setup-laravel12-nginx

Laravel 12 + PHP 8.3 + Nginx Setup

Set up a Laravel 12 application with PHP 8.3 and Nginx on Ubuntu 24.04. Provides the foundation for Datadog APM instrumentation (see laravel12-dd-tracer skill).

Prerequisites

• Docker (for Phase 1 local setup)
• An EC2 instance running Ubuntu 24.04 with SSH access (for Phase 2)

Instructions

The complete setup is documented in README.md across two phases:

Phase 1 — Local Docker Setup

# Build and run locally (from the references/ directory)
docker build -t travellist-laravel12:latest .
docker run -d --name travellist -p 8080:80 travellist-laravel12:latest

Phase 2 — EC2 Native Install

Install PHP 8.3, Nginx, PHP-FPM, Composer, and Laravel 12 directly on the EC2 instance. See README.md for the full SSH command sequence covering:

1. Install PHP 8.3, Nginx, PHP-FPM, and utilities
2. Install Composer
3. Create the Laravel 12 project
4. Create SQLite database
5. Append phpinfo route
6. Set permissions
7. Configure Nginx (use references/travellist-nginx.conf)
8. Verify the setup

Reference Files

• README.md — Complete phase-by-phase guide
• references/Dockerfile — Docker image for local development
• references/travellist-nginx.conf — Nginx server block configuration
• references/routes-web.php — Laravel route snippet (phpinfo endpoint)

Validation

# Check PHP version
php -v  # -> PHP 8.3.x

# Check Laravel version
php /var/www/html/travellist/artisan --version  # -> Laravel Framework 12.x.x

# Check homepage returns 200
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://<HOST>  # -> 200

# Check phpinfo route
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://<HOST>/phpinfo  # -> 200

Troubleshooting

Homepage returns 500

Cause: Laravel storage directory permissions are incorrect. Fix: sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/travellist && sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/travellist/storage

Nginx returns 502 Bad Gateway

Cause: PHP-FPM is not running or misconfigured. Fix: sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm and check the socket path in the Nginx config matches PHP-FPM's listen directive.