How to Install Osclass on Debian 9

Osclass is an open source project that allows you to easily create a classified site without any technical knowledge. Its source code is hosted on Github. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Osclass on a Debian 9 server.

Requirements

• PHP version 5.6 or greater
• MySQLi and GD modules for PHP
• MariaDB database
• Nginx

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 unzip and sudo.

apt install -y unzip sudo

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-mysql php7.0-gd php7.0-xml

Check the version.

php --version
# PHP 7.0.30-0+deb9u1 (cli) (built: Jun 14 2018 13:50:25) ( NTS )

Install MariaDB and create a database

Install MariaDB.

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version && sudo mysqld --version

# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.1.26-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2
# mysqld  Ver 10.1.26-MariaDB-0+deb9u1 for debian-linux-gnu on x86_64 (Debian 9.1)

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve security and set the password for the root user.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Connect to MariaDB as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password

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

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

Install and configure 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/osclass.conf and populate the file with the following configuration.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    server_name example.com; # Check this
    root /var/www/osclass; # Check this

    index index.php index.html;

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

    location ~ /.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock; # Check this
    }
}

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

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

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install Osclass

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/osclass

Change ownership of the /var/www/osclass directory to johndoe.

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

Download and unzip the Osclass package.

cd /var/www/osclass
wget https://static.osclass.org/download/osclass.3.8.0.zip
unzip osclass.3.8.0.zip
rm osclass.3.8.0.zip

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

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

Finally, open your favorite web browser and navigate to the URL http://your-server-ip/index.php or http://yourdomain.com/index.php. Complete the required steps to finish the installation. To access the Osclass admin dashboard, append /oc-admin to your URL/IP.