Vanilla Forum recommended software stack:
mbstring
curl
gd
PDO
mysqli
openssl
Check the FreeBSD version.
uname -ro
# FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE
Ensure that your FreeBSD system is up to date.
freebsd-update fetch install
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y
Install some basic system administration packages if they are not present on your system.
pkg install -y sudo vim unzip wget curl bash socat git unzip
Create a new user account with your preferred username (we will use johndoe
).
adduser
# Username: johndoe
# Full name: John Doe
# Uid (Leave empty for default): <Enter>
# Login group [johndoe]: <Enter>
# Login group is johndoe. Invite johndoe into other groups? []: wheel
# Login class [default]: <Enter>
# Shell (sh csh tcsh nologin) [sh]: bash
# Home directory [/home/johndoe]: <Enter>
# Home directory permissions (Leave empty for default): <Enter>
# Use password-based authentication? [yes]: <Enter>
# Use an empty password? (yes/no) [no]: <Enter>
# Use a random password? (yes/no) [no]: <Enter>
# Enter password: your_secure_password
# Enter password again: your_secure_password
# Lock out the account after creation? [no]: <Enter>
# OK? (yes/no): yes
# Add another user? (yes/no): no
# Goodbye!
Run the visudo
command and uncomment the %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
line to allow members of the wheel
group to execute any command.
visudo
# Uncomment by removing hash (#) sign
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
Now, switch to your newly created user with su
command.
su - johndoe
NOTE: Replace johndoe
with your username.
Set up the timezone.
sudo tzsetup
Install PHP and PHP extensions.
sudo pkg install -y php72 php72-mbstring php72-curl php72-gd php72-pdo php72-mysqli php72-pdo_mysql php72-json php72-openssl php72-ctype php72-dom php72-hash php72-iconv php72-tokenizer php72-calendar php72-fileinfo php72-session php72-simplexml php72-xml php72-filter
Check the version.
php --version
# PHP 7.2.14 (cli) (built: Jan 15 2019 01:14:39) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
Soft-link php.ini-production
to php.ini
.
sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini
Check installed PHP extensions.
php -m
# mbstring
# curl
# gd
# PDO
# mysqli
# openssl
# . . .
Enable and start PHP-FPM.
sudo sysrc php_fpm_enable=yes
sudo service php-fpm start
Install MariaDB.
sudo pkg install -y mariadb102-client mariadb102-server
Check the version.
mysql --version
# mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.19-MariaDB, for FreeBSD12.0 (amd64) using readline 5.1
Start and enable MariaDB.
sudo sysrc mysql_enable="yes"
sudo service mysql-server start
Run the mysql_secure_installation
script to improve the security of your installation.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Log into MariaDB as the root user.
mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:
Create a new database and user. Remember the credentials for this new user.
CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
Install Nginx.
sudo pkg install -y nginx
Check the version.
nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.2
Enable and start Nginx.
sudo sysrc nginx_enable=yes
sudo service nginx start
Configure Nginx for use with Vanilla forum.
sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/vanilla.conf
Populate the file with the following.
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;
root /usr/local/www/vanilla;
index index.php;
location ~* /\.git { deny all; return 403; }
location /build/ { deny all; return 403; }
location /cache/ { deny all; return 403; }
location /cgi-bin/ { deny all; return 403; }
location /uploads/import/ { deny all; return 403; }
location /conf/ { deny all; return 403; }
location /tests/ { deny all; return 403; }
location /vendor/ { deny all; return 403; }
location ~* ^/index\.php(/|$) {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;
set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root/index.php;
fastcgi_param X_REWRITE 1;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
}
location ~* \.php(/|$) {
rewrite ^ /index.php$uri last;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ @vanilla;
}
location @vanilla {
rewrite ^ /index.php$uri last;
}
}
Save the file and exit with COLON+W+Q.
Now we need to include the vanilla.conf
file in the main nginx.conf
file.
Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
and add the following line to the http {}
block.
include vanilla.conf;
Test the configuration.
sudo nginx -t
Reload Nginx.
sudo service nginx reload
Create a document root directory.
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/www/vanilla
Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/vanilla
directory to johndoe
.
sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /usr/local/www/vanilla
Navigate to the document root directory.
cd /usr/local/www/vanilla
Download the latest Vanilla forum.
wget https://open.vanillaforums.com/get/vanilla-core-2.6.4.zip
Unzip it and remove the zip archive.
unzip vanilla-core-2.6.4.zip
rm vanilla-core-2.6.4.zip
Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/vanilla
directory to www
.
sudo chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/vanilla
Restart PHP-FPM.
sudo service php-fpm restart
Navigate to the folder where you uploaded Vanilla in your web browser and follow the instructions on the screen to complete the setup.
]]>This guide was written for Vanilla Forums 2.3, but may also work on newer releases.
For this tutorial, we will use forum.example.com
as the domain name pointed towards the AKLWEB HOST instance. Please make sure to replace all occurrences of the example domain name with the actual one.
Install Apache.
sudo yum -y install httpd
Start Apache and enable it to automatically run at boot time.
sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd
We will use PHP 7.1 to obtain maximum security and stability. First, add and enable the Remi repository.
sudo rpm -Uvh http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php71
Install the latest version of PHP along with the modules required by Vanilla Forum.
sudo yum -y install php php-gd php-mysqli php-mbstring php-curl php-cli php-pear php-devel php-openssl
MariaDB is a fork of MySQL. Add the MariaDB repository into your system. The default YUM
repository contains an older version of MariaDB, which is unsupported by Vanilla.
echo "[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1" | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/mariadb.repo
Install MariaDB.
sudo yum -y install mariadb mariadb-server
Start MariaDB and enable it to automatically start at boot time.
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb
Before configuring the database, you will need to secure MariaDB first.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
You will be asked for the current MariaDB root password. By default, there is no root password in a fresh MariaDB installation. Press the “Enter
” key to proceed. Set a strong password for the root
user of your MariaDB server and answer “Y
” to all of the other questions that are asked. The questions asked are self-explanatory.
Log into the MySQL shell as root.
mysql -u root -p
Provide the password for the MariaDB root user to log in.
Run the following queries to create a database and a database user for the Vanilla installation.
CREATE DATABASE vanilla_data CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
CREATE USER 'vanilla_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON vanilla_data.* TO 'vanilla_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
You can replace the database name vanilla_data
and username vanilla_user
according to your choice. Please make sure to change StrongPassword
to a very strong password.
Download the Vanilla forum zip archive.
wget https://open.vanillaforums.com/get/vanilla-core.zip
Install unzip.
sudo yum -y install unzip
Extract the archive.
sudo unzip vanilla-core.zip -d /var/www/vanilla
Provide the appropriate ownership.
sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/vanilla
Allow HTTP
traffic on port 80
through the firewall.
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Create a virtual host for your Vanilla forum site.
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/forum.example.com.conf
Populate the file.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName forum.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/vanilla
<Directory /var/www/vanilla>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Restart Apache.
sudo systemctl restart httpd
Now that you have successfully installed and configured Vanilla forum, you can access the application on http://forum.example.com
. Provide the database and administrator details. Once you have provided the required database and admin details, the setup will write into the database and you will be taken to the administration interface. You can now configure the forum according to your needs.
Congratulations, you have successfully installed Vanilla forum in CentOS 7 server.
]]>