Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 20.04
• root SSH access or a regular user with sudo privileges

1. Log in via SSH and update the system

Log in to your Ubuntu 20.04 VPS with SSH as a root user or as a regular user with sudo privileges

ssh master@IP_Address -p Port_number

Remember to replace IP_Address and Port_Number with your server’s actual IP address and SSH port number respectively.

You can check whether you have the proper Ubuntu version installed on your server with the following command:

$ lsb_release -a

You should get this output:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal

Then, run the following command to make sure that all installed packages on the server are updated to the latest available version

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

2. Install and Configure Web server

Drupal 9 supports many webservers, like Apache, nginx, LiteSpeed, even Microsoft IIS. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Drupal 9 using apache or nginx on your Ubuntu 20.04. Drupal will be installed in directory /var/www/html/drupal. For this purpose, we need to create the directory.

$ sudo mkdir /var/www/html/drupal

a. apache

If you want to use Apache, run this command to install it from the repository.

$ sudo apt install apache2

Once installed, Apache will run and we can start creating a virtual host.

$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/drupal.conf

Paste the following in to /etc/apache2/sites-available/drupal.conf file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName drupal.rosehosting.com
     ServerAlias drupal.rosehosting.com
     ServerAdmin admin@otodiginet.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/drupal/

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

      <Directory /var/www/html/drupal>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
            RewriteEngine on
            RewriteBase /
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
      </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save the file then exit from nano editor. To enable the virtual host, let’s run this command:

$ sudo a2ensite drupal

As you can see in the Apache virtual host above, it contains RewriteRule. By default, the Apache mod rewrite in Ubuntu is not enabled. So, we need to enable the module and restart Apache.

$ sudo a2enmod rewrite

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

b. nginx

If you want to use nginx instead of apache, run this command to install it.

$ sudo apt install nginx

Now, let’s create an nginx server block to proceed with Drupal 9 installation.

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/drupal.conf

Paste the following contents in to the file

server {
    listen 80;
    
    root /var/www/html/drupal;

    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    server_name drupal.rosehosting.com;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { log_not_found off; access_log off; }
    location = /robots.txt { log_not_found off; access_log off; allow all; }
    location ~* \.(css|gif|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|png)$ {
        expires max;
        log_not_found off;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Save the file then exit.

3. Install Database Server

Drupal 9 requires MariaDB 10.3+ or MySQL/Percona 5.7.8+ or higher, PostgreSQL 10.0 or higher, SQLite 3.26 or higher, the database server is needed to store your Drupal data. In this step, we will install MariaDB from Ubuntu repository.

Run the following command to install the MariaDB server from the official Ubuntu repositories:

$ sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y

Once installed, MariaDB will run and it’s already configured to run after reboot, by default.

Next, secure the MariaDB installation using the following command:

$ sudo mysql_secure_installation

This script will set the MariaDB root password, disable remote root login and remove anonymous users as shown below:

Enter current password for root (enter for none):
Set root password? [Y/n] Y
New password:
Re-enter new 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

4. Create a Database

Login to the MySQL cli as the root user and execute the following commands:

$ mysql -u root -p

You will be prompted for your MySQL root password, you create the password in the previous step. And, once logged in, run these commands.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE drupal9;
mysql> CREATE USER 'drupal9_user'@'IP_address' IDENTIFIED BY 'm0d1fyth15';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal9.* TO 'drupal9_user'@'IP_address';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> \q

Make sure to replace the ‘IP_address‘ is the IP address of your Ubuntu 20.04 server where Drupal 9 will be installed, or you can also use ‘localhost’. Do not forget to replace the PASSWORD ‘m0d1fyth15’ with a stronger and unique one.

5. Install PHP

In this section, we will install PHP 7.4. Rung the command below to install PHP 7.4

$ sudo apt install php7.4 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php7.4-{common,mbstring,xmlrpc,soap,gd,xml,intl,mysql,cli,zip,curl,fpm} -y

If you choose to use Apache, run this command and restart Apache.

$ sudo a2enmod php7.4
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

If you choose nginx, simply restart nginx after installing PHP 7.4

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

6. Install Drupal 9

In this section, we will download and install Drupal 9. At the time of writing this blog post, Drupal 9.3.3 is the latest version, you can check it at their release page at https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal. According to their documentation, this Drupal version 9.3.x will receive security coverage until December 8, 2022.

$ cd /var/www/html
$ sudo wget https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-9.3.3.tar.gz

Once downloaded, we need to extract the compressed file.

$ sudo tar xzvf drupal-9.3.3.tar.gz -C /var/www/html/drupal --strip-components=1

Then, change the permissions.

$ sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/drupal

Navigate to http://yourdrupaldomain.com and initiate the installation.

Choose your desired language then click on the save and continue button.

Once completed, you will be brought to the last step to configure your Drupal website.

Fill the details then click on the save and continue button to finalize the installation. And that’s it, you will be automatically redirected to your Drupal website’s backend.

7. Install Free SSL Certificate

In this modern era, it is recommended to secure your website with an SSL certificate. This is not a mandatory step, but it provides secure connections for your Drupal instance.

First, install the Certbot client in your system to manage the SSL:

$ apt install python3-certbot-apache python3-certbot-nginx

Depends on what your webserver is, you can run one of these commands.

$ sudo certbot --apache
$ sudo certbot --nginx

Follow the steps when installing a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt. You would see the output similar to this:

master@ubuntu20:~# sudo certbot --apache
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer apache
Enter email address (used for urgent renewal and security notices) (Enter 'c' to
cancel): 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Please read the Terms of Service at
https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf. You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(A)gree/(C)ancel: a
There seem to be problems with that address. Enter email address (used for
urgent renewal and security notices)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about our work
encrypting the web, EFF news, campaigns, and ways to support digital freedom.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(Y)es/(N)o: n

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Choose the domain/subdomain your are installing Drupal 9 for, and certbot will install the SSL certificate for it. You can also choose whether to redirect the HTTP traffic to HTTPS or not.

That’s it! You have successfully installed Drupal 9 on your Ubuntu 20.04 machine.

Of course, you don’t have to install Drupal 9 on your Ubuntu 20.04 server if you have a server with us, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux hosting admins to set all of this up for you, quickly and easily. They are available 24×7 and will respond to your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons below, or simply leave a comment down in the comments section. Thank you.

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• PHP 5.5.9 or higher (preferably PHP 7.0), with GD library, JSON, cURL, mysqli , Mbstring, DOM, OpenSSL and XML PHP extensions enabled. PHP 7.2 is not supported on the current release.
• MySQL – 5.5.3 (MariaDB 5.5.20, Percona 5.5.8) or higher with an InnoDB-compatible primary storage engine, PostgreSQL – 9.1.2 or higher, or QLite – 3.6.8 or higher
• Apache web server 2.2 or higher compiled with mod_rewrite module and AllowOverride set to ‘All’ (please note, the default setting for AllowOverride in Apache 2.3.9 and higher is ‘None’).

This install guide assumes that Apache and MySQL/MariaDB are already installed and configured on your virtual server.
Let’s start with the installation procedure.

1. Update the System Packages

Make sure your server Debian 9 OS packages are fully up-to-date:

apt-get update 
apt-get upgrade

2. Install the Required Packages

Install the required PHP packages for Drupal 8:

apt-get install php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-mbstring php7.0-curl php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-mysql php7.0-xml

3. Enable Apache Rewrite Module

Enable Apache rewrite module if it is not already done so:

a2enmod rewrite

4. Restart Apache

Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart

5. Download and Extract Drupal 8 Files

Download Drupal 8 and install if from source, or install Drupal 8 using Composer.

5.1 Download Drupal 8 from source

Download the latest version of Drupal available at https://www.drupal.org/download in the /opt/ directory on the server:

cd /opt/
mkdir -p /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/
wget -O drupal8.tar.gz https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.4.4.tar.gz
tar -xvzf drupal*
mv drupal-*/* /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/

5.2 Download and Install Drupal 8 using Composer – a PHP dependency manager

If you downloaded and extracted Drupal from source, you can skip this step and go to step 6.
Install Composer:

apt-get install composer

mkdir -p /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/
cd /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/

To install the Drupal 8 website on a development server, run:

composer create-project drupal-composer/drupal-project:8.x-dev /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/ --stability dev --no-interaction

Optionally, install Twig C extension:

composer require twig/twig:~1.0

To install the Drupal 8 website on a production server, you also need to run:

composer install --no-dev

This will run the composer install process again remove everyhing from the “require-dev” section from the composer.lock file.

6. Set Proper Ownership of Drupal Files

All files have to be readable by the web server, so set a proper ownership:

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/yourdomain.com/

7. Create MySQL Database and User

Create a new MySQL database and user:

mysql -u root -p
mysql> SET GLOBAL sql_mode='';
mysql> CREATE DATABASE drupaldb;
mysql> CREATE USER 'drupaluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'y0uR-pa5sW0rd';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupaldb.* TO 'drupaluser'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Do not forget to replace ‘y0uR-pa5sW0rd’ with a strong password.

