How to Install Cachet on FreeBSD 11

Cachet is an open source status page system written in PHP. The source code for Cachet is hosted on GitHub. In this guide, you will learn how to install Cachet on a fresh FreeBSD 11 Vultr server instance.

Requirements

• PHP version 7.1 or greater.
• PHP extensions gd, simplexml, mcrypt, xml, mbstring, tokenizer, APCu, redis, mysql, sqlite3, pgsql.
• HTTP server with PHP support (eg: Apache, Nginx, Caddy). This guide will use Nginx.
• A supported database: MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite. This guide will use MariaDB.
• Git
• Composer

Before you begin

Check the FreeBSD version.

uname -ro
# FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE

Ensure that your FreeBSD system is up to date.

freebsd-update fetch install
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y

Install sudo, vim, unzip, wget, bash and git packages if they are not present on your system.

pkg install -y sudo vim unzip wget bash git

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 the su command.

su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set the timezone.

sudo tzsetup

Install PHP

Install PHP and the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo pkg install -y php72 php72-ctype php72-curl php72-dom php72-hash php72-iconv php72-gd php72-json php72-mbstring php72-openssl php72-session php72-simplexml php72-xml php72-zip php72-zlib php72-pdo php72-pdo_mysql php72-mysqli php72-pgsql php72-sqlite3 php72-filter php72-ftp php72-tokenizer php72-calendar php72-pecl-APCu php72-opcache php72-pecl-redis php72-phar php72-fileinfo

Check the version.

php --version
# PHP 7.2.10 (cli) (built: Oct  2 2018 01:30:18) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
#     with Zend OPcache v7.2.10, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Soft-link php.ini-production to php.ini.

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini

Enable and start PHP-FPM.

sudo sysrc php_fpm_enable=yes
sudo service php-fpm start

Install MariaDB

Download and install MariaDB.

sudo pkg install -y mariadb102-client mariadb102-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.17-MariaDB, for FreeBSD11.2 (amd64) using readline 5.1

Enable and start MariaDB.

sudo sysrc mysql_enable="yes" 
sudo service mysql-server start

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit MariaDB.

exit

Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo pkg install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.0

Enable and start Nginx.

sudo sysrc nginx_enable=yes
sudo service nginx start

Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/cachet.conf to configure Nginx for Cachet. Paste in the following text.

upstream php {
  server 127.0.0.1:9000;
}

server {

  listen [::]:80;
  listen 80;

  server_name status.example.com;

  root /usr/local/www/cachet/public;
  index index.php;

  location / {
    try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
  }

  location ~ /.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass php;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_keep_conn on;
  }
}

Save the file and exit with :+W+Q.

Now we need to include cachet.conf file to the main nginx.conf file.

Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf and add the following line to the http {} block.

include cachet.conf;

Test our Nginx configuration changes.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo service nginx reload

Install Composer

Install Composer globally by running the following script in your terminal.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '93b54496392c062774670ac18b134c3b3a95e5a5e5c8f1a9f115f203b75bf9a129d5daa8ba6a13e2cc8a1da0806388a8') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

NOTE: In the command block listed above, the hash will change with every version of the installer. Visit https://getcomposer.org/download/ for the latest Composer installation commands.

Check the version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.7.2 2018-08-16 16:57:12

Install Cachet

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/www/cachet

Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/cachet directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /usr/local/www/cachet

Navigate to the document root directory.

cd /usr/local/www/cachet

Download the Cachet source code with Git.

git clone -b 2.4 --single-branch https://github.com/cachethq/Cachet.git .

Copy .env.example to .env and configure both database and APP_URL settings in the .env file.

cp .env.example .env
vim .env

Install dependencies with Composer.

composer install --no-dev -o

Set the application key.

php artisan key:generate

Install Cachet.

php artisan cachet:install

Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/cachet directory to www.

sudo chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/cachet

Open your website in a web browser and follow the on-screen instructions to finish the Cachet installation.

If you get a 500 error when visiting your status page, you may need to run chmod -R 777 storage for it to work, or rm -rf bootstrap/cache/*.

To access the Cachet dashboard, append /dashboard to the URL of your website.