LAMP Development on Windows

April 4, 2007 at 1:26 am · Filed under LAMP, Virtualization, Linux, developers

tut vmware starting3

LAMP is an open source web development platform, a software stack, used together to run dynamic websites. The acronym LAMP stands for: Linux (L), Apache HTTP Server (A), MySQL (M), PHP or Perl or Python (P). The acronym was coined by Michael Kunze coined in an article for the German computing magazine.

I admit that the title kind of confusing and most people would say that running LAMP on Windows is impractical since there are packages that are specifically designed to run on Windows platform like XAMPP. However, I just feel that running XAMP puts a heavy load on work station. I tried it, for me it runs slow. Though it works, I still enjoy working on Linux commandline as most geeks are. I’m a LAMP specifically Linux fan (dual boot - Windows and Ubuntu ) but my work requires me to use Windows.

What do you need for this tutorial?

  1. Free VMware Player. This will run any virtual machine on Windows or Linux PC. A virtual machine is a computer defined by a set of codes called software as opposed to a set of hardware ( IC, memory chips, video cars, etc.) VMware Player 1.0.2, Version: 1.0.2 Build: 29634
  2. rPath Linux - free Linux Virtual Appliance for VMware. Version 1.0.5

Let’s Get Started

  1. Download VMware Player and install it on your computer.
  2. Download rPath Linux and save it in a folder and extract the zip package. Don’t forget which folder that is. Don’t be like me :)

  3. Open the VMware player by browsing through the list of application programs on your start menu.
    Start -> All Programs -> VMware -> VMware Player

    VMware Start Menu

  4. Browse for the virtual machine configuration file located in the folder where the rPath Linux was extracted. Alternatively, you can double click the configuration file (.vmx) to start the virtual machine.
    VMware Browse Configuration File

  5. It should ask you to either Create, Keep, Always Create or Always Keep the unique identifier (UUID) of your virtual machine. Choose Create. Wait for the virtual machine to load.

    Create New Unique Identifier

    tut vmware starting1

     

    tut vmware starting2

     

    Main Scren

  6. Depending on how your VMware player should connect to the internet, you should take note of the IP address displayed on the VMware screen. I have mine setup to use NAT for networking. This way, I can access my rPath Linux machine without the need for a router. Take note of the IP address.

    VMware Networking Configuration

    VMware Main Screen

  7. Using your favorite web browser, access the URL for the website, for example http://192.168.161.130.

    tut raa site

  8. Access the RPath Appliance Administration Page. The default username is admin and the password is password.

    tut raa

  9. Click Change Password menu to change the administrator’s password. Note: your admin password is going to be the root password.

    tut raa changepw

  10. Click Set user Password to change the password of user web which is used for accessing the PHPMyAdmin page

    tut raa change user pw

  11. Don’t forget to change the Time zone and Date.

    tut raa set time

 

Now you can starting your favorite ftp client to upload files or ssh client to explore the file system via the command line interface and probably create a new user.

raa ssh session

In rPath Linux, the default DocumentRoot is located in “/srv/www/html“. It’s the starting place for your future web projects. For the adventurer in all of us geeks, creating new user is more advisable.

This is way better than XAMPP because it’s like having two seperate machines don’t you think so? For more information, I urge you to check on several resources listed below.

Other Resources:

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