8. Install and Configure Varnish

apt-get install varnish

Configure Varnish to listen on port 80. Edit the ‘/etc/default/varnish’ Varnish configuration file:

nano etc/default/varnish

Add these lines at the end:

DAEMON _OPTS="-a :80\
  -T localhost:6082
  -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl
  -s malloc,512m"
  -S /etc/varnish/secret

Create a new varnish startup script for systemd:

nano /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service

[Unit]
Description=Varnish HTTP accelerator
Documentation=https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/4.1/ man:varnishd

[Service]
Type=simple
LimitNOFILE=131072
LimitMEMLOCK=82000
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :80 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,512m
ProtectSystem=full
ProtectHome=true
PrivateTmp=true
PrivateDevices=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Run the following command to reload systemd manager configuration:

systemctl daemon-reload

Back up default.vcl:

mv /etc/varnish/default.vcl /etc/varnish/default.vcl.bak

Create a new default.vcl file (do not forget to change yourdomain.com with the actual domain name):

nano /etc/varnish/default.vcl

Add these lines

backend default {

.host = “yourdomain.com“;

.port = “8080”;

}

# Access control list for PURGE requests.
# Here you need to put the IP address of your web server
acl purge {
“127.0.0.1”;
}

# Respond to incoming requests.
sub vcl_recv {
# Add an X-Forwarded-For header with the client IP address.
if (req.restarts == 0) {
if (req.http.X-Forwarded-For) {
set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = req.http.X-Forwarded-For + “, ” + client.ip;
}
else {
set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip;
}
}

# Only allow PURGE requests from IP addresses in the ‘purge’ ACL.
if (req.method == “PURGE”) {
if (!client.ip ~ purge) {
return (synth(405, “Not allowed.”));
}
return (hash);
}

# Only allow BAN requests from IP addresses in the ‘purge’ ACL.
if (req.method == “BAN”) {
# Same ACL check as above:
if (!client.ip ~ purge) {
return (synth(403, “Not allowed.”));
}

# Logic for the ban, using the Cache-Tags header. For more info
# see https://github.com/geerlingguy/drupal-vm/issues/397.
if (req.http.Cache-Tags) {
ban(“obj.http.Cache-Tags ~ ” + req.http.Cache-Tags);
}
else {
return (synth(403, “Cache-Tags header missing.”));
}

# Throw a synthetic page so the request won’t go to the backend.
return (synth(200, “Ban added.”));
}

# Only cache GET and HEAD requests (pass through POST requests).
if (req.method != “GET” && req.method != “HEAD”) {
return (pass);
}

# Pass through any administrative or AJAX-related paths.
if (req.url ~ “^/status\.php$” ||
req.url ~ “^/update\.php$” ||
req.url ~ “^/admin$” ||
req.url ~ “^/admin/.*$” ||
req.url ~ “^/flag/.*$” ||
req.url ~ “^.*/ajax/.*$” ||
req.url ~ “^.*/ahah/.*$”) {
return (pass);
}

# Removing cookies for static content so Varnish caches these files.
if (req.url ~ “(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$”) {
unset req.http.Cookie;
}

# Remove all cookies that Drupal doesn’t need to know about. We explicitly
# list the ones that Drupal does need, the SESS and NO_CACHE. If, after
# running this code we find that either of these two cookies remains, we
# will pass as the page cannot be cached.
if (req.http.Cookie) {
# 1. Append a semi-colon to the front of the cookie string.
# 2. Remove all spaces that appear after semi-colons.
# 3. Match the cookies we want to keep, adding the space we removed
# previously back. (\1) is first matching group in the regsuball.
# 4. Remove all other cookies, identifying them by the fact that they have
# no space after the preceding semi-colon.
# 5. Remove all spaces and semi-colons from the beginning and end of the
# cookie string.
set req.http.Cookie = “;” + req.http.Cookie;
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “; +”, “;”);
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “;(SESS[a-z0-9]+|SSESS[a-z0-9]+|NO_CACHE)=”, “; \1=”);
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “;[^ ][^;]*”, “”);
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, “^[; ]+|[; ]+$”, “”);

if (req.http.Cookie == “”) {
# If there are no remaining cookies, remove the cookie header. If there
# aren’t any cookie headers, Varnish’s default behavior will be to cache
# the page.
unset req.http.Cookie;
}
else {
# If there is any cookies left (a session or NO_CACHE cookie), do not
# cache the page. Pass it on to Apache directly.
return (pass);
}
}
}

