DISCLAIMER: These instructions are made available for learning purposes only as well as give you general information of Magento 2.3 environment setup and installation, I endeavor to provide accurate and timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one shall act on such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation or circumstances, by following these instructions you also understand that any kind of naming convention or label is used as an example only and owner of this information will not be responsible of any data lose or whatsoever.

Good news!!

... and it must come first, I have created a Bash script for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) to setup complete environment for Magento 2.3, it is offered as BETA and you can use it as-it-is at your own risk.

Clone the repo and execute sudo bash setup.sh -u johndoe where johndoe is your username, it will take sometime and you are done. The script offers;

• Apache installation and configuration
• VirtualHost (local.mage23.com)
• MariaDB 10.3
• PHP 7.2 with required dependencies
• PHP FPM

Note: DO NOT modify the script until you know what you are doing.

Your suggestions and contributions are valuable.

Magento 2.3 Environment Setup & Installation

Instructions to setup the environment and install Magento 2.3 under Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS.

Features and Applications

• PHP 7.2 extensions for Magento 2.3
• MariaDB 10.4
• Apache 2.4
• PHP FPM
• VirtualHost dev.magento.com
• n98-magerun2
• XDebug
• SendMail
• Composer

Install Apache 2.4

Magento 2.3 requires Apache 2.2 or 2.4 with mod_rewrite and mod_version enabled. Open you terminal and execute

sudo apt-get install apache2

Check if Apache is installed

apache2 -v

If above command is outputting the Apache version then you successfully installed the Apache, now confirm that Apache is running

sudo service apache2 status

Open your browser and enter http://localhost/ you will see welcome page. Open your terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and run sudo chown $USER:$USER -R /var/www it will change the ownership of /var/www/ to you so you can create and modify files and directories under /var/www/. Following are useful Apache commands

• apache2 -M to list all active modules of Apache.
• apache2 -V to get the Apache version If you are encounter with Config variable ${xxx} is not defined error, it is because you directly executed the apache2 binary. In Ubuntu the apache config relies on the envvar file which is only activated if you start apache with apachectl, so either run apachectl -M or execute source /etc/apache2/envvars and everything will be good.

Enable required/useful Apache modules for Magento

• sudo a2enmod rewrite - Enables URL Rewrite.
• sudo a2enmod alias - Enables Alias command.
• sudo a2enmod env - Enables Environment Variable.
• sudo a2enmod setenvif - Enables Environment Variable based on condition.
• sudo a2enmod version - Enables Version module.

If you get an error ERROR: Module version does not exist! and apachectl -M | grep version outputs version_module (static) then its mean mod_version is statically compiled into apache2 package and works automatically.

One more thing, modify Apache defafult configuration so it allow .htaccess to override default settings, otherwise .htaccess under DocumentRoot will not work, sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and search for the following block;

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

Replace AllowOverride None with AllowOverride All.

Setup VirtualHost

Previously we were able to access Apache's welcome page over http://localhost it is coming from /var/www/html/, I don't want to put my Magento installation under /var/www/html/magento/ and access it like http://localhost/magento/ so I will create separate VirtualHost.

Head to my other repo for a nice and easy VirtualHost Generator and generate dev.magento.com or whatever you want, make sure it is working, open the browser and browse for http://dev.magento.com/ (in my case) and you will see empty directory listing. We will modify the VirtualHost later to best fit for our Magento environment.

Install MariaDB

If you have any previous version of MariaDB, check its version and uninstall if it is not compatible with Magento 2.3. Remember Magento 2.3 supports MariaDB 10.x or MySQL 5.6, 5.7, skip this step if you already have one of them.

