How to Setup Laravel on Ubuntu - 2025 Setup Guide using LAMP Stack

How to Setup Laravel on Ubuntu - Quick Guide using VM

The following Guide will help you set up your Laravel application on Ubuntu Virtual Machine (VM) instance, Apache server, using PHP 8.2, and MySQL (LAMP Stack). In this simple guide, we will go through the required steps from installing Apache server, mysql, php8.2 and dependencies, configuring Git, installing composer, and configuring your Laravel application.

Additionally, I include multiple resources that can offer more details on some optional areas.

At the end of the guide, you will have deployed a Laravel application on a VM machine hosted at your favourite such as cloud Google Cloud's Compute Engine, or any other Hosting Provider (e.g. AWS, Azure, and Digital Ocean).

Let's dig in.

Ad: If you need help configuring your Laravel Applications, email me, start a live chat session, or send a message here.

Step 1 - Setup the VM on your hosting

Setup you vm by selecting location, persistent disk, vcpu, and enable firewall. After the VM is ready, login to your vm using SSH.

Step 2 - Install Apache2

Update the Ubuntu packages:

sudo apt update

Install the apache server

sudo apt install apache2

Confirm installation prompt by pressing Y, then ENTER.

Allow firewall through apache

sudo ufw allow in "Apache"

Check the firewall is working:

sudo ufw status

You should get the following output:

Output
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
Apache                     ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
Apache (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

If you get an output indicating the ufw is disabled, enable it by running:

sudo ufw enable

Verify that Apache is working by visiting your ip address. Go to your VM instance, copy the external ip address and paste it in your browser. You should get the Apache2 Default Page verifying that Apache is configured and ready to host your websites.

The next step is installing database driver, Mysql.

Step 3 - Install and Setup Mysql

Download mysql package for Ubuntu using:

sudo apt install mysql-server

Confirm installation prompt by typing Y, and then ENTER.

The initial installation of MYSQL is not secure as it exposes some features that can be exploited by malicious users to gain unauthorized access to your databases.

To secure mysql installation, run:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

The script will ask you if you want to configure VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN which ensures your database passwords meet a specific standard. This is a recommended security feature.

Type Y to confirm and configure, then in the next prompt, choose the password policy that is best for you.

For the rest of the questions, type Y and ENTER to remove anonymous users, disable remote login using root, remove the test database, and enforce the new rules. These are important practices that help secure your databases inside the VM.

Setting up the database user

We need to configure a Database user, that the applications can use to interact with their respective databases.
Let's create a database user:

sudo mysql

CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Replace username with your preferred username and password with a password matching the rules you created while securing mysql.

Exit mysql by typing exit
Let's test the user we have created can access and interact with the database. Use the following command:

mysql -u username -p;

You will be asked to enter a password. Provide the password we have just created above. You should get the following output:

Output

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 10
Server version: 8.0.28-0ubuntu4 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2022, Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

The user is all setup. Type exit. Let's now setup PHP.

Step 4 - Installing PHP 8.2 on Ubuntu 20.04

In addition to installing PHP, we will need to install the core php dependencies that help PHP communicate with Apache (libapache2-mod-php) and MYSQL (php-mysql).

If you wish to install PHP 8.0, 8.1, 8.2 and higher, they are not directly supported by Ubuntu. This means, if you run sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql, you will install php7.4.

We need to install some prerequisites packages to help install PHP 8.0 or higher.

Installing prerequisites for php 8.2

sudo apt install ca-certificates apt-transport-https software-properties-common

Press Y and ENTER to confirm.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Press ENTER when asked to confirm.

Install php 8.2

sudo apt install php8.2 libapache2-mod-php php8.2-mysql -y

This command will install the PHP 8.2 and the core extensions to interact with Apache and Mysql.

In addition to these core extensions, we need some additional extensions.

Installing PHP extensions

Based on the nature of websites you wish to host on this server, you will need to install additional php extensions. I find the following to work with my Laravel projects.

sudo apt install php8.2-{gd,zip,mysql,mysqld,curl,xml,json,yaml,fpm,mbstring,memcache,zip}

You can add any other extension needed for your projects by simply running

sudo apt install php8.2-extension_name

Restart apache server,

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Confirm Apache is running:

sudo systemctl status apache2

Confirm your php version:

php -v

Check the installed PHP modules or extensions: $ php --modules.

Step 5 - Setup Apache Virtual Host for your Website

All your websites on the Ubuntu server will be located in /var/www/ folder. By default, Ubuntu will have configured one virtual host to serve a sample website from /var/www/html.

In this guide, we will be hosting our custom domain at /var/www/mydomain.com using Laravel. Let's get started.

Create a folder that will act as the document root of our website at /var/www/mydomain.com.

sudo mkdir /var/www/mydomain.com

Next, let's give the $USER the ownership to the folder. $USER is an environment variable used to refer to the current system user.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/mydomain.com

Creating a virtual host for the website

We will use nano command line editor to create a new virtual host configuration file. All configuration files for websites are located in /etc/apache2/sites-available.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.conf

The command will create a new bland configuration file. Let's populate the file with the following skeleton configuration details of our domain.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName mydomain.com
    ServerAlias www.mydomain.com 
    ServerAdmin myemail@gmail.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/mydomain.com
    ErrorLog /var/www/mydomain.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/mydomain.com/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Let's understand the above details. We are instructing Apache to serve mydomain.com using /var/www/mydomain.com as the web root directory. A web root directory is the entry point to our web application.

Since any Laravel application serves content using public folder as the entry point into the application, we will only be storing files inside public folder inside the /var/www/mydomain.com. This is to enhance the security of our application. See Laravel Official Documentation for more on setting up your application for deployment.

