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Setup LAMP Server on Raspberry Pi 3 – [Updated 2019] Complete DIY Guide

By 31 Comments

Introduction

[This guide has been fully updated in 2019 to reflect the changes to MySQL in Raspbian “Stretch” v9.x and the FTP issues have been fixed] You wouldn’t think a little PC like the Raspberry Pi 3 could handle the job of being a Web Server, but it does, and performs flawlessly too. Today I will show you how to source genuine Raspberry Pi 3 hardware, then setup a fully fledged LAMP Server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) along with instructions to install WordPress. You’ll also know how to access your web server via FTP, SSH and PHPMyAdmin. We will be using the latest version of Raspbian “Stretch” v9.x.

Contents

  1. Introduction, Hardware, Download & Burn Raspbian Image
  2. Setup Raspbian
  3. Install LAMP Server Packages, Setup FTP
  4. Install WordPress, Summary

Hardware

My first experience buying a Raspberry Pi 2B didn’t go very well, I unwittingly purchased a fake knockoff from China via eBay that didn’t even work, needless to say I was very disappointed. Since then I have learned you have to be very careful where you buy any Raspberry Pi hardware. There are several official Raspberry Pi hardware suppliers that I’ll list below, but first let’s go through the list of parts you will need for this project.
  1. Raspberry Pi 3 motherboard/SBC
  2. A suitable case for your Pi (I like metal cases)
  3. 8GB (or more) MicroSD card class 10
  4. Raspberry Pi Micro USB power supply
  5. LAN Network cable
Raspberry Pi 3 SBC
Raspberry Pi 3 SBC
Official Raspberry Pi 3 USB Power Supply
Official Raspberry Pi 3 USB Power Supply
Raspberry Pi 3 Metal Case Black
Raspberry Pi 3 Metal Case Black
8GB SanDisk Ultra MicroSD Card Class 10
8GB SanDisk Ultra MicroSD Card Class 10
There are really only two official suppliers of Raspberry Pi gear: RS Components and Farnell/Element14. Both sell world-wide with Farnell selling smaller quantities via authorized resellers. Below you will find links to the entire list of resellers for Element14, Farnell, and a link to all the countries that RS Components serves. I do strongly urge you to only buy from these suppliers or their authorized resellers. Once you have your Raspberry Pi 3 board and case you can go ahead and fit the board into the case carefully, some of the components on the board are prone to being crushed so be gentle and if something is not fitting, don’t force it.

Download & Burn Raspbian Image

Download Raspbian

Raspbian is the official operating system for the Raspberry Pi, and based on the excellent Debian Linux distribution. Raspain comes in to flavors: full Raspbian with the Pixel desktop, or Raspbian Lite with no desktop, which is the one we want. So go ahead and visit the Raspbian Downloads page, download the Lite version .zip file (if you have a BitTorrent client, choose the .torrent as it’s faster).

Burn Raspbian to SD Card

Once you have finished downloading the Raspbian Zip file, follow the instructions below to burn the IMG file to your MicroSD card.
  1. Unzip the .img file and take note of the file location
  2. Visit etcher.io and download the Etcher Image Burner for Windows, MAC or Linux and install
  3. Insert your MicroSD card into your PC’s card reader, take note of the drive letter assigned to it
  4. Run Etcher and select the .img file you unzipped earlier
  5. Make sure Etcher has selected the correct drive letter, if not then change it to your SD card’s drive letter (Important!)
  6. Once you’re sure the right .img file and drive letter is selected, click the Flash! button
    How to flash MicroSD card with Etcher Image Burner
    How to flash MicroSD card with Etcher Image Burner
  7. Once Etcher has finished, remove the MicroSD card and insert into your Raspberry Pi with the terminal contacts facing up as shown below
    How to insert a MicroSD card into a Raspberry Pi 3
    How to insert a MicroSD card into a Raspberry Pi 3
  8. Now connect up a USB keyboard (mouse not required), HDMI, LAN network cable and have the power supply plugged into the power socket and unit but don’t turn it on just yet

Comments

  1. Many thanks Richie,
    This is exactly the way the internet should be…. knowledge sharing at its best. You have enabled me to acomplish a pretty challenging task (for an old duffer like me) setting up LAMP on the Pi, I am a bit uncertain of what exactly WordPress does, but at least it is now parked on my Pi as I progress setting up the webserver.
    One comment for Pi newbies… don’t forget to make a disk image backup of that fragile little SD card after doing all this.

