Setting up a LAMP server using Xubuntu 8.04

In Ubuntu there is a handy-dandy little command line utility that allows you to install a number of predefined package collections (like LAMP server) from the command line:

sudo tasksel

I fired this up in a terminal and then selected "LAMP server" on the primitive GUI and clicked OK. After the install was done (maybe 2 minutes), I updated all of my packages to bring the new packages up to date.  Then I pointed my browser on another machine towards my laptop's IP address and got a page that says "It works!" which is just what I wanted to be told.

Was phpMyAdmin installed by default as part of the LAMP server package? Tried pointing my browser at http://10.10.10.160/phpmyadmin and got nothing, so I guess not? That was easy to fix:

sudo aptitude install phpmyadmin

Try http://10.10.10.160 again and it works! I logged in as root using the MySQL root password I defined in response to a prompt during the LAMP install. Then I created a new user "andy@localhost" and gave this user all possible privileges on the MySQL database.

I like to have a special user called "www" and then have the web server's document root be that user's home directory. That way I when I want to work with the web server's files I can just log in as "www" and go to work. So, first I set up the user and created a password:

sudo adduser www
sudo passwd www

And then I pointed apache to the home directory of user www:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

I changed the DocumentRoot value to /home/www and saved the file and then restarted Apache:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Then I did an SSHFS mount of the Xubuntu laptop as user www and copied some HTML files over to /home/www and verified that everything works.

Next I put a symbolic link to the phpMyAdmin directory in /home/www so that I could still use phpMyAdmin:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /home/www/phpmyadmin

Then I logged into phpMyAdmin and created new user php_user with all data (but not structure or database administration) privileges.

Next I created a new database with the same name as the database on my existing home web server, and then imported last nights SQL backup using phpMyAdmin. Tested all of my home web applications (don't ask) successfully.

Then it was time to transfer my home Wordpress blog from the old home web server. I had no idea how to do this, so first I did some googling to see whats up. Luckily for me I found this How-To on migrating a WordPress installation to a new server:

http://maketecheasier.com/clone-and-migrate-wordpress-blog-to-new-server/2008/01/30

I went ahead and moved my Wordpress installation:

• I copied all of the Wordpress php files over to web server document root on the Xubuntu laptop server as described in these directions. However, I didn't search through the files and change anything, I just copied the files over.
• I used phpMyAdmin to make a SQL file backup of the Wordpress database, and then I used phpMyAdmin on the Xubuntu laptop server to create a new database named wordpress and then I imported the SQL file.
• Then I tested the transfer by successfully using my browser to go to the wordpress folder on the Xubuntu laptop server.

But then I got to thinking: Maybe I should also upgrade to the latest version of WordPress? I found this How-To on doing that:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress
However, I decided to save that for another day.