How to Install Laravel 7 on Ubuntu 20.04 with Nginx and MariaDB

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Introduction

Laravel is a framework for PHP to create web applications. This guide describes how to install Laravel on a freshly-deployed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server instance.

Requirements

• A fully-updated Ubuntu 20.04 server instance with at least 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM
• A non-root sudo user

1. Install Prerequisites

1. Install the software dependencies.

   $ sudo apt install -y php-mbstring php-xml php-fpm php-zip php-common php-fpm php-cli unzip curl nginx
   

2. Install Composer:

   $ sudo curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
   $ sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
   

3. Verify the Composer installation.

   $ composer diagnose
   Checking platform settings: OK
   Checking git settings: OK
   Checking http connectivity to packagist: OK
   Checking https connectivity to packagist: OK
   Checking github.com rate limit: OK
   Checking disk free space: OK
   Checking pubkeys:
   Tags Public Key Fingerprint: 57815BA2 7E54DC31 7ECC7CC5 573090D0  87719BA6 8F3BB723 4E5D42D0 84A14642
   Dev Public Key Fingerprint: 4AC45767 E5EC2265 2F0C1167 CBBB8A2B  0C708369 153E328C AD90147D AFE50952
   OK
   Checking composer version: OK
   Composer version: 1.10.10
   PHP version: 7.4.3
   PHP binary path: /usr/bin/php7.4
   OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1f  31 Mar 2020
   

4. Install MariaDB.

   $ sudo apt install -y mariadb-client mariadb-server
   

5. Start MariaDB.

   $ sudo systemctl enable --now mariadb.service
   

6. The root password is blank for a newly installed MariaDB server. Configure the MariaDB security by answering these questions appropriately for your server.

   $ sudo mysql_secure_installation
   

2. Install Laravel

Replace example with your project name where it appears throughout this guide.

1. Create a Laravel project with Composer. You may disregard the warning not to run Composer as root for this step. See the Composer documentation for details.

   $ cd /var/www/html
   $ sudo composer global require laravel/installer
   $ sudo composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel example
   

2. Grant your non-root user access.

   $ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/example
   $ sudo chown -R example_user:example_user /var/www/html/example
   

3. Install the example project.

   $ cd example
   $ composer install
   

4. Test the Laravel application manually in the /var/www/html/example folder. Replace the example IP address with your server's IP.

   $ cd /var/www/html/example
   $ php artisan serve --host=192.0.2.123 --port=8000
   

   To access this example:

   http://192.0.2.123:8000
   

Type CTRL+C in your SSH session to stop the Laravel application.

3. Configure Nginx

For public/production use, configure Nginx.

1. Set the file permissions. Replace example with your Laravel project name.

   $ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/example
   $ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/example
   

2. Create an Nginx configuration file.

   $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example
   

3. Paste the following to your example configuration file.

   • Replace server_name example.com; with your domain or server IP address. You can also use an underscore as a wildcard, for example: server_name _;
   • Replace /var/www/html/example/public with your project path.

   If you installed a different version of PHP, edit the /var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock value for your version. You can find your sock file in /var/run/php/.

   server {
       listen 80;
       server_name example.com;
       root /var/www/html/example/public;
   
       add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
       add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
       add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
   
       index index.php;
   
       charset utf-8;
   
       location / {
           try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
       }
   
       location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
       location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
   
       error_page 404 /index.php;
   
       location ~ \.php$ {
           fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
           fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
           include fastcgi_params;
       }
   
       location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
           deny all;
       }
   }
   

4. Enable the Nginx configuration.

   $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
   

5. Remove the default configuration file.

   $ sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
   

6. Restart Nginx.

   $ sudo systemctl restart nginx
   

7. Test that your Laravel application loads properly in a web browser.

   http://example.com/
   

4. Configure MariaDB

1. Log in to MariaDB as root.

   # mysql -p -u root
   

2. Create a database named laravelexample.

   MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE `laravelexample` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
   

3. Create a database user.

   MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'laravelexampleuser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
   

4. Grant permissions.

   MariaDB [(none)]> use laravelexample;
   MariaDB [laravelexample]> GRANT ALL ON `laravelexample.*` TO 'laravelexampleuser'@'%';
   MariaDB [laravelexample]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   MariaDB [laravelexample]> EXIT;
   

5. Edit the Laravel application .env file.

   $ sudo nano /var/www/html/example/.env
   

   Set the database connection variables.

   DB_CONNECTION=mysql
   DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
   DB_PORT=3306
   DB_DATABASE=laravelexample
   DB_USERNAME=laravelexampleuser
   DB_PASSWORD=password
   

6. Save and exit the file.

Conclusion

You've set up a template Laravel application. See the official documentation for further information.