The acronym LAMP refers to a set of open-source programs, commonly used together to run dynamic Web Sites.

Linux - The Operating System

Apache - The Webserver

Mysql - The Database Server

PHP / Python / Perl - The Programming Language

LAMP has become a defacto-standard around the web community in the recent years. 

Linus Torvald's 1991 announcement that he was coding a free UNIX-type operating system was a watershed event in the open source movement. Since version 1.0 was released in 1994, Linux has become firmly established as an enterprise-class alternative to proprietary UNIX* and Microsoft* products, largely through the efforts of commercial software providers.

The Apache Web server traces its roots to the public domain HTTP daemon developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 1995, it was adopted and completely rewritten by a group of volunteers that eventually became the Apache Software Foundation. Apache has been the most popular Web server every year since 1996 and has a current market share of just over 68 percent, according to a February 2006 Netcraft survey.

MySQL is the world's most popular open source database, with more than 8 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations—including Sabre Holdings, Cox Communications, The Associated Press, NASA and Suzuki—are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software.

PHP is a widely used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and that can be embedded in HTML. In recent years, its relatively simple syntax, ease of use and open source licensing have made PHP one of the most popular languages on the Web.

Sometimes called "the duct tape of the Internet," Perl is a cross-platform programming language popular with Web developers for its text manipulation capabilities and rapid development cycle. It is highly extensible, with more than 500 third-party modules currently available through the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).

Python is a portable, interpreted, object oriented programming language developed under the ownership of the Python Software Foundation. It features an elegant but not overly simple syntax, a small number of powerful high-level data types and a core that can be systematically extended with modules written in a compiled language such as C or C++.

Some useful commands related to LAMP architecture.

root@glugt:~#service httpd start

* Starting web server (apache2)...           [OK]

root@glugt:~# service mysql start

 * Starting MySQL database server mysqld    [OK]

Most of my friends (and myself) had trouble with making the mysqld service start after installing mysql. Many got the error:

[root@localhost ~]# service mysqld start

Initializing MySQL database: Neither host ‘localhost.localdomain’ nor ‘localhost’ could be looked up with /usr/bin/resolveip

Please configure the ‘hostname’ command to return a correct hostname.

If you want to solve this at a later stage, restart this script with  the –force option [FAILED]

The reason for getting this error is the first line in /etc/hosts. So we gotta edit /etc/hosts and change the first line from:

::1 localhost.localdomain localhost to: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

THEN start the mysqld service.