Installing LEMP on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – Remy's Adventures in Cyberspace

Just got a new box setup which needs a LEMP-stack. So here we go: install the packages for nginx, php, mariaDB:

$ sudo apt install nginx mariadb-server php-fpm php-mysql

Configure nginx

In /etc/nginx/nginx.conf replace SSL Settings part:

##
# SSL Settings
##

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; 
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:20m;
ssl_session_timeout 180m;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ciphers EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH;
ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/cert/dhparam.pem;
ssl_stapling on;
ssl_stapling_verify on;
resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 valid=300s;
resolver_timeout 5s;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000" always;

And my custom Logging Settings:

##
# Logging Settings
##

log_format combined_ssl '$time_local $status $host:$server_port $remote_user@$remote_addr $ssl_protocol/$ssl_cipher "$request" $body_bytes_sent ref:$http_referer "$http_user_agent"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log combined_ssl;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

And redirect everybody to https:

##
# Redirect everybody to https
##

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;
    server_name _;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

Lastly let’s generate some Diffie Hellman parameters, disable the default site and restart nginx:

$ sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/nginx/cert/dhparam.pem 4096
$ sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
$ sudo service nginx restart

You should now have a working nginx installation that redirects all traffic to https, but you’ll need to configure at least one virtual host with working SSL certificates to get something to display in your browser.

MariaDB Hardening

$ sudo mysql_secure_installation

You should be using sudo to connect to mariaDB with root, which will cause a problem when you want to be able to connect thru phpMyAdmin. You can fix this by changing the authentication plugin for root to mysql_native_password:

$ sudo mysql -u root -p
MariaDB [(none)]> use mysql;
MariaDB [mysql]> update user set plugin='mysql_native_password' where user='root';
MariaDB [mysql]> flush privileges;

PHP

In /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini set your timezone:

date.timezone = Europe/Amsterdam

phpMyAdmin

I tried installing the phpMyAdmin package via apt but never got that working, so I just download the source and use that. In the directory /var/www/ download the latest ENGLISH only version of phpMyAdmin from their website at https://www.phpmyadmin.net/downloads/

$ wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/4.9.0.1/phpMyAdmin-4.9.0.1-english.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf phpMyAdmin-4.9.0.1-english.tar.gz
$ cp config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php

Let’s configure phpMyAdmin by editting config.inc.php:

Add a blowfish secret and play around with ‘host’; when connecting to a unix-socket, use localhost, when connecting using TCP/IP use 127.0.0.1.

You can give any of your virtual hosts access to phpMyAdmin by creating a symlink in it’s websroot to /var/www/phpMyAdmin-4.9.0.1-english/. I also limit access to it in the nginx configuration of that vhost:

location /phpmyadmin {
	allow 10.1.0.0/16;	# example
	deny all;
}

When you are able to login as root phpMyAdmin will give some pointers to improve your installation, like adding a tmp directory, adding missing php-modules, etc.