How to Install Cachet Status Page System on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Cachet is a beautiful and powerful open source status page system written in PHP that allows you to better communicate downtime and system outages to your customers, teams, and shareholders. The application provides you with many features, the most notable among them are: a powerful JSON API, incident reports, metrics, markdown support for incident messages, subscriber notifications via email, two-factor authentication. In this tutorial, we will install Cachet status page system by utilizing PHP, Nginx, MySQL, and Composer on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Requirements

• PHP version 7.1 or greater
• HTTP server with PHP support (eg: Nginx, Apache, Caddy)
• Composer
• A supported database: MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite
• Git

Prerequisites

• An Ubuntu 18.04 LTS operating system.
• A non-root user with sudo privileges.

Initial steps

Check your Ubuntu version:

lsb_release -ds
# Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS

Set up the timezone:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Update your operating system packages (software). This is an important first step because it ensures you have the latest updates and security fixes for your operating system's default software packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install some essential packages that are necessary for basic administration of Ubuntu operating system:

sudo apt install -y curl wget vim git unzip socat bash-completion

Step 1 - Install PHP

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions:

sudo apt install -y php7.2 php7.2-cli php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-xml php7.2-gd php7.2-zip php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-pgsql php7.2-sqlite3 php7.2-opcache php-apcu

To show PHP compiled in modules, you can run:

php -m

ctype
curl
exif
fileinfo
. . .
. . .

Check PHP version:

php --version

# PHP 7.2.10-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 (cli) (built: Sep 13 2018 13:45:02) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
#     with Zend OPcache v7.2.10-0ubuntu0.18.04.1, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

PHP-FPM service is automatically started and enabled on reboot on Ubuntu 18.04 system, so there is no need to start and enable it manually. We can move on to the next step, which is the database installation and setup.

Step 2 - Install MySQL and create a database for Cachet

Cachet supports MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite databases. In this tutorial, we will use MySQL as the database server.

Install MySQL database server:

sudo apt install -y mysql-server

Check MySQL version:

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.25, for Linux (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper

Run mysql_secure installation script to improve MySQL security and set the password for MySQL root user:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Answer each of the questions:

Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin? N
New password: your_secure_password
Re-enter new password: your_secure_password
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

Connect to MySQL shell as the root user:

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password

Create an empty MySQL database and user for Cachet and remember the credentials:

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

Exit from MySQL:

mysql> exit

Replace dbname, username and password with your own names.

Step 3 - Install Acme.sh client and obtain Let's Encrypt certificate (optional)

Securing your website with HTTPS is not necessary, but it is a good practice to secure your site traffic. In order to obtain TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt we will use acme.sh client. Acme.sh is a pure UNIX shell software for obtaining TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt with zero dependencies. 

Download and install acme.sh:

sudo su - root
git clone https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh.git
cd acme.sh 
./acme.sh --install --accountemail your_email@example.com
source ~/.bashrc
cd ~

Check acme.sh version:

acme.sh --version
# v2.8.0

Obtain RSA and ECC/ECDSA certificates for your domain/hostname:


# RSA 2048
acme.sh --issue --standalone -d example.com --keylength 2048
# ECDSA
acme.sh --issue --standalone -d example.com --keylength ec-256

If you want fake certificates for testing you can add the --staging flag to the above commands.

After running the above commands, your certificates and keys will be in:

• For RSA: /home/username/example.com directory.
• For ECC/ECDSA: /home/username/example.com_ecc directory.

To list your issued certs you can run:

acme.sh --list

Create a directory to store your certs. We will use the /etc/letsencrypt directory.

mkdir -p /etc/letsecnrypt/example.com
sudo mkdir -p /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc

Install/copy certificates to /etc/letsencrypt directory.

# RSA
acme.sh --install-cert -d example.com --cert-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/cert.pem --key-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/private.key --fullchain-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.pem --reloadcmd "sudo systemctl reload nginx.service"
# ECC/ECDSA
acme.sh --install-cert -d example.com --ecc --cert-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/cert.pem --key-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/private.key --fullchain-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/fullchain.pem --reloadcmd "sudo systemctl reload nginx.service"

All the certificates will be automatically renewed every 60 days.

After obtaining certs exit form root user and return back to normal sudo user:

exit

Step 4 - Install and configure NGINX

Cachet can work fine with many web servers. In this tutorial, we selected Nginx. If you prefer Apache web server over Nginx, visit https://docs.cachethq.io/docs/installing-cachet#section-running-cachet-on-apache to learn more.

Install Nginx:

sudo apt install -y nginx

Check Nginx version:

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)

Configure Nginx for Cachet by running:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/cachet.conf

And populate the file with the following configuration:

server {

  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  listen 443 ssl;
  listen [::]:443 ssl;

  server_name status.example.com;

  root /var/www/cachet/public;

  index index.php;

  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/status.example.com/fullchain.cer;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/status.example.com/status.example.com.key;
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/status.example.com_ecc/fullchain.cer;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/status.example.com_ecc/status.example.com.key;

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

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_keep_conn on;
  }

}

Activate the new 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 NGINX configuration:

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx:

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 5 - Install Composer

Install Composer, the PHP dependency manager globally:

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === '48e3236262b34d30969dca3c37281b3b4bbe3221bda826ac6a9a62d6444cdb0dcd0615698a5cbe587c3f0fe57a54d8f5') { 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 Composer version:

composer --version
# Composer version 1.8.3 2019-01-30 08:31:33

Step 6 - Install Cachet

Create a document root directory where Cachet should reside in:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/cachet

Change ownership of the /var/www/cachet directory to {jour_user}:

sudo chown -R {your_user}:{your_user} /var/www/cachet

NOTE: Replace {jour_user} with your initially created non-root user username.

Navigate to the document root directory:

cd /var/www/cachet

Download the Cachet source code with Git:

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

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

cp .env.example .env
vim .env

Install Cachet dependencies with Composer:

composer install --no-dev -o

Set up the application key by running:

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

Step 7 - Complete the Cachet setup

Open your site in a web browser and follow the instructions on the screen to finish Cachet installation.

Select cache and session drivers and configure mail options.

Configure general site settings like site name, site domain, timezone and language.

Create an administrative user account.

After that, you should get a message that Cachet has been configured successfully. You can open Cachet dashboard by pressing "Go to dashboard" button.

Cachet installation and setup has been completed. 

To access Cachet dashboard append /dashboard to your website URL.