How to install SuiteCRM on Fedora 25 Minimal

[Jared Busch]

The official SuiteCRM instructions are absolutely atrocious.

This guide assumes that you are starting from Fedora 25 Minimal similar to where these instructions leave you.

This guide also assumes that you are installing SuiteCRM 7.8.3. The instructions for other versions may or may not differ.

Install useful packages

dnf install -y wget nano rsync sysstat htop glances

Install required packages

dnf install -y unzip httpd mariadb mariadb-server php php-mysqli php-gd php-xml php-mbstring php-pecl-zip php-imap php-pear-Net-Curl ImageMagick policycoreutils-python-utils

Download SuiteCRM from here: https://suitecrm.com/download
You will have to register to get the download file.
Copy the downloaded ZIP file to your server with SCP/FTP/whatever
For example: scp SuiteCRM-7.8.3.zip root@10.254.0.55:/root/SuiteCRM-7.8.3.zip

Assuming you copied it to /root, extract the zip

unzip SuiteCRM-7.8.3.zip -d /var/www/html

Rename the extracted folder

mv /var/www/html/SuiteCRM-7.8.3 /var/www/html/suitecrm

Set ownership

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/suitecrm/

Set read/write permissions

chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/suitecrm/
chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/cache
chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/custom
chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/modules
chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/themes
chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/data
chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/upload
chmod 775 /var/www/html/suitecrm/config_override.php

Open the firewall for http

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=http/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

Start the mariadb and set to start on boot

systemctl start mariadb
systemctl enable mariadb

Create a database for SuiteCRM and a user to access it.

mysql -e "CREATE DATABASE suitecrm;"
mysql -e "CREATE USER 'scrmuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'scrmuserpassword';"
mysql -e "GRANT ALL ON suitecrm.* TO 'scrmuser'@'localhost';"
mysql -e "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"

Secure mariadb. These commands do what mysql_secure_installation does interactively

mysql -e "UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('somesecurepassword') WHERE User='root';"
mysql -e "DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE User='root' AND Host NOT IN ('localhost', '127.0.0.1', '::1');"
mysql -e "DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE User='';"
mysql -e "DROP DATABASE test;"
mysql -e "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"

Tell SELinux to let it send mail and talk on the network

setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail 1
setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

Tell SELinux that these directories need to write

semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/cache(/.*)?"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/cache
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/custom(/.*)?"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/custom
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/modules(/.*)?"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/modules
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/themes(/.*)?"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/themes
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/data(/.*)?"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/data
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/upload(/.*)?"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/upload
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/suitecrm/config_override.php"
restorecon -R /var/www/html/suitecrm/config_override.php

Edit /etc/php.ini to have the following settings found in the upgrade section of the official guide

sed -i -e 's/post_max_size = 8M/post_max_size = 60M/' /etc/php.ini
sed -i -e 's/upload_max_filesize = 2M/upload_max_filesize = 60M/' /etc/php.ini
sed -i -e 's/max_input_time = 60/max_input_time = 300/' /etc/php.ini
sed -i -e 's/memory_limit = 128M/memory_limit = 256M/' /etc/php.ini

Create an Apache virtual host file

cat > /etc/httpd/conf.d/suitecrm.conf << EOF
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    <Directory /var/www/html/suitecrm>
        Allow From All
        AllowOverride All
        Options +Indexes
   </Directory>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/suitecrm
    ServerName crm.domain.com
        ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/suitecrm.error.log
        CustomLog /var/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
EOF

Restart Apache and enable for reboot.

systemctl restart httpd
systemctl enable httpd

Disbale SELinux temporarily.

setenforce 0 

Make sure your DNS name is setup wherever your DNS is controlled.

Go to install page
http://crm.domain.com/install.php

Accept the agreement and click next.

Verify everything shows ok and click next.

Change the SuiteCRM Database user to Provide Existing User.

Populate the database appropriately.
Change the server to localhost and fill in with the database user and password previously setup.

Populate the initial admin account info

Expand each of these options and set them up appropriately.
I leave everything default, except for populating the email settings.

Click next, and you will see a progress bar while it sets everything up and then get redirected to the login page.

Go turn SELinux back to enforcing.

setenforce 1