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

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.