# Set a header to track a cache HITs and MISSes.
sub vcl_deliver {
# Remove ban-lurker friendly custom headers when delivering to client.
unset resp.http.X-Url;
unset resp.http.X-Host;
# Comment these for easier Drupal cache tag debugging in development.
unset resp.http.Cache-Tags;
unset resp.http.X-Drupal-Cache-Contexts;

if (obj.hits > 0) {
set resp.http.Cache-Tags = “HIT”;
}
else {
set resp.http.Cache-Tags = “MISS”;
}
}

# Instruct Varnish what to do in the case of certain backend responses (beresp).
sub vcl_backend_response {
# Set ban-lurker friendly custom headers.
set beresp.http.X-Url = bereq.url;
set beresp.http.X-Host = bereq.http.host;

# Cache 404s, 301s, at 500s with a short lifetime to protect the backend.
if (beresp.status == 404 || beresp.status == 301 || beresp.status == 500) {
set beresp.ttl = 10m;
}

# Don’t allow static files to set cookies.
# (?i) denotes case insensitive in PCRE (perl compatible regular expressions).
# This list of extensions appears twice, once here and again in vcl_recv so
# make sure you edit both and keep them equal.
if (bereq.url ~ “(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$”) {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
}

# Allow items to remain in cache up to 6 hours past their cache expiration.
set beresp.grace = 6h;
}

9. Change Apache Listening ports

nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Change:
Listen 80
to
Listen 8080

Edit the main Apache configuration file (/etc/apache2/apache2.conf), search for ” and change ‘AllowOverride None’ to ‘AllowOverride All’ so it looks like:

<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>

Also, change the port from 80 to 8080 in all virtual hosts located in /etc/apache2/sites-available directory.

10. Create a New Virtual Host in Apache

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘yourdomain.conf’ on your virtual server:

touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/yourdomain.conf
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf

Then, add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:8080>
ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/yourdomain.com
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
<FilesMatch \.php$>
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/html/yourdomain.com>
DirectoryIndex index.php
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

If you downloaded Drupal 8 using Composer, replace ‘/var/www/html/yourdomain.com’ with ‘/var/www/html/yourdomain.com/web’ in the ‘DocumentRoot’ and ‘Directory’ virtual host directives.

11. Restart Apache and Varnish

Restart Apache and Varnish services for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart
service varnish restart

12. Install Drupal 8

Open http://yourdomain.com in a web browser , choose install language, click on the ‘Save and continue’ button, select an installation profile (standard), enter the database name, username and password and start the installation. Once installed, you will automatically be redirected to the Drupal 8 administration back-end.

13. Configure Caching

Go to the Drupal 8 administration back-end, click Configuration >> Performance >> set the page cache maximum age and click on the ‘Save configuration’ button:

14. Install Purge and Varnish Purger Modules in Drupal 8

Install the Purge module from the Drupal 8 administration back-end by clicking on Extend >> Install new module , then enter: https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/purge-8.x-3.0-beta8.tar.gz in the ‘Install from a URL’ field and click on the ‘Install’ button.

Then, install the Varnish Purger module by clicking on Extend >> Install new module >> enter: https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/purge-8.x-3.0-beta8.tar.gz in the ‘Install from a URL’ field and click on the ‘Install’ button.

Open http://yourdomain.com/admin/modules and select Purge, Purge Drush, Purge Tokens, Purge UI, Cron processor, Late runtime processor, Core tags queuer, Varnish Focal Point Purger, Varnish Image Purge, Varnish Purger and Varnish Purger Tags, then click on the ‘Install’ button.

15. Configure Varnish Purger

Open http://yourdomain.com/admin/config/development/performance/purge , click Add purger >> Varnish Purger and click on the ‘Add’ button. Click on the newly created button, select configure and add ‘Varnish Purger’ in the name field:

Configure the Purger’s headers by clicking on Headers >> and enter ‘Cache-Tags’  in the header field with the value [invalidation:expression] and click on the ‘Save configuration’ button.

16. Test if Varnish Caching works

In order to test if Varnish caching is woking properly, run the following command on your server:

curl -s --head http://yourdomain.com/about | grep -i cache
Cache-Tags: MISS

Then, run it once again:

curl -s --head http://yourdomain.com/about | grep -i cache

You should receive an output like this:

Cache-Tags: HIT

You can also use varnishadm, varnishstat and varnishlog command line utilities to check if everything works OK.

That is it. Drupal 8 has been configured to use Varnish.

Of course you don’t have to speed up Drupal using Varnish on Debian 9, if you use one of our Linux Server Support Services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to do this for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, on how to speed up Drupal using Varnish on Debian, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

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