Question

After LAMP stack tutorials, I can't find my site on localhost

Posted October 7, 2019 1.6k views
Apache

I’m a student trying to figure out how to get LAMP stack working on my laptop for Ubuntu 18.04. I need it for a project I’m working on at school and out of school.

I followed a few tutorials,

first
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-ubuntu-18-04
second
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-the-apache-web-server-on-ubuntu-18-04
third
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mysql-on-ubuntu-18-04
fourth
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-18-04

to make a long story short, I set my domain as abc and this is me looking at it in terminal

Skynet:/var/www/abc$ ls
index.html websitedirectory

index.html is from the second tutorial and displays:
“Success! The your_domain virtual host is working!”
The index.html works fine and displays when I go to url localhost in firefox. If I try to do localhost/websitedirectory I get a blank page and if I try to do www.abc/websitedirectory/login.php (I added login.php into /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf to prioritize it) I also get a blank page. I’m not really sure what I’m doing wrong and how I can get my actual site to display using the LAMP stack. I was using the lampp package from apachefriends.org and I had my site working with that, but I’m trying to figure out how to use it with LAMP stack instead and to apply it to real world situations.

Would anyone be able to clarify this for me and explain what I’m doing wrong. Thank you in advance.

Big thank you to the tutorial authors:
Justin Ellingwood, Kathleen Juell, and Mark Drake

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2 answers
alexdo October 8, 2019

What happens if you enter the full path in your browser - localhost/abc/subdirectory/index.php

Also are you using an .htaccess file and if so can you place the content of it here?

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  • Pachuca October 8, 2019

    for localhost/abc/subdirectory/index.php i get the same Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server.

    yes, I’m using .htaccess

    AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Files"
AuthUserFile /etc/phpmyadmin/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
    Reply Report
  • Pachuca October 15, 2019

    I got it working. I was doing 2 things wrong. #1 I had a missing database connection which was causing the blank white screen to load. After adding the db the page loaded. Also when using localhost/ one doesn’t need to provide the full path like localhost/abc/index.php instead use localhost/index.php and that will display the site (at least on a linux machine.) The full path /var/www/your_domain I guess is included when using localhost/ in the URL so using localhost/your_domain/index.php is redundant and results an error.

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alexdo October 7, 2019

Hello, @Pachuca

Can you please check if mod_rewrite is enabled? You can check it via this command:

httpd -M | grep rewrite

Also, please make sure that the site files are located in the same directory where your apache virtual hosts - document root is pointing to.

Let me know how it goes.

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  • Pachuca October 7, 2019

    that command doesn’t work for me.

    Skynet:/var/www$httpd -M | grep rewrite

Command 'httpd' not found, did you mean:

  command 'http' from snap http (1.0.2-1)
  command 'xttpd' from deb xtide
  command 'http' from deb httpie

See 'snap info <snapname>' for additional versions.
    Reply Report
    • alexdo October 7, 2019

      I’m sorry httpd is for CentOS, for Ubuntu is:

      apache2ctl -M

      You can try:

      apache2ctl -M | grep rewrite

      Let me know how it goes.

      Reply Report
      • Pachuca October 7, 2019

        Thank you for your help. So far I’m not getting anything from that
        output:

        Skynet:~$ apache2ctl -M | grep rewrite
Skynet:~$
        Reply Report
        • alexdo October 7, 2019

          It might not be enabled.

          Can you please run this command to enable it:

          sudo a2enmod rewrite

          then restart apache:

          sudo systemctl restart apache2

          Check again if mod_rewrite is enabled:

          apache2ctl -M | grep -i rewrite

          If it’s okay/enabled check your site if it’s loading.

          Let me know how it goes.

          Reply Report
          • Pachuca October 8, 2019

            great that did something

            Skynet:/var/www/abc$ apache2ctl -M | grep -i rewrite
 rewrite_module (shared)

            BUT when I visit localhost/abc i’m getting the below instead of a blank page.

            Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.
Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu) Server at localhost Port 80

            My index.php file for the site is in a sub directory of abc so the full path is like localhost/abc/subdirectory/index.php even when I put that into the url I’m getting the same result. I can’t even see the directories from localhost/abc/ or localhost/.

            this is my virtual host file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/abc.conf

            <VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    ServerName abc
    ServerAlias www.abc.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/abc
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

            I was a little confused at this step. Is the way the Server* should be setup correct in terms of url and root path? I don’t know if I did it right.

            Also I only enabled Apache for ufw and not Apache Full, I don’t know if that makes any difference either.

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