In this tutorial we’ll see how to install Invoice Ninja on a Debian 7 (Wheezy) VPS with MariaDB, PHP-FPM and Nginx. Invoice Ninja is a free, open-source solution for invoicing and billing customers and it’s based on Laravel 4.1 framework. This guide should work on other Linux VPS systems as well but was tested and written for Debian 7 VPS.
Login to your VPS via SSH
ssh user@myVPS
Update the system and install necessary packages
user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-get install python-software-properties git curl openssl vim
Install MariaDB 10.0
user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xcbcb082a1bb943db user@myVPS:~# sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://mirror.jmu.edu/pub/mariadb/repo/10.0/debian wheezy main' user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-get update user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-get install mariadb-server
When the installation is complete, run the following command to secure your installation:
mysql_secure_installation
Next, we need to create a database for our Invoice Ninja instance.
mysql -uroot -p MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE ininja; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ininja.* TO 'ininjauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'ininjauser_passwd'; MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; MariaDB [(none)]> \q
Install and configure PHP and Nginx
The latest versions of Nginx 1.6.2 and PHP 5.6 are not available via the default Debian repositories, so we will add the Dotdeb repository. Open the /etc/apt/sources.list file and append the following lines:
user@myVPS:~# sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org wheezy all deb http://packages.dotdeb.org wheezy-php56 all
Next, fetch and install the GnuPG key:
user@myVPS:~# wget -qO - http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
Update the system and install Nginx, PHP and all necessary extensions:
user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-get update user@myVPS:~# sudo apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-cli php5-mcrypt php5-gd php5-curl user@myVPS:~# sudo php5enmod mcrypt
Install Composer
Composer is a dependency manager for PHP with which you can install packages. Composer will pull in all the required libraries and dependencies that you need for your project.
user@myVPS:~# curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php user@myVPS:~# sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
Install Invoice Ninja
Create a root directory for your application.
user@myVPS:~# mkdir -p ~/your_ininja_site
Clone the project repository from GitHub:
user@myVPS:~# git clone https://github.com/hillelcoren/invoice-ninja.git ~/your_ininja_site user@myVPS:~# cd ~/your_ininja_site
Install all dependencies:
user@myVPS:~# composer install --no-dev -o
Set the environment to production:
user@myVPS:~# cp bootstrap/environment.default.php bootstrap/environment.php
user@myVPS:~# vim bootstrap/environment.php
Open the database.php file and edit the database settings:
user@myVPS:~# vim config/database.php
'mysql' => array(
'driver' => 'mysql',
'host' => 'localhost',
'database' => 'ininja',
'username' => 'ininjauser',
'password' => 'ininjauser_passwd',
'charset' => 'utf8',
'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
'prefix' => '',
),Run database migrations and seed the database with sample data:
user@myVPS:~# php artisan migrate user@myVPS:~# php artisan db:seed
Generate a new application key:
user@myVPS:~# php artisan key:generate
user@myVPS:~# vim app/config/app.php
'key' => 'iL7OD2fbvjJvIcSgalLThFaEM4gPtPNF',
Configure Nginx and PHP
Create a new PHP-FPM pool for your user:
user@myVPS:~# sudo nano /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/your_user.conf
[your_user] user = your_user group = your_user listen = /var/run/php5-fpm-your_user.sock listen.owner = your_user listen.group = your_user listen.mode = 0666 pm = ondemand pm.max_children = 5 pm.process_idle_timeout = 10s; pm.max_requests = 200 chdir = /
Do not forget to change your_user with your username.
Restart PHP-FPM
user@myVPS:~# sudo service php5-fpm restart
Generate SSL certificate:
user@myVPS:~# sudo mkdir -p /etc/nginx/ssl user@myVPS:~# cd /etc/nginx/ssl user@myVPS:~# sudo openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:x -out ininja.pass.key 2048 user@myVPS:~# sudo openssl rsa -passin pass:x -in ininja.pass.key -out ininja.key user@myVPS:~# sudo rm ininja.pass.key user@myVPS:~# sudo openssl req -new -key ininja.key -out ininja.csr user@myVPS:~# sudo openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in ininja.csr -signkey ininja.key -out ininja.crt
Next, create a new Nginx server block:
user@myVPS:~# sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_ininja_site
server {
listen 443 default;
server_name your_ininja_site;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/ininja.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/ininja.key;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_ciphers 'AES128+EECDH:AES128+EDH:!aNULL';
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
root /home/your_user/your_ininja_site/public;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
charset utf-8;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
location = /robots.txt { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
access_log /var/log/nginx/ininja.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/ininja.error.log;
sendfile off;
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm-your_user.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
fastcgi_buffer_size 16k;
fastcgi_buffers 4 16k;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name your_ininja_site;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=2592000;
rewrite ^ https://$server_name$request_uri? permanent;
}
Do not forget to change your_user with your username.
Activate the server block by creating a symbolic link and restart Nginx:
user@myVPS:~# sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_ininja_site /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/your_ininja_site user@myVPS:~# sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
That’s it. You have successfully installed Invoice Ninja on your Debian Wheezy VPS. For more information about Invoice Ninja, please refer to the Invoice Ninja website.
Of course you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Linux VPS Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to setup this for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.
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During my setup, I ran into ” guzzle/guzzle v3.9.3 requires ext-curl * -> the requested PHP extension curl is missing from your system.” problem.
I have to install php5-curl module. So you might want to update “sudo apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-cli php5-mcrypt php5-gd” to “sudo apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-cli php5-mcrypt php5-gd php5-curl”
PS. Love your site btw!
We updated the post.
Thank you.
Thanks for the writeup. There’s a few steps missing though: such as renaming “.env.default” to “.env”, installing php5-gmp (required when running composer) and php5-mysql (or one will get PDO driver not found errors when attempting php artisan migrate), and finally editing .env with the correct database settings or “php artisan” will fail attempting to connect to the db.
Thanks for your feedback.
change :
user@myVPS:~# vim app/config/database.php
to:
user@myVPS:~# vim config/database.php
Thanks for pointing out. The post has been updated.
Please add the nginx config to hide “public” from the url in case invoiceninja is used inside a directory and not as a root
thank you
We will make a new tutorial about how to install invoiceninja with nginx in a subdirectory on a Debian 9 VPS soon.
That sounds great. Can’t wait to read and hopefully follow it :)
Thanks for all your effort you put into the article.