How to install LEMP stack on Almalinux

Installing the LEMP stack (Linux, NGINX, MariaDB, PHP) on Almalinux is a great choice for VPS. Its lightweight, high performance design can provide significant performance benefits over its Apache based equivalent. The LEMP stack is highly popular alternative to building a LAMP stack server.

With support for both static and dynamic websites. An NGINX (pronounced engine-x) based web server is a great choice for modern website hosting renowned for its performance gains, it also integrates well with either MySQL or MariaDB with PHP facilitating the framework for many web-based applications.

Building a LEMP server on Almalinux is a great idea; an open-source Linux distribution created as a direct replacement for CentOS. Almalinux aims to be binary-compatible with RHEL a closed-source distribution known for its enterprise-grade stability, support and performance. Some of the benefits include cost-effectiveness, high performance and a secure environment for hosting with regular update intervals.

Scaling your VPS hosting to match increased demand is simplified allowing you to effortlessly support higher traffic levels from blogs to busy ecommerce sites. Get started with your LEMP stack VPS now by following along with our guide.

Preparing your VPS for LEMP

1. To start, login to your server using either PuTTY or a Terminal window. When logging in use the credentials provided in your welcome email, you can connect using either the server IP or the hostname depending on DNS propagation.

2. For the purposes of this guide we will be treating this as a newly ordered VPS with Almainux 8 installed. To start we will check that installed packages are updated, to do this you can use either yum or dnf (the guide uses dnf). The command below will cycle through any potential updates and require you to confirm before updating.

dnf update

3. To allow traffic to reach NGINX through the firewall you need to open connections over ports 80 (non-SSL) and 443 (SSL) you can check which connections are currently open with the following command.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --list-services

3.1 The following screenshot confirms that by default your firewall is not configured to allow connections of port 80 or 443. Run the following commands to enable traffic over those ports and reload the firewall.

firewall-cmd –permanent -–zone=public -–add-service=http

firewall-cmd –permanent -–zone=public -–add-service=https

firewall-cmd -–reload

3.2 Now, to check the current status of those ports in the firewall run the command from earlier again which should return the following output.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --list-services

Firewall http htps enabled — Firewall http & httpd enabled

Install & Configure NGINX

1. After enabling traffic across the firewall we can move on to install and configuration of NGINX on your VPS. We will start by checking available NGINX versions and enabling the latest version unless an older version is required. The following commands will check the module list and return an output similar to the one below.

dnf module list nginx

dnf module enable nginx:1.24

Using the -y flag we can skip the confirmation prompt.

dnf install epel-release -y

dnf install nginx -y

2. Afterwards start and enable NGINX with the following commands

systemctl start nginx

systemctl enable nginx

3. Now, using the nano and the provided configuration update the default conf and amend with your servers IP or hostname.

nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name **SWAP WITH HOSTNAME OR IP**;
    root /usr/share/nginx/html;

    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

4. Finally reload the NGINX service to apply the conf changes.

systemctl reload nginx

Install & Configure MariaDB

1. Before getting start first lets check which versions of MariaDB are currently available from the module list, enable the latest and install using the following commands.

dnf module list mariadb

dnf module enable mariadb:10.11

dnf install mariadb mariadb-server

3. Next up, start and enable the service with the following commands.

systemctl start mariadb

systemctl enable mariadb

3. Afterwards, start the installation process by entering the command below. Go through the set up options and select the ones you require.

mysql_secure_installation

4. Finally, now that MySQL is installed and configured with a password you can test it works by using the command below and entering your password when prompted.

mysql -u root -p

To exit the utility hit CTRL+D

Install PHP on Almalinux

1. First up, check the available PHP modules and select the latest or what is required for your application. The following commands will do both in that order.

dnf module list php

dnf module enable php:8.2

2. With the correct PHP version installed, install the following extensions so that you everything functions correctly.

dnf install php php-fpm php-zip php-intl php-opcache php-gd php-mbstring php-gd php-xml php-mysqlnd

3. Moving on edit your www.conf file to set up PHP-FPM to use NGINX, us the command below to open up the file in nano you can search using CTRL+W and enter.