Uninstall previous version

sudo apt-get remove mariadb-server mariadb-client

Check the MariaDB version

• Login to MariaDB mysql -u root -p
• When you are logged in run SELECT VERSION();

REMEMBER the root password which you will provide during installation, we need this to login to MariaDB.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8
# Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (16.04 LTS)
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64] http://mirror.zol.co.zw/mariadb/repo/10.3/ubuntu xenial main'
# Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04 LTS)
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64] http://mirror.zol.co.zw/mariadb/repo/10.3/ubuntu bionic main'
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After successful MariaDB installation, create a new database for Magento;

mysql -u root -p
# Enter root password which you entered during installation.
# Once you are inside MariaDB console
CREATE DATABASE magento;
# Type exit to get out from the console

PHP 7.2

According to Magento 2.3 System Requirements we need following extensions

• bc-math (Magento Commerce only) => php7.2-bcmath
• curl => php7.2-curl
• dom => php7.2-dom
• gd => php7.2-gd
• intl => php7.2-intl
• mbstring => php7.2-mbstring
• PDO/MySQL => php7.2-mysql
• SimpleXML => php7.2-simplexml
• soap => php7.2-soap
• libxml => php7.2-xml
• xsl => php7.2-xsl
• zip => php7.2-zip
• json => php7.2-json
• iconv => php7.2-iconv is part of php7.2-common
• ctype => php7.2-ctype is part of php7.2-common
• spl => This extension is available and compiled by default in PHP 5.0.0, as of PHP 5.3.0 this extension can no longer be disabled and is therefore always available.
• openssl => I found that PHP 7.x has openssl compiled within the core and doesn't need an external extension.
• hash => As of PHP 5.1.2, the Hash extension is bundled and compiled into PHP by default, As of PHP 7.2.0, the Hash extension is a core PHP extension, so it is always enabled.

First get the current PHP status along with the enabled extensions

php -v // to get PHP version
php -me // to list enabled extensions

Remember that php in terminal will display the version details for php activated for the bash, your all php versions may located under /usr/bin/ so make sure you are searching all rooms.

If you current php version is satisfied by Magento 2.3 minimum requirement, you can skip this step.

Ubuntu Bionic Beaver is shipped with PHP 7.2 so you don't to use any PPA, run following command to install PHP with all required extensions on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2 php7.2-bcmath php7.2-common php7.2-curl \
      php7.2-dom php7.2-gd php7.2-intl php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-simplexml \
      php7.2-soap php7.2-xml php7.2-xsl php7.2-zip php7.2-json

If you are using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), follow the below given instructions

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2 php7.2-bcmath php7.2-common php7.2-curl \
      php7.2-dom php7.2-gd php7.2-intl php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-simplexml \
      php7.2-soap php7.2-xml php7.2-xsl php7.2-zip php7.2-json

Now we have to test our PHP installation, create a new document, lets say, test.php under /var/www/html with following content;

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

Now open your browser and type http://localhost/test.php, you can use your VirtualHost also, create aforementioned file under document root of your VirtualHost, in my case it is /var/www/magento/public_html/ and visit http://dev.magento.com/test.php if you see a page with tons of useful information with PHP version, Congratulations! You have successfully installed PHP.

Notice Server API, we will get back to this.

Install and Configure SendMail

Run which sendmail to check whether you have SendMail installed or not. Follow the steps to install SendMail.

• sudo apt-get install sendmail
• Configure /etc/hosts file, make sure the line looks like 127.0.0.1 localhost
• sudo sendmailconfig and answer Y to everything
• sudo service sendmail restart to restart sendmail
• Test your installation, execute echo "Subject: sendmail test" | sendmail -v username@host.com

XDebug

Open your terminal and run sudo apt install php-xdebug, it will install XDebug, to test the installation run php -v, if you see following similar output, you have finished installing XDebug.

• sudo apt install php-xdebug to install xdebug.
• Now enable stack trace, edit /etc/php/7.2/mods-available/xdebug.ini and put xdebug.show_error_trace = 1
• sudo service apache2 restart.
• Run php -m and confirm that xdebug is under the active PHP extensions list, or run php -v and find the following similar output;

PHP xxx
Copyright (c) xxx
with Xdebug xxx, Copyright (c) 2002-2018, by Derick Rethans

n98-magerun2

n98-magerun2 is the swiss army knife for Magento developers, sysadmins and devops. The tool provides a huge set of well tested command line commands which save hours of work time. All commands are extendable by a module API.

