Installing a LEMP Stack on RHEL 8

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Installing a LEMP Stack on RHEL 8

Before anyone can start building a world-changing website or application on LEMP, they have to lay the foundation: the stack. In this Hands-On Lab, we will walk through the installation of the components that make up the LEMP stack on RHEL 8. We will also configure the Linux environment to host the LEMP stack. When we have completed this lab, we will have a running LEMP stack on RHEL 8. We will also have a better understanding of how a LEMP installation is configured on RHEL 8.

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Lab Info

Level

Beginner

Last updated

Aug 03, 2025

Duration

45m

Challenge

Install NGINX Using the RHEL 8 Repositories
Become the 'root' user.
```
sudo su -
```
Install the NGINX server.
```
yum -y install nginx
```
Enable the NGINX server to start at boot time.
```
systemctl enable nginx
```
Validate the NGINX configuration.
```
nginx -t
```
Start the NGINX server and check the status.
```
systemctl start nginx
```
```
systemctl status nginx
```
The service should be 'enabled' and 'running'.
Challenge

Configure HTTP Access Through the Firewall
Check the firewall configuration:
```
firewall-cmd --info-zone=public
```
HTTP traffic is not configured:

services: cockpit dhcpv6-client ssh

Allow HTTP traffic through:
```
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http --permanent
```
Reload the new firewall configuration to pick up the change:
```
firewall-cmd --reload
```
Recheck the firewall configuration:
```
firewall-cmd --info-zone=public
```
We should see HTTP listed:

services: cockpit dhcpv6-client http ssh
Challenge

Verify Basic HTTP Functionality in NGINX
Let's verify that we can load the default NGINX web page using curl:
```
curl http://`curl v4.ifconfig.co`
```
Now we'll use a web browser to go to the default NGINX web page at http://OUR_PUBLIC_IP_ADDRESS. We should see the default NGINX page. We can find the public IP address of the instance in the /home/cloud_user/server_info.txt file.
Challenge

Install the PHP Components
Install the PHP components using YUM:
```
yum -y install php php-pdo php-mysqlnd php-gd php-mbstring php-fpm
```
We may notice that php and php-fpm are already installed. This is not an error, as php and php-fpm were installed during the creation of the lab environment.
Challenge

Verifying PHP Functionality in NGINX
Load the 'phpinfo' page using 'curl'. Notice that we are specifying a header (using the -H option).
```
curl -H "www.bigstatecollege.edu" http://www.bigstatecollege.edu/phpinfo.php
```
We should see the 'phpinfo' page for this server. If you put your server's public IP address into your /etc/hosts file pointing to www.bigstatecollege.edu you should be able to access the 'phpinfo' page at http://www.bigstatecollege.edu/phpinfo.php using your web browser.
Challenge

Install MariaDB
Install MariaDB using yum:
```
yum -y install mariadb mariadb-server
```
Enable and start MariaDB via systemctl:
```
systemctl enable mariadb
```
```
systemctl start mariadb
```
Verify that MariaDB is installed, enabled, and running using systemctl:
```
systemctl status mariadb
```
Challenge

Verify the Installed Version of MariaDB
Verify the installed version of MariaDB using 'mysql'.
```
mysql -V
```
The exact version is not critical here, but we want to confirm it returns a result.

[root@ip-10-0-1-205 ~]# mysql -V mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.3.11-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1

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