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medilies
medilies

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Run Laravel locally on Ubuntu using Apache virtual host

#laravel #apache #ubuntu #php

Refresh APT metadata.

sudo apt update
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Installing MySQL

Install MySQL:

sudo apt install mysql-server
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Enter MySQL to edit the root user password:

sudo mysql
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ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
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Re-enter MySQL to create a database for our app, but using the credentials this time:

mysql -u root -p
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CREATE DATABASE my_app;
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References:

Installing Apache

Ubuntu usually comes bundled with a running Apache server but still, I'll include the installation steps.

sudo apt-get install apache2 -y
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Check if Apache is installed by verifying its version:

apache2ctl -v
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Check if your firewall is active:

sudo ufw status
sudo ufw app list
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If it returned Status: active then allow HTTP traffic on Apache:

sudo ufw allow in "Apache"
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Now, visiting http://localhost should display "Apache2 Default Page".

References:

Installing PHP

Register the following repo that enables the installation of multiple PHP versions at once.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
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Install PHP 8.1.

sudo apt install php8.1
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If you opt for a different version then just replace 8.1 with your version whenever you copy a command.

Add PHP module to Apache server:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php8.1
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Install the extensions required by Laravel:

sudo apt install php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xmlrpc php8.1-soap php8.1-gd php8.1-xml php8.1-cli php8.1-zip php8.1-bcmath php8.1-tokenizer php8.1-json php8.1-pear
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The newly installed extensions will be automatically enabled with their configs placed at /etc/php/8.1/cli/conf.d/.

References:

Installing composer

Check https://getcomposer.org/download/.

A new Laravel app 

cd
mkdir dev
cd dev
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I like to place my code at ~/dev.

Create a new Laravel app:

composer global require laravel/installer
laravel new my_app --git
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Set the correct permissions to enable Apache to execute your PHP code.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /home/me/dev/my_app
sudo chmod -R 777 /home/me/dev/my_app
sudo chmod o+x /home/me
sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev
sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev/
sudo chmod o+x /home/me/dev/my_app
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Set .env with your app and database details.

Faking a domain name

We will add a domain name for our app that only our machine knows about by editing /etc/hosts. We will configure it to let our machine know that the domain name my_app.local is on the loopback IP address 127.0.0.1.

sudo nano /etc/hosts
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# Add this line anywhere
127.0.0.1 my_app.local
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Test that you configured the domain correctly by pinging it:

ping my_app.local
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Note that using internet top-level domains like .com will most likely not work. So I recommend sticking to .local for testing locally without HTTPS and without a registered domain name.

Setting up the virtual host

Now we move to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and use as our base virtual host config file:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
sudo cp 000-default.conf my_app-local.conf
sudo nano my_app-local.conf
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And edit my_app-local.conf to look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
        # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
        # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
        # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
        # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
        # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
        # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
        ServerName my_app.local   
        ServerAlias www.my_app.local

        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /home/me/dev/my_app/public

        <Directory /home/me/dev/my_app/public>
                Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Require all granted
        </Directory>

        ReWriteEngine On

        # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
        # error, crit, alert, emerg.
        # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
        # modules, e.g.
        #LogLevel info ssl:warn

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

        # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
        # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
        # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
        # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
        # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
        #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>
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Check the validity of the config you added:

sudo apache2ctl configtest
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Enable your new site:

sudo a2ensite my_app-local.conf
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Also, enable the rewrite module to be able to have URLs that do not point only to real files:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
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The final thing to do is restart Apache to reload the new config:

sudo systemctl restart apache2
// or
sudo systemctl reload apache2
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References:

Finally

Visit http://my_app.local.

Top comments (4)

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medilies profile image
medilies • • Edited

You might want to edit the user and group of the Apache service at /etc/apache2/apache2.conf instead of changing the permissions and ownership of the files.

# These need to be set in /etc/apache2/envvars
User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}
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medilies profile image
medilies •

For dev purposes:

  • If you want to connect to MySQL from any machine do sudo nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf and set bind-address = 0.0.0.0.

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