In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Chamilo on your CentOS 7. For those of you who didn’t know, Chamilo is an open-source (under GNU/GPL licensing) e-learning and content management system, aimed at improving access to education and knowledge globally. It is backed up by the Chamilo Association, which has goals including the promotion of the software, the maintenance of a clear communication channel, and the building of a network of service providers and software contributors. The Chamilo project aims at ensuring the availability and quality of education at a reduced cost, through the distribution of its software free of charge, the improvement of its interface for 3rd world countries’ devices portability, and the provision of free access to public e-learning campuses.
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 Chamilo on a CentOS 7 server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- An active internet connection.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- 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 Chamilo on CentOS 7
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
yum -y update
Step 2. Install LAMP server.
A CentOS 7 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Also, install the required PHP modules:
yum install php-mysql php-gd php-ldap php-xml php-xmlrpc php-mbstring php-mcrypt curl zlib gcc-c++ libuuid-devel
Step 3. Installing Chamilo.
The first thing to do is to go to Chamilo’s download page and download the latest stable version of Chamilo, At the moment of writing this article it is version 1.10:
wget https://github.com/chamilo/chamilo-lms/archive/v1.10.0.zip
Unpack the Chamilo archive to the document root directory on your server:
unzip v1.10.0.zip mv chamilo-lms-1.10.0/ /var/www/html/chamilo
We will need to change some folders permissions:
chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/chamilo
Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for Chamilo.
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 Chamilo. 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 Chamilo installation:
CREATE DATABASE chamilodb; CREATE USER 'chamilouser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Pa$$worD123'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON chamilodb.* TO 'chamilouser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; quit
Step 5. Configuring Apache web server for Chamilo.
We will create an Apache virtual host for your Chamilo website. First, create ‘/etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf’ file with using a text editor of your choice:
nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf IncludeOptional vhosts.d/*.conf
Next, create the virtual host:
mkdir /etc/httpd/vhosts.d/ nano /etc/httpd/vhosts.d/yourdomain.com.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost YOUR_SERVER_IP:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/chamilo/" ServerName yourdomain.com ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/yourdomain.com-error_log" CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/yourdomain.com-access_log" combined <Directory "/var/www/html/chamilo/"> DirectoryIndex index.html index.php Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> </VirtualHost>
Next, edit the ‘php.ini’ file and add/modify the following lines:
### nano /etc/php.ini date.timezone = 'Asia/Jakarta' max_execution_time = 300 max_input_time = 600 memory_limit = 256M post_max_size = 100M upload_max_filesize = 100M short_open_tag = Off safe_mode = Off magic_quotes_gpc = Off magic_quotes_runtime = Off session.cookie_httponly = On
Save and close the file. Restart the apache service for the changes to take effect:
systemctl restart httpd.service
Step 6. Accessing Chamilo.
Chamilo will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com/chamilo or http://server-ip/chamilo and complete the required steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Chamilo. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Chamilo e-learning and content management system on your CentOS 7 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Chamilo website.
