Step 1: Install required packages

Install these packages (if you've not already done so). See Installing Apache,
MySQL and PHP or refer to the respective user manuals. Using apt-get, aptitude
or synaptic you can install these very easily.

Web Server (Apache highly recommended)

Database Server (MySQL or PostgreSQL recommended)

PHP, PHP-MySQL mod (or mod for your database)

These packages are optional:

GD library

LAMP in Debian Etch

Setting up a LAMP in Debian is very easy. Once you get used to Debian
administration including installation and configuration are much simpler
compared to other linux distros. The following describes how to install apache,
php and mysql on the Debian testing distribution called etch. Etch is expected to
be released in December 2006.
For installation of the necessary packages the easiest option to use apt-get.
Use the following command to install apache2, php5 and mysql
apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-server php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5
php5-gd

php5-gd is optional

The mentioned packages are installed along with the dependencies depending
on what was already installed on your Debian system.
Now you may fire up a browser and type localhost to check whether the apache2
default page is shown,
You can edit the apache configuration files using the text editor gedit by
gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Now we must make a slight change in the php5 configuration file. Open it using
gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

add the entries

extension=mysql.so
extension=gd.so

Sometimes these entries are provided as example lines being commented out .
You can remove the commenting to activate the entries.

To test the php installation, you can create a text file named phpinfo.php with the
contents <?phpinfo()?> and save it at /var/www. Restart apache with the
command below. Now access this file through the browser localhost/phpinfo to
check the installation of php. Mysql installation is already there. Give it a root
password using
mysqladmin -u root password "yourpassword"

You can restart apache 2 by

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You can restart mysql by

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

Step 2: Download moodle

Download moodle from http://download.moodle.org/?lang=en.

Step 3: Unpack file

For zip file, use unzip <your_file>. For tgz(tar.gz), use tar -zxvf <yourfile>. You can also use any of the GUI front-ends such as file-roller or ark.
You will get a folder moodle (or moodle-1.5.2 or something similar).

Now, suppose you want to install moodle at /var/www/moodle (This means

moodle will be accessible at http://localhost/moodle). mv moodle
/var/www/ (Most probably you will need to be root to do this)

Step 4: Start web and database servers

Login as root (if you have not already done so): su.

Start your web server. For Apache2, /etc/init.d/apache2 start.

Start your database server. For MySQL, /etc/init.d/mysql start

Step 5: Finally install

Go to http://localhost/moodle and follow the instructions.

Installing Moodle from CVS

To get the most stable current version of Moodle, you will want to install it's
scripts directly from the CVS, the versioning system used in the development of
Moodle. Using the CVS also allows you to regularly update Moodle with the most
recent bug fixes and features.
For these instructions, you can install Moodle with only the minimum of Debian
features installed, keeping all the resources available for the server if you wish.

Install php, MySQL and other needed components

Logged in as the root user (or use the Linux "su" command to get root privileges)
download and install other required software for Moodle (about 41 MB)
apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-server php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5
php5-gd php5-curl php5-xmlrpc cvs

If you use additional authentication methods, you may need to install other php
libraries, such as php5-imap if you use IMAP to authenticate your users.

Setup MySQL Database

Set a secure root password for the database
mysqladmin -u root password "mySecurePassword"

Note that on a secure production server, you will want to create a different user
than root to access the database.
Now log in
mysql -u root -p

Enter your password

Create the Moodle database
mysql> CREATE DATABASE moodle;
mysql> exit;

Get Moodle from CVS

Go to the directory where Moodle will be installed.
cd /var/www

Get the latest version of Moodle 1.9 (check for the most recent released version
or the version you are most comfortable with. It may be earlier or later than 1.9
stable. Use the European Union CVS server (you can replace eu with uk, es, or
us in this step if you wish)
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@eu.cvs.moodle.org:/cvsroot/moodle co -r
MOODLE_19_STABLE moodle

Create a data directory and set Moodle directory

permissions
Create a directory for user and course files (you should still be in the /var/www
directory)
mkdir moodledata

Set permissions so that Apache can access the files

chown -R www-data:www-data moodle
chown -R www-data:www-data moodledata

On a production server, you may want to tighten up privileges further.

Change Apache to use Moodle as the web site

Note that the server comes with Apache running and looking at the /var/www
directory. But there is nothing in that folder, so one just gets a redirect. Edit as
follows to have it point at Moodle instead:
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

On about line 4, change DocumentRoot "/var/www/" to

DocumentRoot "/var/www/moodle/"

On about line 10, change <Directory "/var/www"> to

<Directory "/var/www/moodle">

Around line 17, comment out the line for the default page:
# RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/

You can change other values like ServerAdmin if appropriate. For all changes,
you should restart Apache for the new settings to take effect.
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Setup Moodle
If you are only going to test Moodle on your internal network, just enter the local
IP address as the web address. You can find the local IP address under DHCP
by typing
ifconfig eth0

If you have a web address that points to your server, use that instead.
From a browser on another machine, enter
http:// ----- your web address -----

For the database user, enter root

For Password, enter the password for the database that you created earlier

Continue through the dialogs and select Unattended operation and set up the
Moodle server.

Install cron
Moodle needs a periodic call to do maintenance work like sending out emails,
cleaning up the database, updating feeds, etc. To run the cron every 10 minutes,
do the following
Rather than learning vi, use the nano editor
export EDITOR=nano

Edit the cron file

crontab -e

Add this line and save.

*/10 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://localhost/admin/cron.php

Use CNTL-X to save

Other recommended settings

Next, make three changes to php.ini
nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

This will allocated more memory and allow files to be uploaded up to 80MB. This
should be enough for most multi-media files. Hard drive space is cheap and the
default is only 2MB. It is recommended that you change the settings to the
following values:

memory_limit = 40M
post_max_size = 80M
upload_max_filesize = 80M

Updating from CVS

To update with the most recent fixes to Moodle, issue the following commands
cd /var/www/moodle
cvs -q update