How To Install Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Akaunting is a free, open-source, and online accounting software for small businesses and freelancers. It is used for creating and managing invoices, quotes, and finances. Any user who wants to use the Akaunting for small and medium business or personal usage can access it locally or remotely with the help of the internet and browser, once installed.

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 the Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to download the necessary packages and dependencies for Akaunting.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing LAMP Stack on Ubuntu 22.04.

Before starting this tutorial, the LAMP server must be installed on your server. If you do not have LAMP Stack installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04.

By default, Akaunting is not available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to download the latest stable version of Akaunting from the official page of your Ubuntu system:

wget -O Akaunting.zip https://akaunting.com/download.php?version=latest

Next, unzip the downloaded file:

mkdir -p /var/www/html/akaunting
unzip Akaunting.zip -d /var/www/html/akaunting

We will need to change some folders permissions:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/akaunting/
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/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 a 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 ON akaunting_db.* TO 'akaunting_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> EXIT;

For additional resources on installing and managing MariaDB, read the post below:

• How to install MariaDB on Ubuntu Linux √

Step 5. Configure Apache Virtual Host.

Now create the virtual host configuration file for Akaunting:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/akaunting.conf

Add the following file:

<VirtualHost *:80>

   ServerName domain.com
   ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
   ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html/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/html/akaunting/>
      Options FollowSymlinks
      AllowOverride All
      Require all granted
   </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Save and close the file, then restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

a2ensite akaunting
a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

For additional resources on installing and managing Apache, read the post below:

• How to install Apache on Ubuntu Linux √

Step 6. Secure Akaunting with Let’s Encrypt SSL.

First, install the Certbot client using the following command below:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Next, get your SSL certificate with Let’s Encrypt by following these steps:

certbot --apache -d your-domain.com

Let’s Encrypt certificates have 90 days of validity, and it is highly advisable to renew the certificates before they expire. You can test automatic renewal for your certificates by running this command:

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Step 7. Configure Firewall.

Now we set up an Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) with Apache to allow public access on default web ports for HTTP and HTTPS:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 'Apache Full'
sudo ufw enable

Step 8. Accessing Akaunting Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, open your web browser and access the Akaunting Web UI using the URL https://your-domain.com. You will be redirected to the following page:

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Akaunting. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Akaunting on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the Akaunting website.