Now, let's enable our new virtual host.

sudo a2ensite mydomain

This will tell Apache to run the configuration file with the name mydomain.conf inside the /etc/apache2/sites-available.

At the same time, we should disable the default virtual host that is made available by apache:

sudo a2dissite 000-default

Next, reload Apache server for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

At this point, our website is active. However, we need to add the actual files to be served from the web root folder /var/www/mydomain.com. Right now it is empty.

Step 6 - Hosting Laravel on Ubuntu using Apache

We will be hosting a Laravel application by cloning it from a GitHub repository. I am assuming here, that you have a GitHub repository with your Laravel application files.

Let's navigate to the /var/www folder.

cd /var/www

Here we will create a new folder, where we will clone our repository and host the laravel application.

sudo mkdir main

Navigate into the new directory.

cd main

Now, you should be inside /var/www/main. Remember, the web root for our website is at /var/www/mydomain.com. We will come back to it in a moment.

Now we need to set up Git to be able to clone and interact with our GitHub repositories.

git config --global user.name "my_github_username"
git config --global user.email "my_github_email"

The above will configure the local git to your GitHub settings.

Now, clone the repository with the Laravel application we want to host.

git clone https://github.com/github_username/my_repository.git

Be sure to replace github_username and my_repository with your actual username and repositories.

Next we need to install Composer, so that we can install the Laravel dependencies.

Installing Composer on Ubuntu

Start by installing some dependencies, if they are not already installed.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php-cli unzip

Next, download and install composer. Make sure you are in the home directory.

cd ~
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer -o /tmp/composer-setup.php

We need to ensure that the downloaded installation matches the official SHA-384 hash for the latest composer installer which is available at Composer Public Keys:

We will use curl to fetch the latest public key/signature and store it in a shell variable we will call HASH:

HASH=`curl -sS https://composer.github.io/installer.sig`

Next, we run the following php script that will verify that the composer installer is valid:

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', '/tmp/composer-setup.php') === '$HASH') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

The output should be as follows:

Installer verified

Note: If the output says Installer corrupt, you’ll need to repeat the download and verification process until you have a verified installer.

Next, since our installer is verified, let's continue and install composer.

sudo php /tmp/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

The above will install composer in the global environment at /usr/local/bin with the alias of composer. You should see the following output:

Output
All settings correct for using Composer
Downloading...

Composer (version 2.2.9) successfully installed to: /usr/local/bin/composer
Use it: php /usr/local/bin/composer

To test the installation, run the following:

composer

The output should be something like this:

Output
   ______
  / ____/___  ____ ___  ____  ____  ________  _____
 / /   / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ __ \/ ___/ _ \/ ___/
/ /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ (__  )  __/ /
\____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\____/____/\___/_/
                    /_/
Composer version 2.2.9 2022-03-15 22:13:37

Usage:
  command [options] [arguments]

Options:
  -h, --help                     Display this help message
  -q, --quiet                    Do not output any message
  -V, --version                  Display this application version
      --ansi                     Force ANSI output
      --no-ansi                  Disable ANSI output
  -n, --no-interaction           Do not ask any interactive question
      --profile                  Display timing and memory usage information
      --no-plugins               Whether to disable plugins.
  -d, --working-dir=WORKING-DIR  If specified, use the given directory as working directory.
      --no-cache                 Prevent use of the cache
  -v|vv|vvv, --verbose           Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug
...

Now that we have composer, let's continue with setting up the Laravel application.

Installing Laravel Dependencies

Start by navigating to the laravel application we cloned from GitHub. Then run composer update to download all the required packages.

cd /var/www/main/my_repository
composer update

Setup .env file

sudo nano .env

Copy the contents of the .env file from your local computer, and paste them to the editor.

Tip: use ctrl+O to save a file on nano and ctrl+X to exit nano editor.

Note: If your project requires Nodejs or npm to be istalled, refer to this guide on ReinTech - Installing Node.js and NPM on Ubuntu 20.04 to quickly install, and then come back.

At this point, our application should be ready to be served online.

We need to connect the repository, to the web root (/var/www/mydomain.com). To do this, we will copy all the files inside the public folder of the laravel project, into the web root folder /var/www/mydomain.com. Let's do it.

cp -R public/* ../../mydomain.com

Then, we need to edit the index.php file inside the web root, so that it can point to the laravel project files. We will use nano editor:

sudo nano ../../mydomain.com/index.php

<?php

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

define('LARAVEL_START', microtime(true));

// Determine if the application is in maintenance mode...
if (file_exists($maintenance = __DIR__.'/../main/my_repository/storage/framework/maintenance.php')) {
    require $maintenance;
}

// Register the Composer autoloader...
require __DIR__.'/../main/my_repository/vendor/autoload.php';

// Bootstrap Laravel and handle the request...
(require_once __DIR__.'/../main/my_repository/bootstrap/app.php')
    ->handleRequest(Request::capture());

Note: We are telling the server to go into the /var/www/main/my_repository/... to locate the laravel project files.

With this, our application is ready to be served to the public.

If your application does not allow configurations in .htaccess to work, try configuring the rewrite module of apache and allow .htaccess files in laravel projects as follows:

Check if there is a module called rewrite.load in your apache at:

cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/

If it does not exist execute the following excerpt:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Otherwise, change the Apache configuration file to consolidate use of the "friendly URL".

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Find the following code inside the editor:

<Directory /var/www/> 
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
   AllowOverride None
   Require all granted
</Directory>

Change to:

<Directory /var/www/> 
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

After that restart the Apache server via:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Source: StackOverflow - https://stackoverflow.com/a/48198007

For this to work, You will need to ensure your domain is correctly redirected to the VM. This can be achieved by pointing the dns servers correctly to the External IP Address of the VM.