    Reply

    • Thanks Heath, glad you enjoyed the tutorial. WordPress is basically a publishing platform, think of it like Word for the web 🙂 You might also be interested in learning more about PHP? If so I can highly recommend Brad Traversy’s free YouTube course PHP Front to Back. Cheers! Richie

      Reply

  2. Hi,
    Thank you very much for this tutorial.

    i just have an issue with public IP that wordpress plugin installation error and ask for ftp login details. when i put login detail it says login failed.

    please help me…

    Thank you.

    Reply

    • Hi there, no probs. Did you change ownership of the entire html folder to www-data? You’ll need to enter the following: chown -Rf www-data:www-data /var/www/html and then retry installing the WordPress plugin. Let me know how you go mate.

      cheers!
      Richie

      Reply

  3. This is great. Thanks for the thorough guide!

    However, somewhere around this part it is failing:

    “We also need to add user pi to the www-data group, give ownership of the /var/www folder to www-data user and group, change user pi’s home folder to same, and loosen some permissions on the /var/www folder”

    the second usermod command, I was getting “the user pi is in use by process: XXX”. So I attempted to boot into the CLI instead to see if I could get it complete the command, I figured perhaps the GUI was causing an issue, as it seems most of this guide is written with CLI /lite installs in mind.

    it still does not complete that command.

    Do you have any idea why?

    Reply

    • Howdy RC, thanks for the feedback mate. the error: “the user pi is in use by process: XXX” is usually because you’re not logged in as root, so be sure to su and enter root password. Let me know how that goes and will update the guide. cheers, Richie

      Reply

      • I’m having the same issue and getting the same error message (“the user pi is in use”). I saw this comment regarding logging in as root as followed that another tutorial for logging in as root because I had never done it before and didn’t know what the password was.

        Anyways I logged in as root and was able to complete the command (sudo usermod -m -d /var/www pi). When I log back in as “pi” and run all 4 commands in that section they all appear to go through, however “sudo usermod -m -d /var/www pi” returns the message “No Changes” rather than “the user pi is in use”.

        I thought everything had worked, but I still can’t log in to the pia via FTP/Filezilla. The settings match what is in the tutorial, but Filezilla tells me “Connection attempt failed with “ECONNREFUSED – Connection refused by server”.

        I’m definitely a beginner level with most of this and just wanted to try learning PHP and MySQL. If there’s more information I can provide I’ll be happy to if I know how to get it.

        Reply

        • Hi Phill, thanks for letting me know this, I have fixed the issue by creating a new user called piftp as it seems too difficult to alter user pi while logged in as pi, and I didn’t want to use the nuclear option of logging in as root. I have run through the entire tutorial again and all works 100% now, perhaps you could confirm this for me buy running through it again? cheers! Richie

          Reply

          • Hey Richie! Thank you so much for the incredible guide! Just got my first pi 3 and am having a similar issue even with the updated guide using piftp instead of pi. Im still not able to ftp into my pi and get the ECONNREFUSED error. Any idea??

          • Hi Harrison, no worries at all 🙂 I went through the guide again with a fresh install of Raspbian Buster and it all works ok on my end. Usually this happens because of the FTP client settings, are you using Filezila? And with the following settings? FileZilla settings Also check out the FileZilla network config page and try some of the suggestions there. Let me know how you go. cheers! Richie

  4. awesome tutorial !

    everything worked perfect, untill i installed wordpress.

    after i Enter database details and then click Submit, i get this error

    Error establishing a database connection
    This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host’s database server is down.

    Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
    Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
    Are you sure that the database server is running?
    If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.

    i am 100% sure i enter the right username and password.

    what could the problem be, and how can i fix it ?

    Reply

    • Hi Kenneth, thanks mate. This error means that either one or more of the following is incorrect: db username, db password, db host (which should be localhost). When you entered the code to create the database user: create user 'wordpress'@'localhost' identified by '[enter password]'; did you enter password without the brackets? like this: create user 'wordpress'@'localhost' identified by 'abc123'; ? If you’re unsure, create a new database and user as follows:

      Then enter username: wordpress2, password: abc123, database name: wordpress2, host: localhost, db prefix: wp_ and see if that works mate.

      Let me know how you go.
      cheers
      Richie

      Reply

  5. Please Note* This guide has been fully updated (2018-01-30) to reflect the changes to MySQL in Raspbian “Stretch” version 9.x, which has caused a lot of the code to break. There are a few different aspects to how we create databases in that we run MySQL with the sudo prefix instead of logging in as root. Also, all code is now written to conform to the Linux sudo system which greatly increases security.

    Let me know if you have any issues with the new code and instructions, but I think you’ll find it all works far better now.

    Cheers!
    Richie

    Reply

  6. Thanks alot for the guide. Please note that default phpmyadmin login details are: phpmyadmin with the password that you provided in the setup prompt.

