How to Install Koel on Debian 9

Koel is a simple web-based personal audio streaming app written in Vue on the client side and Laravel on the server side. Koel source code is hosted on Github. This guide will show you how to install Koel on a fresh Debian 9 Vultr instance.

Requirements

• PHP version 5.6.4 or greater, with the following extensions:
  • OpenSSL
  • PDO
  • Mbstring
  • Tokenizer
  • XML
• MariaDB
• NodeJS LTS with yarn
• Composer

Before you begin

Check the Debian version.

lsb_release -ds
# Debian GNU/Linux 9.5 (stretch)

Ensure that your system is up to date.

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Install necessary packages.

apt install -y build-essential sudo dirmngr wget curl vim git

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

adduser johndoe --gecos "John Doe"
usermod -aG sudo johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Install PHP

Install PHP and required PHP extensions.

sudo apt install -y php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-fpm php7.0-common php7.0-mbstring php7.0-xml php7.0-mysql php7.0-curl php7.0-zip

Check the version.

php --version

# PHP 7.0.30-0+deb9u1 (cli) (built: Jun 14 2018 13:50:25) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies
#     with Zend OPcache v7.0.30-0+deb9u1, Copyright (c) 1999-2017, by Zend Technologies

Install MariaDB

Install MariaDB.

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.1.26-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2

Run the mysql_secure installation script to improve security and set the password for the MariaDB root user.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Connect to the MariaDB shell as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password

Create an empty MariaDB database and user for Koel, and remember the credentials.

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

Install Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo apt install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.10.3

Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/koel.conf and configure Nginx for Koel.

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/koel;
  index index.php;


  # Whitelist only index.php, robots.txt, and those start with public/ or api/ or remote
  if ($request_uri !~ ^/$|index/.php|robots/.txt|api/|public/|remote) {
    return 404;
  }

  location /media/ {
    internal;
    # A 'X-Media-Root' should be set to media_path settings from upstream
    alias $upstream_http_x_media_root;
   }

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

   location ~ /.php$ {
     try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
     fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
     fastcgi_param PATH_TRANSLATED $document_root$fastcgi_path_info;
     fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
     fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
     fastcgi_index index.php;
     fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+/.php)(/.+)$;
     fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
     include fastcgi_params;
   }
}

Activate the new koel.conf configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/koel.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Test the Nginx configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install Node.js

Install Node.js.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

Check the version.

node --version
# v8.11.3

Install Yarn

Install the Yarn package manager.

curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y yarn

Check the version.

yarn --version
# 1.7.0

Install Composer

Install Composer.

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

Check the version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.6.5 2018-05-04 11:44:59

Install Koel

Create an empty document root folder where Koel will be installed.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/koel

Navigate to the document root folder.

cd /var/www/koel

Change ownership of /var/www/koel to user johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/koel

Clone the Koel repository to it, checkout the latest tagged release and install its dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/phanan/koel.git .
git checkout v3.7.2
composer install

Run the php artisan koel:init command to setup the database and admin account.

php artisan koel:init

Run vim .env and set APP_URL to your URL.

APP_URL=http://example.com

Run yarn install to compile and install front-end dependencies.

yarn install

Change ownership of the /var/www/koel directory to www-data.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/koel

The setup is now complete. To continue, open your domain in a web browser and you will see a login page. Then, login by entering your admin account credentials that you have previously created.