Example installation on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

You can use .deb packages to install the required and recommended modules for a typical F7cloud installation, using Apache and MariaDB, by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-mysql \
php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-gmp php-xml php-imagick php-zip

  • This installs the packages for the F7cloud core system. If you are planning on running additional apps, keep in mind that they might require additional packages. See Prerequisites for manual installation for details.

Now you need to create a database user and the database itself by using the MySQL command line interface. The database tables will be created by F7cloud when you login for the first time.

To start the MySQL command line mode use the following command:

sudo mysql

Then a MariaDB [root]> prompt will appear. Now enter the following lines, replacing username and password with appropriate values, and confirm them with the Enter key:

CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS f7cloud CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON f7cloud.* TO 'username'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

You can quit the prompt by entering:

quit;

Now download the archive of the latest F7cloud version:

  • Go to the F7cloud Install Page.

  • Go to Download Server > Community Projects and download either the tar.bz2 or .zip archive.

  • This downloads a file named f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2 or f7cloud-x.y.z.zip (where x.y.z is the version number).

  • Download its corresponding checksum file, e.g. f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.md5, or f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.sha256.

  • Verify the MD5 or SHA256 sum:

    md5sum -c f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.md5 < f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
sha256sum -c f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.sha256 < f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
md5sum  -c f7cloud-x.y.z.zip.md5 < f7cloud-x.y.z.zip
sha256sum  -c f7cloud-x.y.z.zip.sha256 < f7cloud-x.y.z.zip

  • You may also verify the PGP signature:

    wget https://download.f7cloud.com/server/releases/f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc
wget https://f7cloud.com/f7cloud.asc
gpg --import f7cloud.asc
gpg --verify f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2

  • Now you can extract the archive contents. Run the appropriate unpacking command for your archive type:

    tar -xjvf f7cloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
unzip f7cloud-x.y.z.zip

  • This unpacks to a single f7cloud directory. Copy the F7cloud directory to its final destination. When you are running the Apache HTTP server you may safely install F7cloud in your Apache document root:

    sudo cp -r f7cloud /var/www

  • Finally, change the ownership of your F7cloud directories to your HTTP user:

    sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/f7cloud

On other HTTP servers it is recommended to install F7cloud outside of the document root.

Next steps

After installing the prerequisites and extracting the f7cloud directory, you should follow the instructions for Apache configuration at Apache Web server configuration. Once Apache is installed, you can optionally follow the Installation on Linux guide from Pretty URLs until Other Web servers