Faveo Helpdesk Community Installation on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with Nginx on PHP 5.6

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Introduction

This document will list steps on how to install Faveo Helpdesk Community version v1.9.6 on a new Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

We will install following dependencies in order to make Faveo Helpdesk work:

• Nginx
• PHP 5.6
• PHP Extensions: listed in server requirement
• MySQL
• Composer
• Cron Job

Read the detailed list of server requirement

We are using vi editor throughout to open and edit file, you can use nano editor also

Configure IP Tables

Please note that you have to make changes in the iptables configurations. This allows to open ports that are necessary in Faveo installation.

This is an optional step, If you are able to access your server remotely on Public IP. This step will not be required.Mainly on local network server this step is required. If you are purchasing/renting server in a data centre this step might not be required.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 22 -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 80 -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 443 -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

PS:

• You have to reset the firewall and iptables to your specifications
• This step might vary for different data centres or cloud service providers, Please check with your hosting company on opening port number and correct settings

Create a user for Faveo and update all the repos

useradd -r www-data

usermod -G www-data www-data

Install software-properties-common package to get add-apt-repository command.

sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common python-software-properties && apt-get update

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

apt-get update

apt-add-repository -y ppa:git-core/ppa && apt-get update

Update your system

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Install Nginx,PHP, MySQL and PHP extensions

In this step we install following

• PHP
• Required PHP Extension
• Git
• MySQL
• Curl
• OpenSSL
• Nginx

Installing Nginx,PHP, PHP extensions and MySQL

sudo apt-get install nginx curl git

sudo apt-get install php5.6 php5.6-gd php5.6-mysql php5.6-dom php5.6-cli php5.6-json php5.6-common php5.6-mbstring php5.6-opcache php5.6-readline php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-zip php5.6-imap php5.6-fpm php5.6-curl

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

sudo apt-get install sl

sudo apt-get install mlocate dos2unix bash-completion openssl

service nginx stop

service php5.6-fpm stop

Create empty Database for Faveo in MySQL

service mysql start

mysql_secure_installation

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE faveo;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON faveo.* TO 'faveouser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'faveouserpass';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

quit

Copy Faveo Help Desk from Github

Faveo files can be manually uploaded to server or copied from Github, if you have access to Github account then use this step, else follow the next step

Create a folder for Faveo and upload Faveo Help-Desk Community

mkdir -p /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/ 

git clone https://github.com/ladybirdweb/faveo-helpdesk.git /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/

OR Copy Faveo Help Desk via SSH

Incase you want to upload the Faveo files from your local system to your server and not use Github, then follow this step Download the Faveo zip file from our billing site https://www.faveohelpdesk.com Use a File transferring client like Filezilla,WinSCP to upload the files to our server directory. Open Filezilla and enter the root Credentials of the server and login.

Create a folder for faveo inside that in the path /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/

Make sure that you have extracted all the files under that folder /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/

Now continue the process by logging in back to ssh terminal

To upload files via SSH

Login to the file location

scp filename.zip username@destination:/where/to/put

Give correct file permission to Faveo files

chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/faveo/

chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/

chmod -R 755  /opt/faveo/

chmod -R 755  /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/

chmod -R 755 /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/storage

chmod -R 755  /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/bootstrap

Install Composer

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

update the Nginx config files

service nginx stop

mv /etc/nginx/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.back

wget -O /etc/nginx/nginx.conf https://support.ladybirdweb.com/uploads/ubuntu16.04/faveo-nginx-conf.txt

Create a conf file for nginx

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/faveo-helpdesk.conf

Copy and paste the below conf in nginx conf

upstream faveo_php {
    server unix://opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/faveo_php.socket;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 127.0.0.1:80;
        # Edit the following line with the correct information.
    server_name %(SERVERNAME)s;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/faveo_error_log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/faveo_access_log;
    root /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/public;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    error_page 403 404 405 500 501 502 503 504 @error;

    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

    location @error {
        rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?$1;
    }

    location ~ /\. {
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ /(artisan|composer.json|composer.lock|gulpfile.js|LICENSE|package.json|phpspec.yml|phpunit.xml|README.md|readme.txt|release-notes.txt|server.php) {
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
        if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {
            return 404;
        }
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_pass faveo_php;
    }
}

Edit the faveo-helpdesk.conf with your domain name Remove the default conf

rm -rf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

Create a conf file for PHP-fpm

vi /etc/php/5.6/fpm/pool.d/faveo_php.conf

Copy and paste the below conf in php-fpm conf

[faveo_php]
user = www-data
group = www-data
listen = /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/faveo_php.socket
listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data
pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 5
pm.start_servers = 2
pm.min_spare_servers = 1
pm.max_spare_servers = 3
chdir = /

service mysql restart
service nginx restart
service php5.6-fpm restart

Setup Cron Job

We are using default localhost URL where Faveo is installed, you can change the URL based on your system setting and IP address

crontab -u www-data -e

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /opt/faveo/faveo-helpdesk/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Start Installation

Now you can install Faveo via GUI Wizard or CLI.

You can access Faveo url in the browser

PS:

• You have to reset the firewall and iptables to your specifications
• You need to follow steps yourself to harden the security of your server, server security is not covered in this article
• Redis is recommended for messaging que and improving system performance
• Always use SSL/HTTPS URL for Faveo

Redis Installation

Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and message broker.

This is an optional step and will improve the system performance and is highly recommended.

Install and configure Redis, Supervisor and Worker for Faveo on Ubuntu 16.04