of…

 
After restarting your computer you have to manually start the server by entering

/opt/lampp/lampp start

 
in a terminal.

EDIT: MiD-AwE pointed out he had to install the ia32 libraries when installing XAMPP on Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit. The ia32 library is needed when installing a 64-bit version on a AMD64 or ia64-system.

To do this open a terminal and type

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

If you want xampp to automatically start at boottime, follow these steps.

 
EDIT : Or as MiD-AwE suggested you can go to System > Preferences and add an entry

 /opt/lampp/lampp start

 
to “Startup Applications”

If you want to use a GUI to start and stop xampp do the following:

1. Open a terminal and type

sudo gedit ~/.local/share/applications/xampp-control-panel.desktop

 
2. Paste this code in the new empty file in gedit

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Start and Stop XAMPP
Name=XAMPP Control Panel
Exec=gksudo python /opt/lampp/share/xampp-control-panel/xampp-control-panel.py
Icon[en_CA]=/usr/share/icons/Humanity/devices/24/network-wired.svg
Encoding=UTF-8
Terminal=false
Name[en_CA]=XAMPP Control Panel
Comment[en_CA]=Start and Stop XAMPP
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/share/icons/Humanity/devices/24/network-wired.svg

Change this line (twice) to match the location of the icon you want to use.

Icon[en_CA]=/usr/share/icons/Humanity/devices/24/network-wired.svg

 
3. The xampp control panel should now show up in Applications > Other

You should get to see something like this :

That was it!

Now run along and go do something usefull

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