New version 3.0 has been released upon Magento 2.3, so it is recommended to delete older version of n98-magerun2 (if any) and install a new 3.0 version.

Follow the link for detailed instructions.

PHP FPM

PHP scripts are handled and executed in two ways;

• As Apache's Module (mod_php).
• As PHP FPM, standalone process manager.

The most popular method to execute PHP is mod_php (Apache Module for PHP), it is embedded in Apache processes thus handles and execute PHP script itself, major downsides of mod_php are;

• Consumes more server resources because the mod_php runs as Apache module and it opens a new footprint for each request.
• All files created by PHP script is owned by Apache owner e.g. www-data and it makes common permission issues when you are executing Magento's bin commands.

The other way to handle PHP requests is PHP FPM (FastCGI Process Manager).

PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites. Find more about PHP FPM here.

PHP FPM runs as a standalone process manager, Apache communicates FPM using Apache's mod_fastcgi or mod_fcgid and treats it a separate server responsible to execute PHP scripts.

Note: mod_fcgid is the free variant of mod_fastcgi.

Using PHP FPM you have two major benefits

• PHP scripts are executed separately so your Apache server will not be involved in memory eating processes as previously described.
• You will not face permission issues as everything related to configuration and permissions is under PHP-FPM.
• You can run different PHP versions for different projects using PHP FPM Pools, Pool is like a separate PHP container with different permission groups, user and configuration, you can declare as many Pools as you want.

Note: Apache handles the script execution in two ways, CGI and FastCGI, both have nothing to do with PHP, it only helps Apache to handle scripts, CGI is old and slow, FastCGI is new and fast.

Install & Configure PHP FPM

sudo apt-get install php7.2-fpm
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-fcgid

Note: On Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) you can install libapache2-mod-fastcgi but on Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) fcgid is default avaiable, if you prefer fastcgi you can download and install using sudo dpkg -i <path-to-package-name> or add xenial repository under apt.list of Bionic Beaver but it may crash your system. Enabled required modules to run PHP FPM properly

sudo a2enmod proxy
sudo a2enmod proxy_http
# Run if Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver)
sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi
sudo a2enmod fcgid
# Run Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)
sudo a2enmod proxy_fastcgi
sudo a2enmod fastcgi

Edit sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf, search for something similar to listen = /run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock and replace it with listen = 127.0.0.1:9000, also make sure that user and group directive is set to your user and group so you don't have issues running Magento's bin commands, don't mix user with listen.owner or listen.group, your modified settings must look like below

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

user = johndoe
group = johndoe

; don't edit following two settings
listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data

Edit your VirtualHost file, in my case it is sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/dev.magento.com.conf, modify DocumentRoot to /var/www/magento/public_html/pub (pub at the end), add ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/magento/public_html/pub to next line.

sudo service apache2 restart
sudo service php7.2-fpm restart

Are you eager to know why I have changed the DocumentRoot? Magento devdocs explains it in detail.

If you installed Magento in Apache’s default docroot /var/www/html, the Magento file system is vulnerable because it’s accessible from a browser. This topic describes how to change the Apache docroot on an existing Magento instance to serve files from the Magento pub/ directory, which is more secure.

Serving files from the pub/ directory prevents site visitors from accessing the Web Setup Wizard and other sensitive areas of the Magento file system from a browser.

Install Magento

# In my case
cd /var/www/magento/public_html
composer create-project --repository-url=https://repo.magento.com/ \
                        magento/project-community-edition:2.3.* .

Enter Magento Marketplace Private Key as Username and Public Key as Password. It will take some time to download all depedences.

Once download is finished, rename php.ini.sample to php.ini and make sure that it contains following must-have configuration;

memory_limit = 2G
max_execution_time = 18000
display_errors = Off