    Reply

  7. I think something has changed in the way phpmyadmin is set up, I have tried several tutorials without success. I can log in as phpmyadmin, but then can’t create a new database (no privileges), and root access is denied:
    #1698 – Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’
    mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/1698): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’

    Googling for a solution offers many, but there is no trace of AllowRootLogin in any of the configuration files……

    I’ve done this many times on other machines, but this has be stumped.

    Reply

  8. Hi Richie,

    Thanks for putting this tutorial together! I was going through the steps using Raspbian 9.3 and encountered a problem with http:///phpmyadmin/ similar to Michu after completing the phpmyadmin install instructions above. I corrected the 404 not found by including an extra step:

    nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

    At the bottom of the file append:

    Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

    Save and quit, then restart the service:

    service apache2 restart

    These steps made the phpmyadmin web interface login available.

    Reply

    • Hi Joshua, thanks for the info. The issue is due to Debian changing the default MySQL engine from MySQL to MariaDB in version 9.x which is why I link directly to version 8.x Jessie in the guide. I will have to update the guide to reflect these change as soon as I can.

      cheers
      Richie

      Reply

  9. Hi Richie
    Thanks for the great tutorial!
    I can’t access the phpmyadmin site… how can I delete it on the raspberry to install it again?

    Reply

    • Hi Michu, are you sure you put in the right web address? Remember you need to find the Raspberry Pi IP address with ifconfig OR ip address to find your IP address, then enter http://[ip-address]/phpmyadmin/ so be sure you try that first.

      If you still want to uninstall PHPMyAdmin, login as root and enter the following code on line at a time:

      dpkg -P phpmyadmin
      rm -f /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf
      service apache2 restart

      Cheers!
      Richie

      Reply

  10. Thank you very much for this tutorial.

    During the Install MySQL you mention “note* that you will be asked to enter and confirm a root password during the installation process”, this is not my case the process it doesn’t request MySQL password.

    Late in the Setup WordPress Database request the above password, but I don’t know.
    “Login to MySQL as root using the same MySQL root password we entered when installing it earlier”

    Could you please tell me how to get the root MySQL password in your installation process?

    Reply

  11. I think a great addition to this would be to include a web IDE like Codiad into the tutorial. It allows a new user to get into the web development without getting too deep into setting up an IDE in Linux. This also allows allows the user to code their web page from other devices. I built a WAMP + Codiad + phpMyAdmin and will try to build the same on my R-Pi.

    Reply

  12. My bad…. I missed it…. you have a link to FileZilla in the section just above where I jumped to…. thank you!

    Reply

  13. I think this tutorial is great, and I’m using it this evening to learn about LAMP servers and about my RPi 3. I’m basically new to Linux and while not “new car smell” new, I’m wondering how exactly you envision connecting SFTP? Just since i’m playing around, I figure the SSH-FTP route would be the way to go, but not sure how I’m supposed to use connection data. Are you suggesting using WinSCP or similar which takes the IP address, port, protocol, login, and password? I’m just not clear how that login process is supposed to happen. I’ll dig around on your site some more, but how you’re intending us to apply that information is unclear (I have a guess on some options, but your intention might be easier than what else I might try). Still, I greatly appreciate the post!

    Reply

    • Hi Scott, thanks for your question and feedback. In this tutorial I give two ways to connect to your RPi; (1) via SSH-FTP (SFTP) which is a bit dangerous as you’ll login as root and have access to entire filesystem or (2) install and setup VSFTPD then login using FTPS which is the better option. The client for both connection types is PuTTY, but any FTP client should do. FTPS is FTP over a secure SSL or TLS encrypted connection, whereas SFTP or SSH-FTP is data transfer over the SSH connection. The reason I recommend FTPS is you can lock-down the folder access to just the /var/www folder, whereas the SSH-FTP gives access to the entire filesystem, I realize I could have created a separate Linux user, but it’s difficult to lock down to the /var/www folder, and permissions are a nightmare. Cheers! Richie

      Reply

      • Thank you Richie. The precaution of using VSFTPD makes sense both in your reply above, and in the main article for the security reasons you cited. For my purposes, which is just trying it out at home, the SSH-FTP route is just fine, but I understand your point and its validity.

        One more point, which I think I have right and I’ll make here for anyone passing this way that momentarily is confused on that last section: Although you’re saying to use root for login after changing the sshd_config file, root is not enabled by default on Debian (which Raspbian is based) distributions. You would need to enable the root account, which is not covered in the procedure above.

        Reply

        • Hi Scott, yes VSFTPD is the better/safer option. I actually do go through changing the AllowRootLogin without-password to AllowRootLogin yes under the “Login to FTP as Root User” section, but you may not have read it as you went down the VSFTPD path 😉 Cheers, Richie

          Reply

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