Deploy-PHP-Laravel-Application-on-Linux-Centos-7-VPS-Server-Guidelines-

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Initial Setup

Here we will setup swap file and other necessary things before deploying laravel application

Create Swap File

Check whether you have swap file or not. Run following command.

free -m

Or

 swapon -s 

If you see nothing or swap data empty, then create a swap file first. Run following commands.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=1024 bs=1M

Here we may create a swapfile having double size of the physical ram. So here in the above command count=1024 is used for 1GB size. If you need 2GB then count will be 2048 and so on. Now setup the swap file we just created

mkswap /swapfile

Enable swapfile

swapon /swapfile

Now check the swap size again

free -m

To enable swapfile after rebooting every time we need to edit the file system table file

nano /etc/fstab

Add the following line at the end of the file

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

Now save by pressing ctrl + x, then press y and enter. If you see any error opening with nano can use vim or install nano if not available by following command

sudo yum install nano

Install and configure Apache Server, PHP and its extensions, phpmyAdmin

Now on centos 7 update repository to get the latest packages by running following commands.

rpm -Uvh https://download-ib01.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/Packages/e/epel-release-7-13.noarch.rpm

rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

sudo yum update 

Here after updating, we will install apache from remi,epel repository

Install apache2 server

yum --enablerepo=remi,epel install httpd

Install mysql server [mariadb]

yum --enablerepo=remi,epel install mysql-server 

It may give you error as from centos 7 all mysql repositories are replaced with mariadb.

yum --enablerepo=remi,epel install mariadb-server

Now to run mariadb, run following command

service mariadb start 

To check if mysql works, you can type mysql in the terminal and can login automatically and run sql commands also. But this is not a secured way , so we will secure mysql by giving password and set other options. You will be asked whether you need remote location, remove test users, test databases etc. It depends on you. We will allow remote connection here. To secure run this command. Enter blank password and set a password for root user.

/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Now you can login to mysql terminal by running this command and give password to login securely.

mysql -uroot -p 

Install PHP 7.4 and some required extensions on centos 7

Before installing php, we will install yum utils which can handle additional package's extensions.

sudo yum -y install yum-utils

Enable php 7.4 repository

sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php74

Now run the following command.

sudo yum install php  php-cli php-fpm php-mysqlnd php-zip php-devel php-gd php-mcrypt php-mbstring php-curl php-xml php-pear php-bcmath php-json

You can add or remove extensions depending on your requirements. Restart apache/ httpd server

 service httpd restart

Install phpmyAdmin

Run this command to install latest phpmyadmin

yum --enablerepo=remi install phpmyadmin

If you try to access phpmyAdmin by serveripaddress/phpmyadmin You will see some error. We need to allow access from outside. Edit phpmyadmin configuration file by running following command

sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpMyAdmin.conf

Now change the following block by <Directory /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/>

  <Directory /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/>
   AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
   Require all granted
  </Directory>

Now restart apache server

sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Now you can login remotely. Visit serveripaddress/phpmyadmin If you can't login using username and password of mysql, update your user's native password by running

mysql -uroot -p 

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '123456';

Test Simple PHP Script

Run the following command

nano /var/www/html/test/index.php

Add the following lines in the index.php file

<?php 
phpinfo();
?>

To access this you need to tell apache server the virtual host configuration. Now create a test configuration file on /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory Create test.conf and Add the following lines.

<VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName youdomain.com
       DocumentRoot /var/www/html/test
       <Directory /var/www/html/test>
              AllowOverride All
       </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Now restart apache server

sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Now try to access youdomain.com if you have configured your Domain's DNS's blank and www A record pointing to your server ip. Congratulations you have succesfully configured php. Now to test mysql connection edit the /var/www/html/test/index.php file

  <?php
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost","root","123456");

// Check connection
if ($mysqli -> connect_errno) {
  echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . $mysqli -> connect_error;
  exit();
}
else {
echo "connected";
}
?> 

Now save and reload the website. If you see connected, then you are good to go.

# Deploy Laravel Application

Now its time to deploy our laravel application. First we will install composer and git.

Install composer

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
mv composer.phar /usr/bin/composer
chmod +x /usr/bin/composer

Install git

sudo yum -y install git

Now you can clone or upload your web applications file on /var/www/html directory in appropriate folder. For example we will simply just create an application to test login registration functionality.

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel testapp "5.8.*"

Set file permission

chown -R apache.apache /var/www/html/testapp 
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/testapp 
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/testapp/storage
chcon -R -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html/testapp/storage

Configure the .env file with database credentials. Run migrations

php artisan migrate 

To access using your domain , edit the test.conf file /etc/httpd/conf.d directory. You can add more conf files too.

<VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName yourdomain.com
       DocumentRoot /var/www/html/testapp/public

       <Directory /var/www/html/testapp>
              AllowOverride All
       </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Here we added the document root which is the root directory of your laravel project's root directory. Now restart apache server

service httpd restart 

Now if you try to access the application by your domain you can access, But when trying to registering, you may get an sql permission denied error. To solve this run following command.

sudo -P setsebool httpd_can_network_connect_db 1

It will enable apache to connect with database.

Enjoy ! Keep eyes on this doc.

Future Updates

• Configure Cloudflare SSL certificate
• Configure SSH
• Change phpmyadmin address