First, install XDebug, this assumes you already have a LAMP stack installed with Apache, php, MySQL: sudo apt-get install php5-xdebug This installed the latest version, which is 2.2.3 at this time. Now update the options in PHP.INI - /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini # Added for xdebug zend_extension="/usr/lib/php5/20121212/xdebug.so" xdebug.remote_enable=1 xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp xdebug.remote_mode=req xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1 xdebug.remote_port=9000 Restart Apache2, and you are ready to Go! sudo service apache2 restart