Load Times Under 2s: MySQL, Apache, PHP7 & Composer

Installing MySQL

Next we need to install MySQL. This will be our database of choice however you can easily use any database that you’re looking for. Use the latest “Red Hat” repository mentioned here: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/repo/yum/. Click “Download”, then use the link “No thanks, just start my download”. Replace the wget and rpm lines with the link you selected here.

#Enable Repo cd /tmp/ wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql57-community-release-el7-11.noarch.rpm rpm -ivh mysql57-community-release-el7-11.noarch.rpm; yum update -y; #Install yum install -y mysql-community-server mysql-community-devel mysql-community-client.x86_64; #Enable on Boot systemctl enable mysqld; #Test start MySQL systemctl start mysqld; #Check Status systemctl status -l mysqld;

 

You should see “Active: active (running)” in the output if everything was successful. To secure your MySQL installation, run the following command.

Follow the instructions and set a root password, remove root accounts that are accessible from outside the local host, remove anonymous-user accounts, and remove the test database and privileges that permit anyone to access databases with names that start with test_. When you create your root password, I recommend keeping it to only numbers and letters (uppercase and lowercase, no symbols). This will make it easier to use the password later in shell commands. If you run into any issues, please read the second note below.

Keep the root MySQL password somewhere; we will need it later on.

mysql_secure_installation;

Note: Your MySQL installation should have either a blank password (e.g. no value) or a temporary password. To find the temporary password, use:
grep "temporary password" /var/log/mysqld.log

Note: if you can’t log in when if it asks for your root password (either because you set the password, or you just can’t log in), add “skip-grant-tables” to the [mysqld] section of /etc/my.cnf , run systemctl restart mysqld; and log in again. Run: mysql -uroot -e “FLUSH PRIVILEGES;”;mysql -uroot -e “ALTER USER ‘root’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘[[Root MySQL Password]]’;”; When you’re done, edit the /etc/my.cnf file again (nano /etc/my.cnf), remove the “skip-grant-tables”, and restart the MySQL server again (systemctl restart mysqld).

Another Note: I recommend that you decrease the password validation policy to “LOW”. The reason for this is that it’s advantageous to have a password without any special characters, since entering them in the command line directly can prove difficult. Open the my.cnf file
nano /etc/my.cnf;

… and add the following line in the “[mysqld]” section
validate_password_policy=LOW

Finally, restart your mysql service.
systemctl restart mysqld;

Install Apache

Now we need to install Apache.
yum install -y httpd httpd-devel; systemctl enable httpd; systemctl start httpd;

 

And if you have SELinux, we will need to add another setting allowing Nginx to connect to Apache
setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1;

 

At this point, if you go to http://[[your IP address]] you should see the Apache test page.

Installing PHP

To install PHP, run the following command. Feel free to upgrade the “71w” to the latest version of PHP that provides all of the packages that you’re looking for.
yum install -y mod_php71w php71w-cli php71w-common php71w-gd php71w-mbstring php71w-mcrypt php71w-mysqlnd php71w-xml php71-php-pear php71-php-devel php71-php-devel php71-php-pecl-pcs-devel php71-build php71-php-imap.x86_64 php71w-imap.x86_64 php71-php-pecl-inotify php71-php-pecl-event php71w-process;

 

In my case, I needed to link the inotify .so file to the PHP modules folder. If you install other PHP packages, you may need to do the same with those as well.
ln /opt/remi/php71/root/usr/lib64/php/modules/inotify.so /usr/lib64/php/modules/inotify.so;

 

Installing Composer

Composer is great for PHP package management. To install it and enable it, just run:
cd /tmp/; sudo curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php; mv composer.phar /usr/bin/composer; chmod +x /usr/bin/composer;

 

Automatic Installation?

If you like the result of the tutorial, but run into problems or would just like to have the work done automatically, we can help you with that. We have an automated script that can SSH into your server and run this tutorial from beginning to end (as long as it’s running CentOS 7). If you would like this done for you ($100), please contact us using the form below.

 

 

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Tags: Apache Composer Hosting linux MySQL PHP7 servers