How to install SuiteCRM on Debian 9

file_uploads = On
default_charset = UTF-8
memory_limit = 128M
post_max_size = 60M
upload_max_filesize = 60M
memory_limit = 256M
max_input_time = 60
max_execution_time = 6000
date.timezone = Europe/London

Replace the timezone variable in PHP configuration file according to your server geographical location.  The PHP timezone list can be found at the following link http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

To increase the load speed of your website pages, enable  OPCache plugin available for PHP7.  Insert the following OPCache lines at the bottom of the PHP interpreter configuration file, after the [opcache] statement, as shown in the following excerpt:

[opcache]
opcache.enable=1 
opcache.enable_cli=1 
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8 
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000 
opcache.memory_consumption=128 
opcache.save_comments=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=1

Finally, close the php.ini configuration file and restart Apache daemon to apply changes by issuing the below command.

systemctl restart apache2

To display all PHP settings in a browser, create a PHP info file in your domain webroot path by executing the following command.

echo ‘<?php phpinfo(); ?>’| tee /var/www/html/info.php

Visit the PHP info script file from a remote browser at the following URL. Scroll down to date setting to verify if PHP time zone configuration and other settings had been successfully applied.

https://domain.tld/info.php

Install SuiteCRM

After we’ve configured all the required LAMP settings for installing SuiteCRM application, visit SuiteCRM official download page at https://suitecrm.com/download/ and grab the latest zip file archive in your system by issuing the below command. On the time of writing this guide, the latest released version of SuiteCRM was SuiteCRM-7.9.9.zip file.

wget https://suitecrm.com/files/158/SuiteCRM-7.9/178/SuiteCRM-7.9.9.zip

ls

After SuiteCRM zip file archive download completes, extract the zip archive file to your current working directory and list the extracted files by issuing the below commands.

unzip SuiteCRM-7.9.9.zip

ls

ls –al SuiteCRM-7.9.9

Before copying the installation files to your domain webroot, make sure you remove the default index.html file installed by Apache package to web server document root path and also delete the info.php file created earlier.

rm /var/www/html/index.html

rm /var/www/html/info.php

The installation files of SuiteCRM application are located in your current working directory under SuiteCRM-7.9.9/ directory. Issue ls command to list this directory files. Copy all the content of the SuiteCRM-7.9.9/ directory to your web server document root path by issuing the following command.

cp -rf SuiteCRM-7.9.9/* /var/www/html/

Next, grant Apache runtime user (www-data) with full write permissions to Apache document root path, by issuing the below command.  Run ls command to list the permissions for the installed files located under /var/www/html/ directory.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

ls –al /var/www/html/

Next, log in to MariaDB database console, and create SuiteCRM database. Choose a name for this database and a user with a strong password to manage the application database, by issuing the following commands. Make sure you change the database name, user, and password used in this tutorial with your own settings.

mysql –u root -p

Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 2
Server version: 10.1.26-MariaDB-0+deb9u1 Debian 9.1
Copyright (c) 2000, 2017, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> create database mycrm_db;

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> grant all privileges on mycrm_db.* to ‘crm_user’@’localhost’ identified by ‘password1234’;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) 

MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
MariaDB [(none)]> exit
Bye 

Now, let’s start the installation process of SuiteCRM application. Open a browser and navigate your server’s IP address or domain name via HTTPS protocol.

http://yourdomain.tld

On the first installation screen, SuiteCRM installer will display the license agreement. Check ‘I Accept’ checkbox in order to agree with license terms and conditions, choose the language for installing the application and hit on Next button in order to start the installation process, as illustrated in the below screenshot.

In the next installation screen, SuiteCRM installer will check your system environment requirements and will display and OK message if all PHP and server configurations are passed. In order to continue the installation process, hit on Next button, as shown in the below screenshot.

Next, the installer will display the Database Connection settings and Site Configuration page. In the left pane, select MySQL with MySQLi Extension as database type and provide the MySQL database name created for installing SuiteCRM application, database server host address, database username and the password needed to access SuiteCRM database. Also, select “Same as Admin user” in “SuiteCRM Database user /”. On the right plane, add an application administrator username and set a strong password for admin account. Check the URL address of SuiteCRM instance to match your domain name via HTTPS protocol, on port 443 and add the email address of the admin account. Use the following image as a guide to configure this step.

Next, in the same installation screen, hit on “Choose Demo” data from “More options” menu, and choose to not populate the SuiteCRM database with demo data.  Then, click on Scenario Selection menu and select to enable the following SuiteCRM modules: Sales, Marketing, Finance, Service and Project management. If you don’t need a module while installing the application, you can leave it unchecked and enable it after the installation process completes using the application administration page.

Next, scroll down and hit on SMTP Server Specification menu to enable SuiteCRM emails option. Add the name and email address you want to appear in “ From” email header. Then, choose your email service provider and specify the mail server settings. In this guide, we’ll use Gmail service provider to send e-mail, and the mail server settings can be found illustrated in the below screenshot. After you’ve completed the required settings for enabling your mail service provider, hit on Branding menu and add a name to be displayed in browser title bar for SuiteCRM application and upload your own website logo image.

Next, scroll down again and hit on System Locale Settings menu and specify how the time format, time zone and currency settings should be displayed in SuiteCRM application. Finally, leave the Site Security options unchecked for now and hit on Next button to complete the installation process. You can use the below image to complete this step.

After the installation process finishes, you will be redirected to SuiteCRM login page. In order to access the application admin panel, log in to SuiteCRM with the admin account credentials configured during the installation process, as shown in the below image.

Before logging in to SuiteCRM admin panel, first, return to the server console and issue the following command in order to remove the install directory which is no longer needed and can represent a security breach.

rm -rf /var/www/html/install/

You can also visit SuiteCRM dashboard by navigating to your server IP address or domain name via HTTPS protocol. A view of SuiteCRM admin dashboard is presented in below screenshot.

http://yourdomain.tld

Finally, in order to automatically redirect visitors to HTTPS, so that they can securely access SuiteCRM interface from their browsers, return to your server terminal and edit the autogenerated .htaccess file located in your domain document root path, by issuing the below command.

nano /var/www/html/.htaccess

In .htaccess file, search for <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> line and insert the below line rules after RewriteEngine On statement in order to automatically redirect domain traffic to HTTPS.

.htaccess file excerpt:

# Redirect to HTTPS
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]

At the bottom of the file, you can modify web server native PHP server settings by adding other lines with the settings to reflect your own server resources and configurations.

# Modify PHP settings
php_value session.use_trans_sid 0
php_value register_globals 1
php_value upload_max_filesize 100M
php_value post_max_size 100M

In order to execute SuiteCRM Schedulers, edit your web server runtime account crontab file with the below command and add the following cron task to run each minute.

crontab -e -u www-data

crontab file example:

*    *    *    *    *   /usr/bin/php7.0  -f  /var/www/html/cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1

If you want to circumvent browser warnings that are generated each time a client visits your application, you should consider buying a certificate issued by a trusted Certificate Authority or issue a free certificate from Let’s Encrypt CA.

That’s all! SuiteCRM web application has been successfully installed and configured in a Debian 9 server on top of a LAMP stack.

In order to further customize SuiteCRM platform, make sure you visit the application wiki page at the following address: https://suitecrm.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page