Installing Apache2 server with PHP and MySQL support

Today I wanted to try out and start learning PHP scripting language a bit. PHP is server-side scripting language so for it to work I need a server that supports it. Apache web server is widely used with PHP so I'm going for that combo. Also, I would like to have a MySQL database support.
Here's how I did that on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Googling around I found that the wanted combo is named LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) task and it can be installed using tasksel command:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

But unfortunately it gave me an error:

tasksel: aptitude failed (100)

Is it a bug or something wrong with my machine? Anyone has an answer please comment.
So I turned to the good old apt-get:

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql

After the installation you'll be asked for MySQL 'root' user password. Enter it and don't forget! :) Now, the Apache server can be started with:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName

To hide this strange "Could not... " message you need to create a file /etc/apache2/conf.d/fqdn and put this line in it:

ServerName localhost

Now to check functionality create a 'test.php' in the /var/www/ directory with the line:

<?php phpinfo();?>

Open up your browser and type http://localhost/test.php in the address bar. If you get something like this:



you did it!
For configuring databases, user privileges etc. there is an application called "phpmyadmin" that really ease the job.