Installing LAMP stack on Windows 10/11 using WSL2

The following guide will help to install the following components in Windows 10/11 using WSL2. And also the guide going through to install 2 versions of PHP with help of PHP-FPM and therefore we can easily choose the version of PHP using .htaccess.

Linux - The operating system
Apache - The Web Server
MySQL - The Database
PHP - The programming language

Ubuntu distro used as Linux operating system.

Enable WSL2 and Install Ubuntu

wsl --install

Above comand should install Ubuntu as default distro, if not please follow the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/setup/environment

Upgrade Ubuntu to latest (optional)

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Install Apache

sudo apt update && sudo apt install apache2

Add repositories to install PHP

sudo apt update

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-fcgid

sudo apt install software-properties-common

Add ondrej/php

sudo LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php && sudo apt update

Add ondrej/apache2

sudo LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2 && sudo apt update

add-apt-repository is broken with non-UTF-8 locales, to fix this added LC_ALL=C UTF-8 to the above command

Install MySQL

sudo apt install mysql-server

After install restart mysql service

sudo service mysql restart

Secured the mysql installation

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Configurations:

Validate password component: n
Add New root password: password
Confirm root password: password
Remove anonymous users: y
Disallow root login remotely: y
Reload privilege tables now: y

Create mysql user

sudo mysql -u root

Note: Replace mysql_user and mysql_password based on your interest

mysql command:

CREATE USER 'mysql_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'mysql_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'mysql_user'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Install PHP

PHP 7.4

sudo apt install php-7.4 php7.4-fpm

PHP 8.1

sudo apt install php-7.4 php8.1-fpm

Install PHP extensions for both versions

sudo apt install php7.4-mysql php7.4-curl php7.4-json php7.4-gd php-memcached php7.4-intl php7.4-mbstring php7.4-xml php7.4-zip

sudo apt install php8.1-mysql php8.1-curl php8.1-json php8.1-gd php8.1-intl php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xml php8.1-zip

Configure apache

sudo a2enmod actions alias proxy_fcgi fcgid

Restart apache if required

sudo service apache2 restart

Add PHP services

sudo a2enconf php7.4-fpm

sudo a2enconf php8.1-fpm

Reload apache if required

sudo service apache2 reload

Enable AllowOverride in order to choose PHP version from .htaccess

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Ctrl + x, y and then Enter to save apache2.conf file and exit

Restart apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Check default PHP version

php -v

Add FilesMatch directive to .htaccess of the applicaiton

This will help to choose the PHP version for the application

For PHP 7.4 (You can skip this if PHP 7.4 default)

<FilesMatch \.php> 
    # Apache 2.4.10+ can proxy to unix socket
    SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/" 
</FilesMatch>

For PHP 8.1 (You can skip this if PHP 8.1 default)

<FilesMatch \.php>
    # Apache 2.4.10+ can proxy to unix socket
    SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/"
</FilesMatch>

Install composer

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install dependencies first

sudo apt install wget unzip

Download composer setup file

"Navigate to the home folder cd ~"

Download the installer from https://getcomposer.org/installer and save as composer-setup.php in the current directry

wget -O composer-setup.php https://getcomposer.org/installer

Install composer globally

sudo php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Test composer installation

composer -V

Install nodejs

Install NVM (Node version manager)

Get the latest version command here: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#installing-and-updating

Navigate to the home folder cd ~

Download the installer

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash

Test the NVM installation

The following command should return nvm if not please restart the terminal

command -v nvm

Install latest stable versoin of nodejs

nvm install --lts

Test nodejs

node -v

Test NPM

npm -v

Fix permissions issue when editing files

Add current user into www-data group

sudo usermod -a -G www-data (username)

Change the group for the working directory

sudo chgrp www-data /home/(username)/project_dir

Change the permissions

sudo chmod -R g+rwxs /home/(username)/project_dir

Shifrin / lamp-stack-setup