Since the Moodle Docs site has been so sketchy, I decided it would be best to document my recent installation.
Note:  I am installed on a VMWare ESXi 6.5 Virtual Machine.  750GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and 8 Cores.

• Install Ubuntu 16.04
• If you are doing it on a VM, check Check CPU#, Increase Video RAM, and move LAN to the 1000e.
• I immediately open root and do everything else as room
  • sudo -i passwd root
  • sudo passwd -u root
  • su
  • gedit /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf
    • Add the following lines to the bottom.
      [SeatDefaults]
      greeter-session=unity-greeter
      user-session=ubuntu
      greeter-show-manual-login=true
  • gedit /root/.profile
    • Delete last line -> mesg n
• Reboot and logon as root
  • Update  and install vm tools
    • apt-get update
    • apt-get upgrade
    • apt-get install open-vm-tools
  • Install LAMP and required Moodle dependencies.
    • apt-get install apache2 mysql-client mysql-server php7.0 libapache2-mod-php7.0
    • apt-get install graphviz aspell php7.0-pspell php7.0-curl php7.0-gd php7.0-intl php7.0-mysql php7.0-xml php7.0-xmlrpc php7.0-ldap php7.0-zip php7.0-soap php7.0-mbstring
  • Restart the server and then create the Moodle database
    • reboot -r now
    • mysql -u root -p
      • CREATE DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
      • create user ‘username‘@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password‘;
      • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES  ON moodle.* TO username@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password‘
      • quit;
• I make the folders for Moodle in the /var/www folder and initially open all permissions there.
  • cd /var/www
  • mkdir moodledata
  • mkdir moodlesql
  • chmod -R 0777 /var/www
• • If you are restoring a previous version.
    • cd /var/www/moodlesql  (or wherever the sql file is)
    • mysql -p moodle<moodle-database.sql
  • If you make a mistake you can always delete the database and start over
    • mysql -u root -p
      • drop database Moodle;
      • quit;
  • There are a couple tweaks I make to PHP before the installation
    • gedit /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini
      • find “post_max_size”
      • Change the value to the number of Mb you want your site to accept as uploads
      • find “upload_max_filesize”
      • Change to the same value as above
      • Find “max_execution_time”
      • Raise to a larger value if needed (like 60-600)
• Download Moodle from Moodle.org and extract the file to /var/www/html
  • Navigate to 127.0.0.1 in your browser and begin the installation!
• When you are complete you may want to:
  • Reset your folder permissions
    • chmod -R 0775 /var/www
  • make your IP address a static one and then get that address permanently in the moodle config.php file until you have an actual web address to put in there.

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