How to Install SuiteCRM on FreeBSD 13

Introduction

SuiteCRM is a free and open-source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. It gives the users a detailed summary of their customers in different aspects to help them manage marketing, sales, and so on. It's a fork of SugarCRM software because they stopped releasing its open-source community edition. It's user-friendly and suitable for both small and big businesses. Some notable features are file storage support, internal chat integration, marketing automation, social media integration, access on different devices, plugins support for extended functionality, integration with third-party apps like Gmail, multiple user accounts and roles, and so on. This article explains how to install SuiteCRM on FreeBSD 13.

Prerequisites

Perform the following steps first:

• Deploy a Vultr FreeBSD 13.0 Server.
• SSH into the server you deployed.
• Create a non-root user with sudo access.

Step 1. Install Required Packages

Update the system package list.

$ pkg update

Install required packages.

$ pkg install -y sudo nano unzip wget bash

Install PHP 7.4, Apache, MySQL, and more modules.

 $ sudo pkg install -y apache24 mysql80-server mod_php74 php74 php74-session php74-curl php74-xml php74-zip php74-mbstring php74-ctype php74-imap php74-simplexml php74-tokenizer php74-xmlreader php74-xmlwriter php74-pear php74-fileinfo php74-json php74-phar php74-exif php74-iconv php74-mysqli php74-pdo_mysql php74-dom php74-filter php74-intl php74-openssl php74-intl php74-opcache php74-gd

Enable PHP-FPM service.

$ sudo sysrc php_fpm_enable=yes

Start PHP-FPM service.

$ sudo service php-fpm start

Copy the sample PHP configuration file.

$ sudo cp /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini

Edit the PHP configuration file.

$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/php.ini

Find the following lines and change the values like below. Finally, save and close the file.

upload_max_filesize = 100M
post_max_size = 100M

Restart Apache service.

$ sudo service apache24 restart

Step 2. Create SuiteCRM Database

Enable MySQL service to start on system boot.

$ sudo sysrc mysql_enable="yes"

Start MySQL service.

$ sudo service mysql-server start

Log in to MySQL shell. Then, at the password prompt, just press Enter to continue.

$ sudo mysql -u root -p

Secure the MySQL root user by changing the password. Change the value of StrongPassword with your own secure password.

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';

Create a database named suitecrm.

CREATE DATABASE suitecrm;

Create a database user suitecrmuser with a password MySecurePassword. Change the value of MySecurePassword to your own secure password.

CREATE USER 'suitecrmuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'MySecurePassword';

Grant the database user full access to the database.

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

Save all the changes to take effect.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit MySQL shell.

exit;

Step 3. Install SuiteCRM

Download the latest version of SuiteCRM. To find the latest version, please visit the official releases page.

$ wget https://suitecrm.com/files/147/SuiteCRM-7.12/609/SuiteCRM-7.12.4.zip

Extract the downloaded archive.

$ sudo unzip SuiteCRM-7.12.4.zip

Rename the extracted archive directory.

$ sudo mv SuiteCRM-7.12.4 suitecrm

Move the renamed directory into the document root.

$ sudo mv suitecrm /usr/local/www/apache24/data/

Remove the downloaded archive.

$ sudo rm SuiteCRM-7.12.4.zip

Set the ownership of the directory to the web-root user and group.

$ sudo chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/apache24/data/suitecrm/

Change the access permissions.

$ sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/local/www/apache24/data/suitecrm/

Step 4. Configure Apache2

Enable Apache service to start on system boot.

$ sudo sysrc apache24_enable=yes

Start Apache service.

$ sudo service apache24 start

Create a configuration file to allow Apache to work with PHP.

$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/apache24/modules.d/001_mod-php.conf

Add the following lines of code to the file. Then, save and close the file.

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
    <FilesMatch "\.php$">
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
    </FilesMatch>
    <FilesMatch "\.phps$">
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-source
    </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

Create Apache configuration file suitecrm.conf for SuiteCRM.

$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/apache24/Includes/suitecrm.conf

Add the below code to the file. Save and close the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerAdmin admin@example.com
    DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/apache24/data/suitecrm
    ServerName example.com

    <Directory /usr/local/www/apache24/data/suitecrm/>
        Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Test the configuration.

$ sudo apachectl configtest

Enable mod_rewrite by editing the apache configuration file.

$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf

Comment out the following line. Save and close the file:

LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache24/mod_rewrite.so

Restart Apache service.

$ sudo service apache24 restart

Step 5. Access SuiteCRM

To access the SuiteCRM Web Interface, go to your browser and visit http://Server_IP/. For example:

http://192.0.2.11/

After the installation process is competed, set up Cron for the web user to run SuiteCRM Schedulers.

$ sudo EDITOR=nano crontab -e -u www

Add the following line to the file:

* * * * * cd /usr/local/www/apache24/data/suitecrm; php -f cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Conclusion

You have installed SuiteCRM on your FreeBSD 13.0 server. Continue with the installation process, set up the database, and create an administrator account. You can now check the official documentation to learn more about using SuiteCRM.