How To Install WebERP on CentOS 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WebERP on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, webERP is a free, open-source, and complete web-based accounting and business management system. You just need a web browser and PDF reader to use the webERP. With webERP, you can manage many things including, purchase orders, web store, manufacturing, sales, general ledger, and shipping. It is written in PHP and uses MariaDB as a database backend.

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 WebERP on a CentOS 8.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A network connection or internet access.
• 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 WebERP on CentOS 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install epel-release

Step 2. Installing the LAMP stack.

A CentOS 8 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing WebERP on CentOS 8.

Now we download the WebERP packages from the official page:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/web-erp/files/webERP_4.15.2.zip

After that, extract the downloaded file to the Apache web root directory:

unzip webERP_4.15.2.zip -d /var/www/html

We will need to change some folder permissions:

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/webERP
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/webERP

Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for WebERP.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and 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 WebERP. 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 WebERP installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> create database weberpdb;
MariaDB [(none)]> create user weberp@localhost identified by 'your-@strong@-passwd';
MariaDB [(none)]> grant all privileges on weberpdb.* to weberp@localhost identified by 'your-@strong@-passwd';
MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges;
MariaDB [(none)]> exit;

Step 5. Configuring Apache for WebERP.

Now we create a new Apache virtual host configuration file to host the webERP. You can create it using the following command:

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/weberp.conf

Add the following line:

<VirtualHost *:80> 
ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/webERP
ServerName your-domain.com
<Directory /var/www/html/webERP/> 
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory> 
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/weberp.org-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/weberp.org-access_log common
</VirtualHost> 

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

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Step 6. Configure Firewall.

We need to allow ports 80 and 443 through the firewall. You can allow them with the following command:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 7. Accessing WebERP Web Interface.

WebERP will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.comand 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 WebERP. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the WebERP on your CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official WebERP website.