In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Akaunting on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Akaunting is a free, open-source, and online accounting software for small businesses and freelancers. Akaunting provides an elegant and intuitive UI will all the features and controls needed to stay abreast of your cashflows and transactions.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Akaunting open-source accounting software on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Akaunting on Debian 11 Bullseye
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing the LAMP stack.
A Debian 11 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, Please read our previous tutorial to install LAMP Server on Debian 11.
Step 3. Installing Akaunting on Debian 11.
By default, Akaunting is not available on Debian 11 base repository. So, now we download the latest stable version of Akaunting from the official page:
wget -O Akaunting.zip https://akaunting.com/download.php?version=latest
Next, extract the downloaded zipped archive:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/akaunting/ sudo unzip Akaunting.zip -d /var/www/akaunting/
We will need to change some folders permissions:
sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/akaunting/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/akaunting/
Step 4. Configuring MariaDB.
By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. You should read and below each step carefully which will set the root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB:
mysql_secure_installation
Configure it like this:
- Set root password? [Y/n] y - 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
Next, we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for Akaunting. Run the following command:
mysql -u root -p
This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server, you need to create a database for Akaunting installation:
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE akaunting_db; MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'akaunting_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password'; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON akaunting_db.* to akaunting_user@'localhost'; MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; MariaDB [(none)]> exit
For additional resources on installing and managing MariaDB, read the post below:
Step 5. Configure Apache.
Now we create a new VirtualHost to better manage the Akaunting website:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/akaunting.conf
Add the following file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/akaunting/
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.your-domain.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.your-domain.com_access.log combined
<Directory /var/www/akaunting/>
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Save and close, then restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:
sudo a2ensite akaunting.conf sudo a2enmod rewrite ssl sudo systemctl restart apache2
For additional resources on installing and configuring Apache, read the post below:
Step 6. Installing the Let’s Encrypt certificates.
First, install Certbot to your Debian system using the following command below:
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache
Then, generate the certificates, with the following command:
sudo certbot --apache -d [your-domain.com]
You will then be prompted to enter an email address for the certificate. After you have entered that you must agree to the T&C’s and decide if you want to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This last step is optional. Once successfully, Reload Apache again to load all the new configurations.
Step 7. Configure Firewall.
By default, the UFW firewall is enabled on Debian. Depending on your Apache virtual host configuration file, open ports 80 and 443 to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic:
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp sudo ufw allow 443/tcp sudo ufw reload
Step 8. Accessing Akaunting Web Interface.
Once successfully installed, open your web browser and access the Akaunting using the URL https://your-domian.com. You will be redirected to the Akaunting interface page:
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Akaunting. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of the Akaunting open-source accounting software on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Akaunting website.
