CentOS 8 – Setting up a LAMP environment

Welcome back again to another Stealthbay blog. So this week I was trying to setup a LAMP (linux, apache, mariadb, php) setup to test out some web apps. And, I thought I’d post a quick tutorial on what I did to set one up. Hopefully, it helps someone else out there to setup one very quickly using CentOS 8.

Note – I was using CentOS 8 on VMWare 15.5 and noticed there is an issue. Make sure you do not power the machine on right away. Go to the hardware settings on the VM and remove the “autostart.inf” it shows up as a CD/DVD drive. This is the easy install option and it messes up the installation.

Update Packages

Download new updated packages

sudo dnf update

Install Apache

Install apache on the machine

sudo dnf install httpd httpd-tools 

Optional: If you want Apache to start during a bootup use the following:

sudo systemctl enable httpd

Start Apache

sudo systemctl start httpd

Verify Apache is running

sudo systemctl status httpd

Change firewall rules

Use the commands below to allow firewall rules for http(s) traffic:

sudo firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-service=http

sudo firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-service=https

sudo firewall-cmd –-reload

Test webserver

If you now go to: http://server-IP you should see your web server is active and running.

Install MariaDB (MySQL)

Download and install mariadb

sudo dnf install mariadb-server mariadb -y

Run mariadb

sudo systemctl start mariadb

Optional: The following command will start MariaDB on startup/bootup

sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Confirm that mariadb is running

sudo systemctl status mariadb

Secure mariadb

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Install PHP

Let us get the latest package updates

sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Let us get yum utils

sudo dnf install dnf-utils http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm

Find which PHP modules are available

sudo dnf module list php

Verify we have the latest PHP 7.4 version

sudo dnf module reset php

Reset PHP modules to use latest PHP version

sudo dnf module enable php:remi-7.4

Install PHP modules

sudo dnf install php php-opcache php-gd php-curl php-mysqlnd

Verify latest PHP version is setup

php -v

Start PHP

sudo systemctl start php-fpm

Optional: If you want to run PHP on server startup use the following:

$ sudo systemctl enable php-fpm

Check PHP status

sudo systemctl status php-fpm

Get SELinux to allow apache to run PHP code

sudo setsebool -P httpd_execmem 1

Restart apache

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Test PHP

Create a file and insert the below code in it

<?php

 phpinfo ();

?>

Load the file via your web server

http://server-ip-address/test.php

If PHP is working you should see the PHP settings.

Install PHPMYADMIN

Download phpMyAdmin

Visit https://www.phpmyadmin.net/files/ to find the latest version.

Wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/5.0.2/phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages.zip

Unzip the file and move the contents

sudo mv phpMyAdmin-5.0.2-all-languages /usr/share/phpMyAdmin

Change the config file so it is active

cd /usr/share/phpmyadmin
mv config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php

Add a database secret

sudo nano config.inc.php

Look for the following and add your own secret/password here.

$cfg[‘blowfish_secret’] = ‘add-a-password-here’;

Import tables

sudo mysql < /usr/share/phpmyadmin/sql/create_tables.sql -u root -p

Create a temp directory for phpMyAdmin

mkdir /usr/share/phpmyadmin/tmp
 sudo chown -R apache:apache /usr/share/phpmyadmin
 sudo chmod 777 /usr/share/phpmyadmin/tmp

Create config phpMyAdmin file for Apache

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

Add the below code into your file:

Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpMyAdmin

<Directory /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/>

   AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

   <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>

     # Apache 2.4

     <RequireAny>

      Require all granted

     </RequireAny>

   </IfModule>

   <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>

     # Apache 2.2

     Order Deny,Allow

     Deny from All

     Allow from 127.0.0.1

     Allow from ::1

   </IfModule>

</Directory>

<Directory /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/setup/>

   <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>

     # Apache 2.4

     <RequireAny>

       Require all granted

     </RequireAny>

   </IfModule>

   <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>

     # Apache 2.2

     Order Deny,Allow

     Deny from All

     Allow from 127.0.0.1

     Allow from ::1

   </IfModule>

</Directory>

Restart apache

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Verify apache is running

sudo systemctl status httpd

Secure phpMyAdmin with SELinux

We need the following package:

sudo dnf install policycoreutils-python-utils

Enable access to the phpMyAdmin directory

sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t ‘/usr/share/phpMyAdmin/’

 sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t “/usr/share/phpMyAdmin/tmp(/.*)?”

Recurse through all phpMyAdmin directory files

sudo restorecon -Rv ‘/usr/share/phpMyAdmin/’

Restart the firewall rules for phpmyadmin

 sudo firewall-cmd –-reload

Check to see if phpMyAdmin is running

http://your-server-ip/phpmyadmin

Extra security

So for me this is a local virtual machine, so I am not concerned with other IP’s being able to reach the machine. However, if you have this on a public facing IP you will want to restrict what IP addresses can access phpMyAdmin.

Edit the Config file for phpMyAdmin and add your IP address

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf

<RequireAny>

    Require ip your-ip-address

    Require ip ::1

</RequireAny>

Tutorial Completed

Well that is it and you now are done and ready to start installing your web apps. I recommend you make a snapshot if it is a VM that you are using. So, you do not need to redo all of the work again.

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