We’re setting up an extranet for a client and have a installed dedicated box running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. I’m going through the simple setup procedure to get a LAMP stack going via the command line. We’ll then go about setting up postfix for mail services.

First thing’s first; we have to ensure all updates are on the box. We do this by using (logged in as root or using sudo)

apt-get -u dist-upgrade

You’re asked if you want to change the grub loader at this point. Don’t touch it unless you have good reason to.

The next bit is dead easy. Instead of going through the rigmarole of installing and setting up individual Apache, MySQL and PHP services, just use:

tasksel

It gives you a sweet little window where you can choose to install a whole host of things, a LAMP stack being one of them.

The only additional thing you need to do is to decide on a password for your MySQL server. Make sure it’s a good one.

In seconds, we were pointing browsers to the extranet’s IP address and got the gloriously ugly Apache welcome:

It works!

Next we’ll set up WordPress and get some authentication going so we can safely work behind the scenes.