monica/docs/installation/providers/debian.md

Installing Monica on Debian

Monica can run on Debian Buster.

• Prerequisites
• Installation steps
  • 1. Clone the repository
  • 2. Setup the database
  • 3. Configure Monica
  • 4. Configure cron job
  • 5. Configure Apache webserver
  • Final step

Prerequisites

Monica depends on the following:

• A Web server, like Apache httpd webserver
• Git
• PHP 8.1+
• Composer
• Node.js
• Yarn
• MySQL / MariaDB

An editor like vim or nano should be useful too.

Apache: Install Apache with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apache2

Git: Install Git with:

sudo apt install -y git

PHP:

If you are using Debian 10 or lower, PHP 8.1 is not available from the Debian project directly. Instead use the deb.sury.org package repository from Ondřej Surý, maintainer of the mainline Debian packages.

sudo apt install -y curl software-properties-common
curl -sSL https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php-sury.gpg
echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php-sury.list
sudo apt update

Install PHP 8.1 with these extensions:

• bcmath
• curl
• dom
• gd
• gmp
• iconv
• intl
• json
• mbstring
• mysqli
• opcache
• pdo_mysql
• redis
• sodium
• tokenizer
• xml
• zip

Run:

sudo apt install -y php8.1 php8.1-bcmath php8.1-curl php8.1-gd php8.1-gmp \
    php8.1-intl php8.1-mbstring php8.1-mysql php8.1-redis php8.1-tokenizer php8.1-xml php8.1-zip

Composer: After you're done installing PHP, you'll need the Composer dependency manager.

curl -sSL https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin/ --filename=composer

Node.js: Install node.js with package manager.

curl -sSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

Yarn: Install yarn with npm.

sudo npm install --global yarn

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

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Installation steps

Once the softwares above are installed:

1. Clone the repository

You may install Monica by simply cloning the repository. Consider cloning the repository into any folder, example here in /var/www/monica directory:

cd /var/www/
sudo git clone https://github.com/monicahq/monica.git

You should check out a tagged version of Monica since main branch may not always be stable. Find the latest official version on the release page

cd /var/www/monica
# Get latest tags from GitHub
sudo git fetch
# Clone the desired version
sudo git checkout tags/v2.18.0

2. Setup the database

First make the database a bit more secure.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Next log in with the root account to configure the database.

sudo mysql -uroot -p

Create a database called 'monica'.

CREATE DATABASE monica CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

Create a user called 'monica' and its password 'strongpassword'.

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

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

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

And finally we apply the changes and exit the database.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

3. Configure Monica

cd /var/www/monica then run these steps with sudo:

1. cp .env.example .env to create your own version of all the environment variables needed for the project to work.
2. Update .env to your specific needs
   • set DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD with the settings used behind.
   • configure a mailserver for registration & reminders to work correctly.
   • set the APP_ENV variable to production, local is only used for the development version. Beware: setting APP_ENV to production will force HTTPS. Skip this if you're running Monica locally.
3. Run composer install --no-interaction --no-dev to install all packages.
4. Run yarn install to install frontend packages, then yarn run production to build the assets (js, css).
5. Run php artisan key:generate to generate an application key. This will set APP_KEY with the right value automatically.
6. Run php artisan setup:production -v to run the migrations, seed the database and symlink folders.
   • You can use email and password parameter to setup a first account directly: php artisan setup:production --email=your@email.com --password=yourpassword -v
7. Optional: Setup the queues with Redis, Beanstalk or Amazon SQS: see optional instruction of generic installation
8. Optional: Setup the access tokens to use the API follow optional instruction of generic installation

4. Configure cron job

Monica requires some background processes to continuously run. The list of things Monica does in the background is described here. Basically those crons are needed to send reminder emails and check if a new version is available. To do this, setup a cron that runs every minute that triggers the following command php artisan schedule:run.

Run the crontab command:

sudo crontab -u www-data -e

Then, in the crontab editor window you just opened, paste the following at the end of the document:

* * * * * php /var/www/monica/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

5. Configure Apache webserver

1. Give proper permissions to the project directory by running:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/monica
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/monica/storage

2. Enable the rewrite module of the Apache webserver:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

3. Configure a new monica site in apache by doing:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/monica.conf

Then, in the nano text editor window you just opened, copy the following - swapping the **YOUR IP ADDRESS/DOMAIN** with your server's IP address/associated domain:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName **YOUR IP ADDRESS/DOMAIN**

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/monica/public

    <Directory /var/www/monica/public>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

4. Apply the new .conf file and reload Apache. You can do that by running:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo a2ensite monica.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Final step

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