---
title: How to setup webserver
tags: how-to, system administration
---
How to Setup a Webserver
===
Currently at this time the following are version used:
- CentOS 7
- MySQL 8
- Laravel 7.*
- nodejs 12.16.3

Installing Mysql
---

1. Select appropriate binary, in the following address:
`https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/repo/yum/`
2. Download selected binary by
`wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql80-community-release-el7-3.noarch.rpm`
3. Check md5sum if download is not corrupted
`sudo md5sum mysql80-community-release-el7-3.noarch.rpm`
4. Add rpm package
`sudo rpm –ivh mysql80-community-release-el7-3.noarch.rpm`
5. Install MySQL Server
`sudo yum install mysql-server`
6. Check temporary password
`sudo grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log`
7. Run Mysql Secure Installation
`mysql_secure_installation`

#### Below are optional setup for MySQL security

- Disabling Password Validation
-To uninstall password validation**

`mysql> UNINSTALL COMPONENT 'file://component_validate_password';`

To install it back again, the command is:

`mysql> INSTALL COMPONENT 'file://component_validate_password';`

**To change policy strictness**

    SET GLOBAL validate_password.policy = 0;   // For LOW
    SET GLOBAL validate_password.policy = 1;   // For MEDIUM
    SET GLOBAL validate_password.policy = 2;   // For HIGH

- Creating specific user for database management
1. `mysql> CREATE USER 'user_name'@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'user_password';`
2. `mysql> CREATE GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `database`.* TO 'user_name'@'%';`

----

Installing system requirements for laravel
---
**Installation steps based on Amazon Linux 2 AMI**
1. Install amazon-linux-extras if not yet already installed

2. Check for versions available

3. Enable selected version

4. Install php

sudo yum clean metadata
sudo yum install php php-{pear,cgi,common,curl,mbstring,gd,mysqlnd,gettext,bcmath,json,xml,fpm,intl,zip,imap}

**Installation steps based on RHEL variant Distro**

By default CentOs is shipped with php 5.4.16 which we dont want.

1. Install system development tools and allow centos to install latest packages

sudo yum -y install epel-release
sudo yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
sudo yum update
sudo yum install yum-utils

2. Set yum to install php73

3. Install php

sudo yum install php php-cli php-gd php-json php-mysqlnd php-pdo php-perl-mcrypt php-mbstring php-xml php-opcache php-zip

Installing Nodejs
---

1. Download latest nodejs binary
`wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v14.15.4/node-v14.15.4-linux-x64.tar.xz`

2. Unzip the binary archive to any directory you wanna install Node, I use /usr/local/lib/nodejs

 sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/nodejs
 sudo tar -xJvf node-v14.15.4-linux-x64.tar.xz -C /usr/local/lib/nodejs 

3. Set the environment variable ~/.profile, add below to the end

export PATH=/usr/local/lib/nodejs/node-v14.15.4-linux-x64/bin:$PATH

4. Source shell profile

source ~/.bash_profile 

---
Installing Composer
---

1. Download composer and install

2. Move composer.phar to bin directory for global call

---

Setup correct user-group permission for web server
---

1. Create user group

`sudo groupadd laravel`

2. Add ssh-user to group

`sudo gpasswd -a ssh-user laravel`

3. Add web server user to group

- for nginx

`sudo gpasswd -a nginx laravel`

- for apache either of the following command

`sudo gpasswd -a apache laravel`

`sudo gpasswd -a httpd laravel`

4. Navigate to your Application directory

`sudo cd /path/to/your/beautiful/laravel-application`

5. This is an optional steps for resetting file and directory permissions to default

sudo find ./ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find ./ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

6. Give users part of the group the standard RW and RWX

sudo chown -R :laravel ./storage
sudo chown -R :laravel ./bootstrap/cache
sudo chgrp laravel /path/to/your/beautiful/laravel-application
sudo chmod g+s /path/to/your/beautiful/laravel-application
sudo find ./storage -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
sudo find ./bootstrap/cache -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
sudo find ./storage -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
sudo find ./bootstrap/cache -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;

7. Give the newly created files/directories the group of the parent directory

sudo find ./bootstrap/cache -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;
sudo find ./storage -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

8. Let newly created files/directories inherit the default owner
This set permissions up to maximum permission of rwx e.g. new files get 664 and olders get 775

sudo setfacl -R -d -m g::rwx ./storage
sudo setfacl -R -d -m g::rwx ./bootstrap/cache

9. Set File permission for .ht files

sudo chmod 0755 .htaccess

10. Update the web server config to use the appropriate user and group
- For Apache: update config commonly at `/etc/httpd`
- For Nginx: update nginx config commonly at `/etc/nginx`
- For PHP-FPM: update pool config commonly at `/etc/php/fpm/pool.d` OR /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
11. Test your application

#### NOTE
For laravel projects manually create the data folder for cache on ./storage/framework/cache/ to avoid cache permission issue