Setup Magento 2 with Composer on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 and Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.1-FPM Support

We recently showed students and new users how to install Magento 2 with composer on Ubuntu with Apache2 HTTP support… However, for those wanting to use Nginx instead, they should continue below:

If you always want to upgrade Magento 2 to the latest version easily, the steps below should help you get there… This post helps you setup Magento 2 with Composer for easy install and upgrade…

Students and new users looking for help installing the latest version of Magento 2 ( 2.2.5 ) from Github using Composer with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.2 support, the steps below should be a great place to start…

When you use Composer to install Magento 2 packages, you can easily upgrade from the commmand line with Composer, which is much simpler…

To upgrade Magento 2, you must manually upgrade its core files and other packages when new versions are available…. and doing that using its starndard method can be challenging for some users…

This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install / upgrade Magento 2 from Github repository via Composer with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.2 support on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 LTS servers…

To get started with installing Magento 2, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu

Nginx HTTP Server is probably the second most popular web server in use… so install it since Magento 2 needs it..

To install Nginx HTTP on Ubuntu server, run the commands below…

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

After installing Nginx, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable Nginx service to always start up with the server boots.

sudo systemctl stop nginx.service
sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

To test Nginx setup, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see Nginx default test page as shown below.. When you see that, then Nginx is working as expected..

http://localhost

Step 2: Install MariaDB Database Server

MariaDB database server is a great place to start when looking at open source database servers to use with Magento… To install MariaDB run the commands below…

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots..

Run these on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

sudo systemctl stop mysql.service
sudo systemctl start mysql.service
sudo systemctl enable mysql.service

Run these on Ubuntu 18.04 and 18.10 LTS

sudo systemctl stop mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

After that, run the commands below to secure MariaDB server by creating a root password and disallowing remote root access.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.

Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
New password: Enter password
Re-enter new password: Repeat password
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y

Restart MariaDB server

To test if MariaDB is installed, type the commands below to logon to MariaDB server

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then type the password you created above to sign on… if successful, you should see MariaDB welcome message

Step 3: Install PHP 7.1-FPM and Related Modules

PHP 7.1 may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories… in order to install it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.

Run the commands below to add the below third party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.1-FPM

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.1-FPM

sudo apt update

Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2 and related modules.

sudo apt install php7.1-fpm php7.1-common php7.1-gmp php7.1-curl php7.1-soap php7.1-bcmath php7.1-intl php7.1-mbstring php7.1-xmlrpc php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-mysql php7.1-gd php7.1-xml php7.1-cli php7.1-zip

After installing PHP 7.1, run the commands below to open PHP default config file for Nginx…

sudo nano /etc/php/7.1/fpm/php.ini

Then make the changes on the following lines below in the file and save. The value below are great settings to apply in your environments.

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
short_open_tag = On
memory_limit = 256M
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0
upload_max_filesize = 100M
max_execution_time = 360
date.timezone = America/Chicago

After making the change above, save the file and close out.

Step 3: Restart Nginx

After installing PHP and related modules, all you have to do is restart Nginx to reload PHP configurations…

To restart Nginx, run the commands below

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Step 4: Create Magento 2 Database

Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required for Magento 2 to function, continue below to start configuring the servers. First run the commands below to create a blank Magento 2 database.

To logon to MariaDB database server, run the commands below.

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then create a database called magento2

CREATE DATABASE magento2

Create a database user called magento2user with new password

CREATE USER 'magento2user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';

Then grant the user full access to the database.

GRANT ALL ON magento2.* TO 'magento2user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Finally, save your changes and exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 5: Download Magento 2 Latest Release

To get Magento 2 latest release you may want to use Github repository… Install Composer, Curl and other dependencies to get started…

sudo apt install curl git
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

After installing curl and Composer above, change into the Nginx root directory and downaload Magento 2 packages from Github…

When prompted, enter your authentication keys. Your public key is your username; your private key is your password…. ( https://marketplace.magento.com/customer/accessKeys/ )

You’ll have to register for an account to create the key above….

cd /var/www/html
sudo composer create-project --repository=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition magento2

Then run the commands below to install Magento 2 with the following options:

The Magento software is installed in the root directory on localhost…. Admin is admin; therefore: Your storefront URL is http://exmaple.com
The database server is on the same localhost as the webserver….
The database name is magento2, and the magento2user and password is new_passwore_here
Uses server rewrites
The Magento administrator has the following properties:
- First and last name are: Admin User
- Username is: admin
and the password is admin123
E-mail address is: admin@example.com
Default language is: (U.S. English)

Default currency is: U.S. dollars
Default time zone is: U.S. Central (America/Chicago)

The commands below:

cd /var/www/html/magento2
sudo bin/magento setup:install --base-url=http://example.com/ --db-host=localhost --db-name=magento2 --db-user=magento2user --db-password=new_password_here --admin-firstname=Admin --admin-lastname=User --admin-email=admin@example.com --admin-user=admin --admin-password=admin123 --language=en_US --currency=USD --timezone=America/Chicago --use-rewrites=1

Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Magento 2 to function.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/magento2/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/magento2/

Step 6: Configure Nginx

Finally, configure Apahce2 site configuration file for Magento 2. This file will control how users access Magento 2 content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called magento2

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/magento2

Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.

upstream fastcgi_backend {
         server  unix:/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

    set $MAGE_ROOT /var/www/html/magento2;
    set $MAGE_MODE developer;
    include /var/www/html/magento2/nginx.conf.sample;
}

Save the file and exit.

Step 7: Enable the Magento 2 and Rewrite Module

After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/magento2 /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Step 8 : Restart Nginx

To load all the settings above, restart Nginx by running the commands below.

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Then open your browser and browse to the server domain name. You should see Magento 2 setup wizard to complete. Please follow the wizard carefully.

http://example.com/

Congratulation! You have successfully installed Magento 2 on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 and may work on upcoming 18.10…

In the future when you want to upgrade to a new released version, simply run the commands below to upgrade…

cd /var/www/html/magento2
sudo bin/magento maintenance:enable
sudo composer require magento/product-community-edition 2.2.5 --no-update
sudo composer update
sudo php bin/magento setup:upgrade
sudo php bin/magento setup:di:compile
sudo php bin/magento indexer:reindex
sudo php bin/magento maintenance:disable

You may have to re-run the to update Nginx directory permissions…

That’s it!