Install SuiteCRM on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with Nginx, MariaDB, PHP 7.1 and Let’s Encrypt free SSL/TLS

If you’re looking for a true open source CRM platform, then SuiteCRM is your choice… it is a fork of SugarCRM, a popular web page CRM platform… So, when deciding on which open source CRM production to install, don’t ignore SuiteCRM…

SuiteCRM is an open source alternative to the popular customer relationship management (CRM) software, SugarCRM. SuiteCRM became popular when SugarCRM decided to stop development of its open source version of their popular application.

Now, SuiteCRM continues to innovate and extend its software.. and if you’re looking for a functional, high performance CRM platform to interact with your customers, you’ll find it in SuiteCRM. This brief tutorial is going to show you how to install SuiteCRM on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP support.

This post covers installing the latest version of SuiteCRM, which at the time of writing was at version 7.9.6.

To get started with installing SuiteCRM, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Install Nginx

SuiteCRM requires a webserver and the most popular webserver in use today is Apache2. So, go and install Nginx on Ubuntu by running the commands below:

sudo apt-get install nginx

Next, run the commands below to stop, start and enable Nginx service to always start up with the server boots.

sudo systemctl stop nginx.service
sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Step 2: Install MariaDB

SuiteCRM also requires a database server… and MariaDB database server is a great place to start. To install it run the commands below.

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After installing, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots.

sudo systemctl stop mysql.service
sudo systemctl start mysql.service
sudo systemctl enable mysql.service

After that, run the commands below to secure MariaDB server.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.

• Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
• Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
• New password: Enter password
• Re-enter new password: Repeat password
• Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
• Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
• Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]:  Y
• Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]:  Y

Restart MariaDB server

sudo systemctl restart mysql.service

Step 3: Install PHP and Related Modules

PHP 7.1 isn’t available on Ubuntu default repositories… in order to install it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.

Run the commands below to add the below third party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.1

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.1

sudo apt update

Run the commands below to install PHP 7.1 and related modules.

sudo apt install php7.1-fpm php7.1-common php7.1-mbstring php7.1-xmlrpc php7.1-soap php7.1-gd php7.1-xml php7.1-intl php7.1-mysql php7.1-cli php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-ldap php7.1-zip php7.1-curl

After install PHP, run the commands below to open PHP-FPM default file.

sudo nano /etc/php/7.1/fpm/php.ini

Then edit the below lines to look like this and save the file.

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
memory_limit = 256M
upload_max_filesize = 100
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
max_execution_time = 360
date.timezone = America/Chicago
session.save_path = "/var/lib/php/session"

Step 4: Create SuiteCRM Database

Now that you’ve install all the packages that are required, continue below to start configuring the servers. First run the commands below to create SuiteCRM database.

Run the commands below to logon to the database server. When prompted for a password, type the root password you created above.

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then create a database called suitecrm

CREATE DATABASE suitecrm;

Create a database user called magentouser with new password

CREATE USER 'suitecrmuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';

Then grant the user full access to the database.

GRANT ALL ON suitecrm.* TO 'suitecrmuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Finally, save your changes and exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 5: Download SuiteCRM Latest Release

Next, visit SuiteCRM site and register for a free account. You must register before you’re allowed to download a copy. The community edition is what you’ll want to download.

After downloading, run the commands below to extract the download file into Nginx root directory.

sudo apt-get install git
cd /tmp && git clone https://github.com/salesagility/SuiteCRM.git suitecrm
sudo mv suitecrm /var/www/html/suitecrm/

Change or modify the directory permission to fit Nginx configuration.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/

Step 6: Configure Nginx

Finally, configure Nginx site configuration file for SuiteCRM. This file will control how users access Moodle content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called suitecrm

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/suitecrm

Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    root /var/www/html/suitecrm;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

    client_max_body_size 100M;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Save the file and exit.

Step 7: Enable the SuiteCRM Site

After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/suitecrm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/


STEP 8: OBTAIN AND CONFIGURE LET’S ENCRYPT SSL CERTIFICATES

Now that the SuiteCRM configuration is done, continue below to get Let’s Encrypt installed and configured. Let’s Encrypt now provides a Nginx module to automate this process. To get the client/module installed on Ubuntu, run the commands below

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx

After that run the commands below to obtain your free Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificate for your site.

sudo certbot --nginx -m admin@example.com -d example.com -d www.example.com

After running the above commands, you should get prompted to accept the licensing terms. If everything is checked, the client should automatically install the free SSL/TLS certificate and configure the Nginx site to use the certs.

Please read the Terms of Service at
https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf. You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A)gree/(C)ancel: A

Choose Yes ( Y ) to share your email address

Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about EFF and
our work to encrypt the web, protect its users and defend digital rights.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Y)es/(N)o: Y

This is how easy is it to obtain your free SSL/TLS certificate for your Nginx powered website.

Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2

Pick option 2 to redirect all traffic over HTTPS. This is important!

After that, the SSL client should install the cert and configure your website to redirect all traffic over HTTPS.

Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://example.com and
https://www.example.com

You should test your configuration at:
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=example.com
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.example.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem
   Your key file has been saved at:
   /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
   Your cert will expire on 2018-02-24. To obtain a new or tweaked
   version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again
   with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of
   your certificates, run "certbot renew"
 - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:

   Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
   Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le

The highlighted code block should be added to your Nginx SuiteCRM site configuration file automatically by Let’s Encrypt certbot. Your SuiteCRM site is ready to be used over HTTPS.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    root /var/www/html/suitecrm;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

    client_max_body_size 100M;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

  listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

    if ($scheme != "https") {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    } # managed by Certbot

    # Redirect non-https traffic to https
    # if ($scheme != "https") {
    #     return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    # } # managed by Certbot

}

Step 9 : Restart Nginx

To load all the settings above, restart Nginx by running the commands below.

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Then open your browser and browse to the server domain name or domain. You should see SuiteCRM setup wizard to complete. Please follow the wizard carefully.

eg. https://example.com

Then enter the database information as well as the site administrator login credentials.

Wait and SuiteCRM should install successfully. Login and begin using your program.

Enjoy!

To setup a process to automatically renew the certificates, add a cron job to execute the renewal process.

sudo crontab -e

Then add the line below and save.

0 1 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew & > /dev/null

The cron job will attempt to renew 30 days before expiring

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