LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...

denoting one of the most common software stacks for many of the web's most popular applications. However, LAMP now refers to a generic software stack model and its components are largely interchangeable. Each letter in the acronym stands for one of its four

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

building blocks: * Linux for the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

* Apache HTTP Server * MySQL for the

relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relati ...

* PHP,

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

, or Python

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

The components of the LAMP stack are present in the software repositories of most

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading on ...

History

The acronym LAMP was coined by Michael Kunze in the December 1998 issue of ''Computertechnik'', a German computing magazine, as he demonstrated that a bundle of

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

"could be a feasible alternative to expensive commercial packages". Since then,

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of ...

and

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

teamed up to popularize the acronym and evangelize its use. The term and the concept became popular because it was one of the first open-source software stacks for the web, with sufficient capabilities to host a variety of web frameworks, such as

Joomla Joomla (), also spelled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, p ...

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP, hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported secure hypert ...

and

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwid ...

Variants

The LAMP model has been adapted to other componentry, though typically consisting of

. With the growing use of the archetypal LAMP, variations and

retronym A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...

s appeared for other combinations of operating system, web server, database, and software language. For example, an equivalent installation on the Microsoft Windows operating system family is known as WAMP. An alternative running IIS in place of Apache is called

WIMP Wimp, WIMP, or Wimps may refer to: Science and technology * Weakly interacting massive particle, a hypothetical particle of dark matter * WIMP (computing), the "window, icon, menu, pointer" paradigm * WIMP (software bundle), the web stack of Win ...

. Variants involving other operating systems include

MAMP MAMP is a solution stack composed of free and open-source and proprietary commercial software used together to develop and run dynamic websites on Apple Macintosh computers. Specifications and uses The name ''MAMP'' is an acronym that stem ...

(

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

SAMP Samp is an African food consisting of dried corn kernels that have been pounded and chopped until broken, but not as finely ground as mealie-meal or mielie rice. The coating around the kernel loosens and is removed during the pounding and stam ...

( Solaris), FAMP (

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

), iAMP (

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS i ...

) and

XAMPP XAMPP ( or ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server solution stack package developed by Apache Friends, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl program ...

(cross-platform). The web server or database management system also varies. LEMP is a version where Apache has been replaced with the more lightweight web server

Nginx Nginx (pronounced "engine x" ) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004. Nginx is free and open-source software ...

. A version where MySQL has been replaced by

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

is called LAPP, or sometimes by keeping the original acronym, LAMP (Linux / Apache / Middleware (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby) / PostgreSQL). The LAMP bundle can be combined with many other free and open-source software packages, including: *

netsniff-ng netsniff-ng is a free Linux network analyzer and networking toolkit originally written by Daniel Borkmann. Its gain of performance is reached by zero-copy mechanisms for network packets (RX_RING, TX_RING), so that the Linux kernel does not need ...

for security testing and hardening * Snort, an

intrusion detection An intrusion detection system (IDS; also intrusion prevention system or IPS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically rep ...

(IDS) and intrusion prevention (IPS) system *

RRDtool RRDtool (''round-robin database tool'') aims to handle time series data such as network bandwidth, temperatures or CPU load. The data is stored in a circular buffer based database, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time. ...

for diagrams *

Nagios Nagios Core , formerly known as Nagios, is a free and open-source computer-software application that monitors systems, networks and infrastructure. Nagios offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications and servic ...

, Collectd or

Cacti A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Gree ...

, for monitoring. As another example, the software which

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...

and other

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...

projects use for their underlying infrastructure is a customized LAMP stack with additions such as

Linux Virtual Server Linux Virtual Server (LVS) is load balancing software for Linux kernel–based operating systems. LVS is a free and open-source project started by Wensong Zhang in May 1998, subject to the requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL ...

(LVS) for load balancing and Ceph and

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT ...

for distributed object storages.

Software components

Linux

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

is a

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

computer

assembled under the model of

development and distribution. Most

s, as collections of software based around the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...

and often around a

package management system A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

, provide complete LAMP setups through their packages. According to W3Techs in October 2013, 58.5% of web server market share is shared between

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', '' Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All th ...

, while

RHEL Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop vers ...

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

and CentOS together shared 37.3%.

Apache

The role of LAMP's web server has been traditionally supplied by Apache, and has since included other web servers such as

. Until 2022, Apache HTTP Server was the most popular

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

on the public Internet. In June 2013, Netcraft estimated that Apache served 54.2% of all active

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

s and 53.3% of the top servers across all domains. According to W3Tech's web server count, only in June 2022 did Nginx bypass Apache in popularity, with a share of 33.6% versus Apache at 31.4%. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation. Released under the Apache License, Apache is

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Ope ...

. A wide variety of features are supported, and many of them are implemented as

compiled In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily ...

modules which extend the core functionality of Apache. These can range from server-side programming language support to authentication.

MySQL and database alternatives

MySQL's original role as the LAMP's

has since been alternately provisioned by others like

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ...

(a community-developed

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca ' pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ...

of MySQL developed by its original developers), and even

NoSQL A NoSQL (originally referring to "non- SQL" or "non-relational") database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases. Such databases have existed ...

databases like

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Ser ...

is a multithreaded,

multi-user Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving ...

, SQL

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

, acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

in 2008, which was then acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

in 2010. Since its early years, the MySQL team has made its

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

available under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...

, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements.

is also an ACID-compliant object-relational database management system developed by PostgreSQL Global Development Group.

is a

database that eschews the traditional

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

structure in favor of

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other s ...

