Easy web server setup for noob

[tibucci]

Hi everyone,

I work with some websites locally, where I try things out before putting the changes online (a couple Wordpress and a prestashop). 

I used Mamp on my Mac machine or Xamp on my old windows to launch a local web server but since lately my Mac isn't in a good shape and I had to reset my windows machine more than once in the last 6 months I thought that using a virtual machine as a local web server would be easier for backup/moving it and wouldn't require much resources.

I tried using ubuntu server, Manjaro and Debian, but I get lost in all the commands to install and start the various services or when I finally get something working I can't access the web server folder cause I don't have permissions or something. I followed guides and tutorials but still can't get it to work.

Never used linux and I have basically zero knowledge of how these services works (ports, versions, etc) as well of how linux handles tasks, services and permissions. 

I'm looking (if it exists) for a distro and/or an app like Mamp or Xamp that handles installation, configuration and permission for me through an interface.

Basically a one click setup of the web server with a folder and a phpMyAdmin, do u know of one?

 

This is something I do at a hobby level beside work and unfortunately I don't have much time/money to invest in it.

 

Thank u everyone

[Helly]

if you already got a way to run a VM, why are you not just installing windows or macos on it? Seems strange to use an OS you're not familiar with in a VM, unless you're interested in learning of course.... i'd just install windows in the VM, and use xamp like you have before.

[tibucci]

Hi,

thank u for the answer, I'm using it mostly on my Mac on which I'm planning a clean install of Catalina in a week or two if there aren't too many bugs... it has only 128GB storage and 8GB of Ram so I was hoping for a VM that takes around 4GB of storage and 512MB of ram...

That's why I was looking at a linux distro, I thought that since a lot of people use those for webservers it would be easy to deploy one on a VM.

Unless I run the Vm with windows xp I doubt I can run both system simultaneously with just 8GB of ram...

[Jarsky]

You're looking for something like this.... https://github.com/teddysun/lamp

 

Quote

• If your server system: Amazon Linux/CentOS/Fedora

yum -y install wget screen git
git clone https://github.com/teddysun/lamp.git
cd lamp
chmod 755 *.sh
screen -S lamp
./lamp.sh

• If your server system: Debian/Ubuntu

apt-get -y install wget screen git
git clone https://github.com/teddysun/lamp.git
cd lamp
chmod 755 *.sh
screen -S lamp
./lamp.sh

 

[tibucci]

Wow, thank you

Seems I somehow managed to make it work: apache, php and mysql are working, now I only have to deal with permissions, when i move folders in the root of my webserver i can't access them, it says Forbidden, but if i create a new folder and put a index.php file there i can access it no problem.

Should have something to do with users, groups, and permissions.

I'll try to dig more tonight

21 hours ago, Jarsky said:

You're looking for something like this.... https://github.com/teddysun/lamp

 

 

 

 

 

[mtz_federico]

12 hours ago, tibucci said:

Wow, thank you

Seems I somehow managed to make it work: apache, php and mysql are working, now I only have to deal with permissions, when i move folders in the root of my webserver i can't access them, it says Forbidden, but if i create a new folder and put a index.php file there i can access it no problem.

Should have something to do with users, groups, and permissions.

I'll try to dig more tonight

 

 

 

You can use this command (assuming your web directory is in the default one)

chmod -R 775 /var/www

it changes the permissions of the directory and the files inside to be owned by your user and your user group, this allows you to edit and add files without using sudo and it allows apache to access the files since apache has a higher user level.

[tibucci]

Thank u! hopefully I finally got it

first I did a chown with www-data but then I could't edit the files from the host system, then figured out that I had to undo the chown and instead use the chgrp. Also realized that I got php 7.2 by default but one of my plugin weren't compatible and were throwing out errors.

 

On 10/16/2019 at 9:06 PM, mtz_federico said:

You can use this command (assuming your web directory is in the default one)

chmod -R 775 /var/www

it changes the permissions of the directory and the files inside to be owned by your user and your user group, this allows you to edit and add files without using sudo and it allows apache to access the files since apache has a higher user level.