How to install LAMP Stack on Docker

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In this article, you will learn how to install LAMP Stack on Docker. #centlinux #linux #docker

What is LAMP Stack?

LAMP stack is a group of open source software components that are used to deploy PHP based applications. LAMP is named after the original stack components which are Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

We are already learned how to install LAMP stack on Ubuntu. But this is now the era of DevOps and it is necessary to explore how to install LAMP Stack on Docker.

If you are new to Docker platform, then you should read Docker in Action (PAID LINK) by Manning Publications.

Environment Specification:

We are using a Linux based Docker host with following specification.

CPU – 3.4 Ghz (2 cores)
Memory – 2 GB
Storage – 20 GB
Operating System – Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS
Hostname – docker-01.centlinux.com
IP Address – 192.168.116.218 /24

Although there are many pre-build single LAMP images are available on Docker Hub. But by following the best practice and to maintain the modularity of the software stack, we will run each service in its relevant container.

Configure a PHP/Apache Docker Container:

Connect with Docker host (docker-01.centlinux.com) as a privileged user by using a ssh tool.

Create a directory to store files related to our LAMP Server.

$ mkdir ~/lamp-server
$ cd ~/lamp-server/

Create a directory that will be mounted as Apache Document Root within the Apache container. This directory is used to deploy our web applications and the php-apache container will serve our web applications to clients.

$ mkdir ~/lamp-server/html

Create a default PHP page in this directory. The PHP script contains a single phpinfo() function, that generates a webpage with detailed information about Apache server and installed plugins.

$ echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > ~/lamp-server/html/index.php

We need to install some additional PHP plugins on the php-apache container. For this purpose, we have to create the build context file for our php-apache container.

Create a directory to store php-apache build context.

$ mkdir php-apache

Create build context file for php-apache container.

$ vi php-apache/Dockerfile

Add following directives there in.

FROM php:7.4-apache

RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo pdo_mysql mysqli

Since, we are deploying a multi-container Docker application, therefore, we need to use docker-compose to create and execute our containers.

For this purpose, we need to create docker-compose.yml file that contains the directives to create our containers.

$ vi docker-compose.yml

And add following directives to create php-apache container.

version: '3'
services:
        php-apache:
                build:
                        context: ./php-apache
                ports:
                        - 80:80
                volumes:
                        - ./html:/var/www/html
                links:
                        - 'mariadb'

Configure MariaDB in Docker Container:

Create a directory for Dockerfile that will be used to create mariadb container.

$ mkdir -p mariadb/sql

Create a SQL script to prepare our sample table.

$ vi mariadb/sql/init-db.sql

Add following SQL statements in this file.

USE testdb;

CREATE TABLE test (
        name varchar(30),
        email varchar(50)
);

INSERT INTO test (name, email)
VALUES
        ('Ahmer', 'ahmer@centlinux.com'),
        ('Mansoor','mansoor@centlinux.com'),
        ('Salman','salman@centlinux.com');

Create a Dockerfile to customize our mariadb container.

$ vi mariadb/Dockerfile

Add the following build context there in.

FROM mariadb:10.5

ENV MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD 123
ENV MYSQL_USER ahmer
ENV MYSQL_PASSWORD 123
ENV MYSQL_DATABASE testdb

COPY ./sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/

Create a directory on Docker Host to store MariaDB Server data files. This directory will be mounted within the MariaDB container on container startup.

$ mkdir mariadb_data

Now, configure a MariaDB docker container in the same docker-compose.yml file.

$ vi docker-compose.yml

Append following lines of code under the “services” section in this file.

 mariadb:
         build:
              context: ./mariadb
         volumes:
              - ./mariadb_data:/var/lib/mysql

Run LAMP Stack in Docker:

Start our LAMP stack environment by using docker-compose command.

$ sudo docker-compose up
...
Starting lamp-server_mariadb_1 ... done
Starting lamp-server_php-apache_1 ... done
Attaching to lamp-server_mariadb_1, lamp-server_php-apache_1
...
mariadb_1     | 2020-02-28 17:46:24 0 [Note] InnoDB: Buffer pool(s) load completed at 200228 17:46:24

Open URL http://docker-01.centlinux.com in a web browser.

Our LAMP Stack has been serving the default PHP page that we have created above.

Connect PHP Application with MariaDB Database:

To demonstrate the connectivity between php-apache and mariadb containers, we are creating a PHP webpage that creates connection to MariaDB database to fetch and display the data from a database table.

For this purpose, we are replacing the existing index.php with a new webpage that contains the PHP code to accomplish the required task..

$ mv html/index.php html/phpinfo.php
$ vi html/index.php

Add following HTML code in this file.

<html>
   <head>
      <title>Fetching Data from MariaDB Server</title>
   </head>
   <body>
        <style>
        td,th {
        border: solid black 1px;
        font-size: 30px;
        width: 200px;
        }
        </style>
        <table>
        <tr>
        <th>Name</th>
        <th>Email</th>
        </tr>
      <?php
         $dbhost = "mariadb";
         $dbuser = "ahmer";
         $dbpass = "123";
         $db = "testdb";
         $dbconn = mysqli_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass, $db);

         if(! $dbconn ) {
            die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
         }
         $query = mysqli_query($dbconn, "SELECT * FROM test")
            or die (mysqli_error($dbconn));

         while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($query)) {
            echo
                "<tr>
                <td>{$row['name']}</td>
                <td>{$row['email']}</td>
                </tr>";
         }

         mysqli_close($dbconn);
      ?>
   </body>
</html>

Open URL http://docker-01.centlinux.com in a web browser.

You can see that, our web page is now displaying data from the test table.

Conclusion – Install LAMP Stack on Docker:

In this guide, you have learned how to install LAMP Stack on Docker.

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