Installing Sugarcrm on Nginx over CentOS / Redhat (LEMP)

 

 

Here is how to get sugarcrm working on Nginx Server. Nginx is a great apache alternative and is much faster in certain terms. It serves php pages with php-fpm and this makes thing much lighter and faster. 

We will get this thing installed in a Centos or Redhat Box, because that is where I had tried it. This will also allow you to learn the basics to create a LEMP (Linux + 'e'Nginx + Mysql + Php) server, contrary to the LAMP (Linux + Apache + Mysql + Php) ones you have been doing all these days. You can use this to host your other php applications also. So lets get started.  

Creating the LEMP Instance:

Launch a clean CentOS / Redhat box and start with instaling Nginx.

CentOS does not offer the latest version of Nginx in its default YUM repository. To install it, you need to add the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository, which is part of the Fedora Project.

1. Install the EPEL repository:

# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5Server/x86_64/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

(Note: This url may change depending upon the Redhat/CentOS version you may be using please do the neccessary corrections accordingly. In case you are stuck ask me via the comments and I'll help you out)

2. Install nginx

# yum install nginx

3. You will be asked to install the gpg-key for EPEL. Answer yes

4. Start Nginx

# /etc/init.d/nginx start

5. Check the installation by going to your web server’s default site, either using your ip address or domain name. And you will see a "Welcome to Nginx" page.

The following are the configuration files for Nginx which we may need later:

• Default config file: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
• Default SSL config file: /etc/nginx/conf.d/ssl.conf
• Default virtual hosting config file: /etc/nginx/conf.d/virtual.conf
• Default documentroot: /usr/share/nginx/html

Configure PHP As FastCGI

To install php5 with other modules we will first have to add the correct php repository:

I tried this php 5.2.10 which is available in the Cent-OS Testing repository.

1. To add the CentOS-Testing repository create a file c5-Testing.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and add the following lines in it

[c5-testing]
name=CentOS-5 Testing 
baseurl=http://dev.centos.org/centos/$releasever/testing/$basearch/
enabled=0
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://dev.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-testing

Install php and all other required extensions via this command:  

# yum install php-pear-Net-Socket php-pear php-common php-gd php-devel php php-mbstring php-pear-Mail php-cli php-imap php-snmp php-pdo php-xml php-pear-Auth-SASL php-ldap php-pear-Net-SMTP php-mysql

If some things fail to install use the --enablerepo=c5-Testing switch with yum and you can also exclude php-readline extension by using the switch --exclude with yum because this too causes dependency issues at times.

You can check if php is working fine by using a phpinfo file. Create /usr/share/nginx/html/phptest.php as follows:

 
<?php
     phpinfo();
?>

Hit the url http://your IP or domain/phptest.php  It should show you the php info page.

Now that the webserver is ready we will go ahead and install the Mysql database. And I must say that Mysql installation is pretty easy with yum and we will use these steps:

1. Install MySQL
   yum install mysql-server mysql php-mysql

Configuring MySQL

1. Set the MySQL service to start on boot
   chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
2. Start the MySQL service
   service mysqld start
3. Log into MySQL
   mysql -u root
4. Set the root user password for all local domains
   SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('new-password') ;
   SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost.localdomain' = PASSWORD('new-password');
   SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'127.0.0.1' = PASSWORD('new-password');
5. Drop the Any user (for security)
   DROP USER ''@'localhost';
   DROP USER ''@'localhost.localdomain';
   
6. Exit MySQL
   exit

This will set the Mysql root user password and get things started. Now we are pretty close to install the sugarcrm application over it.

Before installting sugarcrm we will need to make certain changes in the nginx configuration file. 


A sample Nginx configuration for Sugarcrm :-
Step 1: Open the file : /etc/nginx/nginx.conf and enter the following configuration (I just replaced the default nginx.conf with this after backing up the original one):


server {
listen 0.0.0.0:80;
server_name testsugarcrm.com;
gzip off;
set $root_path /usr/share/nginx/html/sugarcrm;
location / {
root $root_path;
index index.php;
error_page 404 = /index.php;
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?$1 last;
break;
}
}
location ~ .php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $root_path$fastcgi_script_name;
}

}
Step 2: Execute the command /etc/init.d/nginx restart in shell.
Step 3: Add the following entry in /etc/hosts file:-
127.0.0.1 testsugarcrm.com


Step 4:  Download suagarcrm comminity edition from here.
Now unzip the package in nginx webroot (/usr/share/nginx/html or whatever it may be in your case) and rename the folder  'sugarcrm'
I tried this exercise with sugarcrm 5.2.0 which I had with me. However, I believe this would work with other versions also.

Now, check the url http://testsugarcrm.com in your browser. This will give you the sugarcrm installer page. Thereafter, the installation is pretty self-explanatory will complete without hiccups :) However you can visit the sugardocs in case you need help.

One last thing I would like to mention here is, some instances which I installed had a strange error of the page going blank after I would press 'Next' in the sugarcrm installation wizard. To resolve this issue, just put the 'display_errors' 'On' in your php.ini file and restart Nginx and rerun the wizard. Now you will see a fatal error about the "Session directory" not getting enough "Permissions" with the directory path mentioned there. You can just go ahead and set the permissions to that directory by the following command:


# chmod -R 777 /usr/share/sessions         (your directory will be differrent, I have just mentioned an arbitrary directory path).

That is it now your sugar is being served by Nginx !