In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Kanboard on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Kanboard is a free and open-source project management tool that uses the Kanban methodology. Kanboard focuses on minimalism and simplicity, it is mainly designed for small teams. It also helps you to manage your projects and visualize your workflow.
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 Kanboard open-source project management on an Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
- 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 Kanboard.
- 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 Kanboard on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, PHP) server.
A Ubuntu 16.04 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Also, install all required PHP modules:
apt-get install php7.0-mysql php7.0-curl php7.0-json php7.0-cgi php7.0 libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-xmlrpc php7.0-gd
Step 3. Installing Kanboard.
First, Download and unzip the latest version of Kanboard:
cd /var/www/html/ wget https://kanboard.net/kanboard-latest.zip unzip kanboard-latest.zip
We will need to change some folders permissions:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/kanboard/
Next, copy the included config.default.php to config.php and change the database information by using these commands:
cd /var/www/html/kanboard mv config.default.php config.php
Create a configuration file named config.php using the nano editor and enter the following contents into the file:
### nano /etc/config.php
// Database driver: sqlite, mysql or postgres (sqlite by default)
define('DB_DRIVER', 'mysql');
// Mysql/Postgres username
define('DB_USERNAME', 'kanboard');
// Mysql/Postgres password
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'kanboarduser_passwd');
// Mysql/Postgres hostname
define('DB_HOSTNAME', 'localhost');
// Mysql/Postgres database name
define('DB_NAME', 'kanboarduser');
Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for Kanboard.
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 the Kanboard. 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 Kanboard installation:
MariaDB [(none)]>CREATE USER 'kanboarduser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; MariaDB [(none)]>GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON kanboarduser.* TO 'kanboard'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION; MariaDB [(none)]>FLUSH PRIVILEGES; MariaDB [(none)]>exit;
Import the Kanboard Database Schema:
cd /var/www/html/kanboard mysql -u kanboard -p kanboard < app/Schema/Sql/mysql.sql
Step 5. Configuring Apache web server for Kanboard.
Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘kanboard.conf’ on your virtual server:
sudo a2enmod rewrite touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/kanboard.conf ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/kanboard.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/kanboard.conf nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/kanboard.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot /var/www/html/kanboard ServerName your-domain.com ServerAlias www.your-domain.com <Directory /var/www/html/kanboard> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common </VirtualHost>
Now, we can restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:
sudo a2ensite kanboard systemctl restart apache2.service
Step 5. Accessing Kanboard.
Kanboard will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/kanboard or http://server-ip-address/kanboard.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Kanboard. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Kanboard open source project management on your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Kanboard website.
