Introduction
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 geniune 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.
Contents
- Introduction, Hardware, Download & Burn Raspbian Image
- Setup Raspbian
- Install LAMP Server Packages, Setup FTP
- 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 dissapointed. 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.
- Raspberry Pi 3 motherboard/SBC
- A suitable case for your Pi (I like metal cases)
- 8GB (or more) MicroSD card class 10
- Raspberry Pi Micro USB power supply
- LAN Network cable
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 authorised 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 authorised resellers.
- Raspberry Pi 3 Official & Authorized Resellers
- Element14 (main website)
- Farnell/Element14 World Wide Authorised Resellers
- RS Components (choose your country)
- Sources for Suitable MicroSD Cards
- Predefined eBay.com search for Sandisk Ultra 8GB MicroSD cards
- Predefined eBay.com search for Sandisk 32GB MicroSD cards
- Search for Sandisk 32GB MicroSD cards on Google Shopping
- Raspberry Pi 3 Cases
- Predefined eBay.com search for Raspberry Pi 3 Metal Cases
- Search for Raspberry PI 3 Metal Case on Google Shopping
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 is 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 and more stable).
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.
- Unzip the .img file and take note of the file location
- Visit etcher.io and download the Etcher Image Burner for Windows, MAC or Linux and install
- Insert your MicroSD card into your PC’s card reader, take note of the drive letter assigned to it
- Run Etcher and select the .img file you unzipped earlier
- Make sure Etcher has selected the correct drive letter, if not then change it to your SD card’s drive letter (Important!)
- Once you’re absolutley sure the right .img file and drive letter are selected, click the Flash! button
How to flash MicroSD card with Etcher Image Burner - 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 - 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
Scott J says
My bad…. I missed it…. you have a link to FileZilla in the section just above where I jumped to…. thank you!
Scott J says
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!
Richie says
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/wwwfolder, 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/wwwfolder, and permissions are a nightmare. Cheers! RichieScott J says
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.
Richie says
Hi Scott, yes VSFTPD is the better/safer option. I actually do go through changing the
AllowRootLogin without-passwordtoAllowRootLogin yesunder the “Login to FTP as Root User” section, but you may not have read it as you went down the VSFTPD path š Cheers, Richie