Knowledgebase

Cachet is an open-source status page system written in PHP. Cachet source code is hosted on Github. In this guide, we will go over the Cachet installation process on Debian 10 (buster) by using a PHP, MariaDB, and Nginx software stack.

Requirements

• PHP version 7.1.3 or greater
• HTTP server with PHP support (eg: Apache, Nginx, Caddy). This guide uses Nginx.
• A supported database: MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite. This guide uses MariaDB.
• Git
• Composer

Before you begin

Check the Debian version.

lsb_release -ds
# Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

adduser johndoe --gecos "John Doe"
usermod -aG sudo johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install needed packages.

sudo apt install -y zip unzip curl wget git

Install PHP

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo apt install -y php php-cli php-fpm php-common php-xml php-gd php-zip php-mbstring php-mysql php-pgsql php-sqlite3 php-apcu

Check the version.

php --version
# PHP 7.3.4-2 (cli) (built: Apr 13 2019 19:05:48) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.3.4, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
#    with Zend OPcache v7.3.4-2, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Install MariaDB and create a database

Install MariaDB.

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.3.15-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and database user, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit

NOTE: Replace dbname and username with appropriate names for your setup. Replace password with a strong password.

Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo apt install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.2

Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/cachet.conf and configure Nginx for Cachet. Populate the file with the following configuration.

server {

  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;

  server_name status.example.com;
  root /var/www/cachet/public;

  index index.php;

  location / {
    try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_keep_conn on;
  }

}

Save the file and exit with Colon + W + Q.

Activate the cachet.conf configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/cachet.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install Composer

Install Composer globally.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'a5c698ffe4b8e849a443b120cd5ba38043260d5c4023dbf93e1558871f1f07f58274fc6f4c93bcfd858c6bd0775cd8d1') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.8.6 2019-06-11 15:03:05

Install Cachet

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/cachet

Change ownership of the /var/www/cachet directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/cachet

Navigate to document root.

cd /var/www/cachet

Download the Cachet source code with Git and checkout the latest tagged release.

git clone -b 2.4 --single-branch https://github.com/cachethq/Cachet.git .

Copy .env.example to .env and configure database and APP_URL settings in .env.

cp .env.example .env
vim .env

Install Cachet dependencies with Composer.

composer install --no-dev -o

Set up the application key.

php artisan key:generate

Install Cachet.

php artisan cachet:install

Change ownership of the /var/www/cachet directory to www-data.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/cachet

Open your site in a web browser and follow the instructions on the screen to finish the Cachet installation. To access the Cachet dashboard append /dashboard to your website URL.