How To Install UVdesk Helpdesk System on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install UVdesk Helpdesk System on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, UVdesk is a powerful helpdesk system that can help businesses manage customer support and communication. It offers a variety of tools for handling customer inquiries, such as email and ticket management, an integrated knowledge base, and a customer self-service portal. Additionally, UVdesk is fully customizable and offers integrations with other popular business software.

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 UVdesk Helpdesk System 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 UVdesk Helpdesk.
• 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 UVdesk Helpdesk System 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
sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gnupg2

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 Composer.

By default, the Composer is not available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to download the Composer installer using wget command:

wget -O composer-setup.php https://getcomposer.org/installer

After the Composer has been downloaded, then execute the following command on the command line to install and setup composer on the Linux Ubuntu system:

php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Confirm the installation and check the installed build version of Composer:

composer -V

For additional resources on installing Composer, read the post below:

• How to install Composer on Ubuntu Linux √

Step 4. Install UVdesk Helpdesk System on Ubuntu 22.04.

Create a new directory named UVdesk in your web root directory. This directory hosts all the content of your UVdesk installation:

sudo mkdir /var/www/uvdesk
cd /var/www/uvdesk

Give the UVdesk directory write and execute permissions:

sudo chown $USER:$USER /var/www/ -R

Next, create a new project called UVdesk using the following command below:

composer clear-cache
composer create-project uvdesk/community-skeleton uvdesk.your-domain.com

Step 5. 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 the UVdesk. 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 UVdesk installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE uvdeskdb;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'uvdesk'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Your-Strong-Passwd';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON uvdeskdb.* TO 'uvdesk'@'localhost';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> exit;

Step 6. Configure Apache Virtual Host.

Now create the virtual host configuration file for UVdesk:

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

Add the following file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/uvdesk/helpdesk-project/public
ServerName uvdesk.your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.uvdesk.your-domain.com

<Directory /var/www/uvdesk/helpdesk-project/public/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/uvdesk.your-domain.com.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/uvdesk.your-domain.com-access_log common

</VirtualHost>

Now, we can restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2ensite uvdesk.conf 
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

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

• How to install Apache on Ubuntu Linux √

Step 7. Secure UVdesk with Let’s Encrypt SSL.

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

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache2

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

certbot --apache -d uvdesk.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 8. 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 9. Accessing UVdesk Helpdesk System Web Interface.

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

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