Installing Faveo Helpdesk on Ubuntu With Nginx Webserver

Faveo can run on [Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fosa), Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish)].

This document is meant for Faveo Freelancer, Paid and Enterprise Versions.

Installation steps :

NOTE : Ubuntu 22.04 is the recommended version, Ubuntu 20.04 does not support oAuth integration.

Installation steps :

Faveo depends on the following:

Apache (with mod_rewrite enabled)
PHP 8.1+ with the following extensions: curl, dom, gd, json, mbstring, openssl, pdo_mysql, tokenizer, zip
MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+
SSL ,Trusted CA Signed or Self-Signed SSL

1. Nginx Installation

Run the following commands as sudoers or Login as root user by typing the command below

sudo su

1.a. Update your package list

apt update && apt upgrade -y

1.b. Nginx Apache should come pre-installed with your server. If it’s not, install it with:

apt install nginx -y
systemctl start nginx
systemctl enable nginx

2. Install some Utility packages

apt install -y git wget curl unzip nano zip

2.a. PHP 8.1+

First add this PPA repository:

apt-get install -y software-properties-common
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Then install php 8.1 with these extensions:

apt update
apt install -y php8.1 php8.1-mysql \
    php8.1-cli php8.1-common php8.1-fpm php8.1-soap php8.1-gd \
    php8.1-opcache  php8.1-mbstring php8.1-zip \
    php8.1-bcmath php8.1-intl php8.1-xml php8.1-curl  \
    php8.1-imap php8.1-ldap php8.1-gmp php8.1-redis

After installing PHP 8.1, run the commands below to open PHP default PHP config file for Nginx

nano /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini

Then make the below changes on the file and save it. The value below are the recommended settings to apply in your environments.

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
short_open_tag = On
memory_limit = 256M
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0
upload_max_filesize = 100M
max_execution_time = 360

2.b. Setting Up IonCube

wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz 
tar xvfz ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz 

Copy the ion-cube loader to Directory. Replace your yourpath below with actual path that was shown with the output of first command below, and restart the both nginx and php.

php -i | grep extension_dir
cp ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_8.1.so /usr/lib/php/'replaceyourpath'
sed -i '2 a zend_extension = "/usr/lib/php/'replaceyourpath'/ioncube_loader_lin_8.1.so"' /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini
sed -i '2 a zend_extension = "/usr/lib/php/'replaceyourpath'/ioncube_loader_lin_8.1.so"' /etc/php/8.1/cli/php.ini
systemctl restart nginx 
systemctl restart php8.1-fpm

2.c. Install MySQL/MariaDB

The official Faveo installation uses Mysql/MariaDB as the database system and this is the only official system we support. While Laravel technically supports PostgreSQL and SQLite, we can’t guarantee that it will work fine with Faveo as we’ve never tested it. Feel free to read Laravel’s documentation on that topic if you feel adventurous.

You can install either MySQL or MariaDB. We have given options for both MySQL and MariaDB below.

2.c.1. MySQL 8.0

Install Mysql 8.0. Note that this only installs the package, but does not setup Mysql. This is done later in the instructions:

For Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mysql-server 
sudo systemctl start mysql
sudo systemctl enable mysql

Secure your MySql installation by executing the below command. Set Password for mysql root user, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, remove the test databases and finally reload the privilege tables.

mysql_secure_installation

2.c.2.MariaDB 10.6

Install MariaDB 10.6. Note that this only installs the package, but does not setup Mysql. This is done later in the instructions:

For Ubuntu 20.04

curl -LsS -O https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup
sudo bash mariadb_repo_setup --mariadb-server-version=10.6

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

For Ubuntu 22.04

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

mysql_secure_installation

2.d. Install wkhtmltopdf

Wkhtmltopdf is an open source simple and much effective command-line shell utility that enables user to convert any given HTML (Web Page) to PDF document or an image (jpg, png, etc).

It uses WebKit rendering layout engine to convert HTML pages to PDF document without losing the quality of the pages. Its is really very useful and trustworthy solution for creating and storing snapshots of web pages in real-time.

For Ubuntu 20.04

apt-get -y install wkhtmltopdf

For Ubuntu 22.04

apt install libfontenc1 xfonts-75dpi xfonts-base xfonts-encodings xfonts-utils
wget https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6.1-3/wkhtmltox_0.12.6.1-3.jammy_amd64.deb
dpkg -i wkhtmltox_0.12.6.1-3.jammy_amd64.deb

2.e. Install Meilisearch

MeiliSearch is an open-source search engine developed in Rust that delivers flexible search and indexing capabilities. It adeptly handles typos, supports full-text search, synonyms, and comes packed with various features, making it an ideal choice for elevating search functionalities in Faveo.

Meilisearch installation documentation

3. Upload Faveo

Please download Faveo Helpdesk from https://billing.faveohelpdesk.com and upload it to below directory

mkdir -p /var/www/faveo/
cd /var/www/faveo/

Extracting the Faveo-Codebase zip file

unzip "Filename.zip" -d /var/www/faveo

4. Setup the database

mysql -u root -p

Create a database called ‘faveo’.

CREATE DATABASE faveo;

Create a user called ‘faveo’ and its password ‘strongpassword’.

CREATE USER 'faveo'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strongpassword';

We have to authorize the new user on the faveo db so that he is allowed to change the database.

GRANT ALL ON faveo.* TO 'faveo'@'localhost';

And finally we apply the changes and exit the database.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

NOTE : Please refrain from making direct MySQL/MariaDB modifications. Contact our support team for assistance.

5. Configure Nginx webserver

5.a. Give proper permissions to the project directory by running:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/faveo
cd /var/www/faveo/
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

5.b. Create the faveo.conf

Finally, configure Nginx site configuration file for Faveo. This file will control how users access Faveo content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file faveo.conf

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/faveo.conf

Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the example.com line with your own domain name and directory root Path if faveo is installed in different path.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    root /var/www/faveo/public;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

     client_max_body_size 100M;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;       
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
               include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
               fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
               fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
               include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Save the file and exit.

5.c. Enable the Faveo and Rewrite Module

After configuring the configuration file above delete the deafult configuration and enable the Faveo configuration by running below commands

rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default*
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/faveo.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
systemctl restart nginx
systemctl restart php8.1-fpm

6. Configure cron job

Faveo requires some background processes to continuously run. Basically those crons are needed to receive emails To do this, setup a cron that runs every minute that triggers the following command php artisan schedule:run.

(sudo -u www-data crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/faveo/artisan schedule:run 2>&1") | sudo -u www-data crontab -

7. 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 system performance and is highly recommended.

Redis installation documentation

8. SSL Installation

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a server and a client. Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority.

This will improve system security and is highly recommended.

Let’s Encrypt SSL installation documentation

Self Signed SSL Certificate Documentation

9. Install Faveo

Now you can install Faveo via GUI Wizard or CLI

10. Faveo Backup

At this stage, Faveo has been installed, it is time to setup the backup for Faveo File System and Database. Follow this article to setup Faveo backup.

11. Final step

The final step is to have fun with your newly created instance, which should be up and running to http://localhost or the domain you have configured Faveo with.