-like documents with dynamic schemas (calling the format

BSON BSON () is a computer data interchange format. The name "BSON" is based on the term JSON and stands for "Binary JSON". It is a binary form for representing simple or complex data structures including associative arrays (also known as name-value ...

), making the integration of data in certain types of applications easier and faster.

PHP and alternatives

PHP's role as the LAMP's application programming language has also been performed by other languages such as

and Python.

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

is a

server-side scripting Server-side scripting is a technique used in web development which involves employing scripts on a web server which produces a response customized for each user's (client's) request to the website. The alternative is for the web server itself ...

language designed for

web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web application ...

but also used as a

general-purpose programming language In computer software, a general-purpose programming language (GPL) is a programming language for building software in a wide variety of application domains. Conversely, a domain-specific programming language is used within a specific area. For ex ...

. PHP code is interpreted by a web server via a PHP processor module, which generates the resulting web page. PHP commands can optionally be embedded directly into an

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

source document rather than calling an external file to process data. It has also evolved to include a command-line interface capability and can be used in standalone graphical applications. PHP is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...

released under the terms of

PHP License The ''PHP License'' is the software license under which the PHP scripting language is released. The PHP License is designed to encourage widespread adoption of the source code. Redistribution is permitted in source or binary form with or wit ...

, which is incompatible with the

(GPL) due to the restrictions PHP License places on the usage of the term ''PHP''.

is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted,

dynamic programming language In computer science, a dynamic programming language is a class of high-level programming languages, which at runtime execute many common programming behaviours that static programming languages perform during compilation. These behaviors co ...

s. The languages in this family include Perl 5 and Raku. They provide advanced text processing facilities without the arbitrary data-length limits of many contemporary Unix command line tools, facilitating manipulation of

text file A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operat ...

s. Perl 5 gained widespread popularity in the late 1990s as a CGI scripting language for the Web, in part due to its

parsing Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lati ...

abilities. Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level, interpreted, programming language. Python supports multiple

programming paradigm Programming paradigms are a way to classify programming languages based on their features. Languages can be classified into multiple paradigms. Some paradigms are concerned mainly with implications for the execution model of the language, s ...

s, including

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

, imperative,

functional Functional may refer to: * Movements in architecture: ** Functionalism (architecture) ** Form follows function * Functional group, combination of atoms within molecules * Medical conditions without currently visible organic basis: ** Functional s ...

and

procedural Procedural may refer to: * Procedural generation, a term used in computer graphics applications *Procedural knowledge, the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task * Procedural law, a legal concept *Procedural memory, a cognitive scienc ...

paradigms. It features a

dynamic type In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer program ...

system, automatic

memory management Memory management is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when ...

, a standard library, and strict use of

whitespace White space or whitespace may refer to: Technology * Whitespace characters, characters in computing that represent horizontal or vertical space * White spaces (radio), allocated but locally unused radio frequencies * TV White Space Database, a mec ...

. Like other

dynamic language In computer science, a dynamic programming language is a class of high-level programming languages, which at Runtime (program lifecycle phase), runtime execute many common programming behaviours that Static program analysis, static programming ...

s, Python is often used as a

scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripti ...

, but is also used in a wide range of non-scripting contexts.

High availability and load balancing

Specific approaches are required for websites that serve large numbers of requests, or provide services that demand high

uptime Uptime is a measure of system reliability, expressed as the percentage of time a machine, typically a computer, has been working and available. Uptime is the opposite of downtime. It is often used as a measure of computer operating system rel ...

High-availability High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. Modernization has resulted in an increased reliance on these systems. Fo ...

approaches for the LAMP stack may involve multiple web and database servers, combined with additional components that perform logical aggregation of resources provided by each of the servers, as well as distribution of the workload across multiple servers. The aggregation of web servers may be provided by placing a

load balancer In computing, load balancing is the process of distributing a set of tasks over a set of resources (computing units), with the aim of making their overall processing more efficient. Load balancing can optimize the response time and avoid unevenl ...

in front of them, for example by using

(LVS). For the aggregation of database servers, MySQL provides internal

replication Replication may refer to: Science * Replication (scientific method), one of the main principles of the scientific method, a.k.a. reproducibility ** Replication (statistics), the repetition of a test or complete experiment ** Replication crisi ...

mechanisms that implement a master/slave relationship between the original database (master) and its copies (slaves). Such high-availability setups may also improve the

availability In reliability engineering, the term availability has the following meanings: * The degree to which a system, subsystem or equipment is in a specified operable and committable state at the start of a mission, when the mission is called for at ...

of LAMP instances by providing various forms of redundancy, making it possible for a certain number of components (separate servers) to experience

downtime The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. The unavailability is the proportion of a time-span that a system is unavailable or offline. This is usually a result of the system failing to function because of an ...

without interrupting the users of services provided as a whole. Such redundant setups may also handle hardware failures resulting in

data loss Data loss is an error condition in information systems in which information is destroyed by failures (like failed spindle motors or head crashes on hard drives) or neglect (like mishandling, careless handling or storage under unsuitable conditions) ...

on individual servers in a way that prevents collectively stored data from actually becoming lost. Beside higher availability, such LAMP setups are capable of providing almost linear improvements in performance for services having the number of internal database read operations much higher than the number of write/update operations.

References

External links

Install a LAMP server on Ubuntu Linux

Install a LAMP server on Debian Linux

Install a LAMP server on SUSE Linux

Install a LAMP server on CentOS 5.x.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lamp (Software Bundle) Free web software Internet software for Linux Linux Perl PHP MySQL MariaDB Web development software Web server software

History

Variants

Software components

Linux

Apache

MySQL and database alternatives

PHP and alternatives

High availability and load balancing

See also

References

External links