Setup easy web development environment (XAMPP) on ubuntu 9.04

This is a how-to for setting up a web development environment easily. This guide will install the XAMPP lampp stack into /opt, setup an easy way to start it up and shut it down, and link a folder in your home directory to the webserver.

Install XAMPP

Two easy steps:

1. Download the most recent version of XAMPP: (at time of writing 1.5.3a)
   http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/x...ar.gz?download
   (Source URL: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html#374)
2. Extract the archive to /opt using sudo: (make sure you are in the directory that you downloaded the archive to)
   Code:

   sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.5.3a.tar.gz -C /opt

Start XAMPP

To start it up, open a terminal and type this:

Code:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

Stop XAMPP

To stop it, open a terminal and type this:

Code:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop

Additional XAMPP commands

To see additional commands, open a terminal and type this:

Code:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp

Sweet XAMPP Control Panel



To use the sweet gtk/python control panel:

Run in a terminal:

Code:

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/xampp-control-panel.desktop

Paste the following into the open file and save and exit.

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Start/Stop XAMPP
Name=XAMPP Control Panel
Exec=gksudo "python /opt/lampp/share/xampp-control-panel/xampp-control-panel.py"
Icon[en_CA]=/usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/devices/network-wired.svg
Encoding=UTF-8
Terminal=false
Name[en_CA]=XAMPP Control Panel
Comment[en_CA]=Start/Stop XAMPP
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/devices/network-wired.svg

"XAMPP Control Panel" will show up in your applications menu under Internet. Use the Alacarte Menu Editor to move it around.

Test to see if XAMPP is running

Once XAMPP is up and running open firefox and go to: http://localhost/

You should see the XAMPP test page:



Location of files and uploading

XAMPP by default uses /opt/lampp/htdocs as the root web directory. The easiest way to start working on files is to link a folder in your home directory into this directory.
My user name is peter so I have /home/peter/public_html linked to /opt/lampp/htdocs/peter. So if I navigate to http://localhost/peter/ I get a listing of all the files/folders in that directory. (As long is there isn't a index.php/html/etc file)
To set this up, run in a terminal:

1. Make public_html directory in home directory:
   Code:

   mkdir ~/public_html

2. Link to /opt/lampp/htdocs
   Code:

   sudo ln -s ~/public_html /opt/lampp/htdocs/$USER

Now any files and folders you place in ~/public_html will be published to your personal webserver.

Bookmark http://localhost/username to make this easy to access.

WARNING - SECURITY
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html#381

Open holes:

1. The MySQL administrator (root) has no password.
2. The MySQL daemon is accessible via network.
3. ProFTPD uses the password "lampp" for user "nobody".
4. PhpMyAdmin is accessible via network.
5. Examples are accessible via network.
6. MySQL and Apache running under the same user (nobody).

This doesn't leave your whole system wide open, but someone could hack your XAMPP installation, so be wary.
To fix most of the security weaknesses open a terminal and run:

Code:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp security