How To Setup an OpenLiteSpeed LOMP Server on Ubuntu

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For those who aren’t familiar, a LOMP server is simply an acronym describing the web software stack: Linux, OpenLiteSpeed, MySQL (or MariaDB), and PHP.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install a LOMP server on Ubuntu or Debian. I used the following software versions, but most versions will be okay to use:

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
OpenLiteSpeed 1.6.16
MariaDB 15.1
PHP 7.3

Note: I’ll be using a bare IP address for the server in this tutorial. If you want to have a domain name instead, set the DNS A record to the IP address of your server.

1. Update Your System

First things first. Login to your server via ssh and update your system.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

2. Install the Web Server and PHP

Use apt to install the OpenLiteSpeed web server and PHP.

wget -O - http://rpms.litespeedtech.com/debian/enable_lst_debain_repo.sh | bash
apt-get install openlitespeed
apt-get install lsphp73-curl lsphp73-imagick lsphp73-memcached lsphp73-redis

OpenLiteSpeed comes packaged with lsphp (usually located at /usr/local/lsws/fcgi-bin/lsphp), so this step will take care of installing both the web server and PHP.

3. Install and Secure Your Database

Install MariaDB, a popular fork of MySQL.

apt-get install mariadb-server

Next, we want to secure our database installation. After executing the following command, answer Y for each security configuration option.

mysql_secure_installation

4. Access the WebAdmin Console

OpenLiteSpeed has a WebAdmin console that’s accessible via a web browser. This makes configuring your web server easy in comparison to manually editing configuration files directly.

By default, the OpenLiteSpeed WebAdmin console runs on port 7080. You can visit the IP address of your server followed by :7080 to access the WebAdmin console.

Here you will be asked for your WebAdmin username and password. To set these credentials, run the following command on your server.

/usr/local/lsws/admin/misc/admpass.sh

5. Set the Example Listener to Use Port 80

By default, OpenLiteSpeed will install an example Virtual Host with a Listener on port 8088. You can check this out by going to your server’s IP address followed by :8088.

If you would like to change this port, you can do so by going to Listeners > View > Edit > and changing 8088 to 80. Finally click the green button in the upper right corder to restart the server.

Now you can access the example Virtual Host website over port 80 by typing the IP address of your server into the address bar of your web browser.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.

Server Administration

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One Response

Sourabh Singh says:

October 28, 2021 at 7:33 am

Hi Tony, Your videos are amazing!

I have one question though, I have configured WordPress on an OpenLitespeed server on an AWS ec2 instance and now I am facing a problem with the Read and Write permission. My WordPress is not able to modify anything on the WordPress directory eg: .htaccess, backup files, etc.

While setting up Wordpress I used the following command:
`sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /usr/local/lsws/Example/html/wordpress`

When I am executing this `groups lsadm` command it gives me the following output:
lsadm : lsadm nogroup

Could you please help me understand what needs to be done here in order to provide proper access to OpenLitespeed and ensure security in mind as well and also let me know about the exact file & directory permission for the WordPress folder when you get a chance to look into my query.

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