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nabbisen

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at obsd.solutions

Joomla! 4.3 on OpenBSD 7.3: Install

Summary

Joomla! is one of popular PHP content management systems (aka CMS). It is good for portal-like websites as well as blogging platforms.
The first version was released in 2005 and, after long progress, the latest major one was done two years ago (on 2021-08-17).

This post shows how to install Joomla! with PHP/PHP-FPM on OpenBSD, the solid OS. All of them are the latest as of today.

Environment

Reference posts

In case any of them are not done:

Notes on Joomla!'s system requirements

PHP 8.2 is not what is recommended officially by them today (See: their Technical Requirements). It got, however, "improved support" in 4.3 release, which is described in their "What’s new in Joomla 4.3.0 Stable?". Therefore, PHP 8.2 should be a better option than 8.1 now. Besides, as to the other option, 8.0, its support will come to an end soon (See: PHP's Supported Versions).

Tutorial

Prepare database

Connect to the server with client tool (for example, running mysql -u root -p), and run:



-- create database
CREATE DATABASE <dbname> \
    CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 \
    COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

-- create user
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES \
    ON <dbname>.* \
    TO <dbuser>@'localhost' \
    IDENTIFIED BY '<dbpass>';

-- flush
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;


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Install and activate PHP extensions

Get mysqli for MariaDB connection:



$ doas pkg_add php-mysqli


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The output, my choice and the result were:



quirks-6.122 signed on 2023-09-01T21:25:11Z
Ambiguous: choose package for php-mysqli
a   0: <None>
    1: php-mysqli-7.4.33
    2: php-mysqli-8.0.30
    3: php-mysqli-8.1.22
    4: php-mysqli-8.2.9
Your choice: 4
php-mysqli-8.2.9: ok


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It is necessary to activate it (and also opcache). Run:



$ doas ln -s /etc/php-8.2.sample/* /etc/php-8.2/


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Now they are activated:



$ ls -l /etc/php-8.2
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  30 Sep  2 10:09 mysqli.ini -> /etc/php-8.2.sample/mysqli.ini
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  31 Sep  2 10:09 opcache.ini -> /etc/php-8.2.sample/opcache.ini


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Get Joomla! package

Suppose that our working directory is /var/www/joomla.

Run to download from their releases in GitHub:



$ curl -LO https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/releases/download/4.3.4/Joomla_4.3.4-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz


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Decompress and extract it:



$ tar xzf Joomla_4.3.4-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz


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Set permissions for web user:



$ doas chown -R www:www ./*


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Add httpd (Web) server(s)

If you don't have the activated daemons of either httpd or PHP-FPM 8.2, you have to make them ready. (See Reference posts.)

If so, continue and add defition on Joomla! server(s):



$ doas nvim /etc/httpd.conf


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Write like below in it. Here, <fqdn> is up to you. <chroot-parent-dir> must be empty. (It is up to your working directory.) In addition, TLS configuration files are necessary to enable TLS (see below).



server "<fqdn>" {
        listen on egress tls port https
        tls {    
                certificate     "/etc/ssl/<fqdn>.crt"
                key             "/etc/ssl/private/<fqdn>.key"
        }
        log {
                access  "<fqdn>-access.log"
                error   "<fqdn>-error.log"
        }

        # it depends on your working directory under `/var/www` and `chroot` settings:
        root "<chroot-parent-dir>/joomla"
        directory index index.php

        location "/*.php" { 
                fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
        } 
        location "/*.php[/?]*" { 
                fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
        } 
}


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Restart the daemon:



$ doas rcctl restart httpd
httpd(ok)
httpd(ok)


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Now we can access to Joomla!'s web installer with web browser. Connect to https://<fqdn>/ !!

TLS configuration files

It is able to get them via requests to Let's Encrypt with acme-client. (See: How to conifugre OpenBSD acme-client).

Alternatively, you can get them as self-signed certificates with command lines such as:



$ cd /etc/ssl

$ # [ consts ]
$ # case ksh:
$ export MY_DOMAIN="..."
$ export MY_COUNTRY_CODE="XX"
$ export MY_STATE="..."
$ export MY_ORGANIZATION="..."
$ # case fish:
$ # set -x MY_DOMAIN "..."; (...)

$ # [ generate ]
$ doas openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -x509 -days 36500 -keyout private/$MY_DOMAIN.key -out $MY_DOMAIN.crt </span>
-subj "/C=$MY_COUNTRY_CODE/ST=$MY_STATE/L=/O=$MY_ORGANIZATION/OU=/CN=$MY_DOMAIN"
$ doas chmod 400 private/$MY_DOMAIN.key

$ # return to your working directory
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Server without TLS connection (Optional)

You may build another server which uses http instead of https (less secure):



# httpd.conf
< listen on egress tls port https
< tls {

< certificate "/etc/ssl/<fqdn>.crt"
< key "/etc/ssl/private/<fqdn>.key"
< }
> listen on egress port http
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Servers with and without TLS connection (Optional)

In addition, you can also redirect all http requests to https as needed:



# httpd.conf
server "<fqdn>" {
listen on egress http
# (...)
block return 301 "https://$SERVER_NAME$REQUEST_URI"
}
server "<fqdn>" {
listen on egress tls port https
# (...)
}

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Set it up with web installer

All you have to do is just follow them. Well, in my case, the <fqdn> above was 192.168.122.175.

Select default language and enter site name:

joomla-4-install-01

Create the system administrator:

joomla-4-install-02

Enter database information, and clicking the button will start the actual installation:

joomla-4-install-03

Success messages will be shown:

joomla-4-install-04

Validate installation

You will see the front page when https://<fqdn>/ is accessed to:

joomla-4-home-01

The admin entrance will be shown with https://<fqdn>/administrator/ accessed to:

joomla-4-admin-01

When authentication is successful, the admin panel will be shown:

joomla-4-admin-02

Conclusion

Now you are ready to build your website with the latest Joomla! Here shows an example about a very small step. Upload a media file in Media view:

joomla-4-media-01

Click "Upload" and choose a file. I tried one of the OpenBSD logos. It was successful :)

joomla-4-media-02

As shown in this post, it is not tough work to build and serve PHP apps on OpenBSD, when httpd and PHP-FPM are configured. It's because their project and community support PHP and also components around web service.

🕊 Happy serving 💫

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