Creating and installing a blank Laravel app on an Ubuntu 22.04 Vultr instance to be snapshotted for rapid redeployment.

This includes Apache, Composer and PHP 8.1 installations.

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Choose your starting base instance, I am choosing a $6 p/m AMD high performance compute with 25GB. That means the snapshot will be compatible with this plan as you cannot deploy larger snapshots back onto smaller plans.

It is recommended to setup using an SSH key, this makes it fast to connect to future instances as you “don’t need to know the password”.

Start by updating the package list:

sudo apt update

Install Apache

Install apache2 HTTP webserver:

sudo apt install apache2

Most likely UFW (firewall) will be running as default, you will need to allow Apache through with:

sudo ufw allow 'Apache'

Install PHP 8.1

For PHP 8.1 you may need to install the independent software sources first, this can be done with

sudo apt install software-properties-common

This is needed for the latest PHP versions repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

To install PHP 8.1 and the PHP 8.1 module for Apache

sudo apt install php8.1 libapache2-mod-php8.1

Installing PHP 8.1 extensions is done in the following format:

sudo apt install php8.1-[extension_name]

An example with a few common extensions

sudo apt install php8.1-{curl,mysql,xml}

Restart Apache

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Install Composer

Composer is a dependency or package manager for PHP, it makes installing and updating packages to your project easy.

Install the PHP comandline interface

sudo apt install php-cli unzip

Go to your home directory and download the composer installer

cd ~
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer -o /tmp/composer-setup.php

Install composer globally

sudo php /tmp/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

The system-wide command name for Composer will be composer.

To test the installation was successful, run:

composer

and you will see the Composer version and usage options page

Install Laravel

Navigate to

cd /var/www

Create a new Laravel project with Composer

composer create-project laravel/laravel myapp

this puts the Laravel project in /var/www/myapp

To verify a successful Laravel install go into the directory and run PHP artisan:

cd myapp
php artisan

Similar to Composer you will get an output with the Laravel version and usage commands.

Permissions

Add some permissions to the Laravel project directory so the webserver (Apache) can access it

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/myapp

and

sudo find /var/www/myapp/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

Virtual Hosts

Create a new virtual host for the Larvel app

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/myapp.conf

Edit and past in the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin contact@domain.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/myapp/public
     ServerName DOMAINIP.com

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

     <Directory /var/www/myapp/>
        Options +FollowSymlinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
     </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

You need to replace DOMAINIP.com with the domain you are using or you can use the instance IP address as a placeholder.

Press ctrl + x then y to save.

Apply this configuration file

sudo a2ensite myapp.conf

Make sure mod_rewrite is enabled

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Finally restart Apache

sudo systemctl restart apache2

When you navigate to http://domain.tld or http://ipaddress you will see the Laravel welcome page:

Creating a snapshot

Taking an instance snapshot on Vultr means you can skip all of the previous steps and rapidly redeploy this Laravel setup to use at other locations or at another time.

The only thing you would need changing is the ServerName in the myapp.conf and DNS changes externally for your domain name.

To take a snapshot on your instance page click the Snapshots tab, and create a label name such as “Base Laravel app”. Finally click “Take Snapshot”.

To use this snapshot, instead of choosing an Operating System click the Snapshot tab and choose “Base Laravel app”.