I'm trying to install SuiteCRM on my Windows system using Apache 2.4.58, PHP 8.2.12, and MariaDB/MySQL. I extracted the SuiteCRM files and navigated to http://localhost/suitecrm/public/, but I’m getting the following error:

I’m trying to install SuiteCRM on my Windows system using Apache 2.4.58, PHP 8.2.12, and MariaDB/MySQL. I extracted the SuiteCRM files and navigated to http://localhost/suitecrm/public/, but I’m getting the following error:

Oops! An Error Occurred
The server returned a “500 Internal Server Error”.

I checked the SuiteCRM installation logs and found this:

ERROR: Cannot create writable dir cache/upload/import
MySQL error 1044: Access denied for user ‘suiteuser’@‘localhost’ to database ‘suitecrm_db’
Invalid CSRF token

Also, I faced issues creating the database and user privileges using phpMyAdmin’s SQL window. Even though I used the following command:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON suitecrm_db.* TO ‘suiteuser’@‘localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘Suite@123’;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

It gave me:

Error: #1046 No database selected

So, I manually created the database first with:

CREATE DATABASE suitecrm_db;

But the installer still fails at the run-legacy-install step.

Additionally, phpMyAdmin now shows:

Cannot connect: invalid settings.
mysqli::real_connect(): (HY000/2002): No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it
#2006 - MySQL server has gone away

What I’ve tried:

  • Verified suiteuser has correct privileges.
  • Rechecked config_si.php and .env.local.
  • File and folder permissions seem okay.
  • MySQL service might be refusing connections, or not running reliably.
  • Apache and PHP are working fine.

Can someone help me troubleshoot:

  1. Why the SuiteCRM installer can’t connect/create the database even when it exists?
  2. What could be causing the 500 error?
  3. Why phpMyAdmin is unable to connect (even though it was working earlier)?
  4. Any known compatibility issue with SuiteCRM and PHP 8.2 or MariaDB?

Any help would be really appreciated. Thank you!

The problem with directories not being writable is a permissions problem. Are you sure about the user name you used in the chown?

If you have SELinux, that also needs some permissions.

About creating the database, the instructions (you’re following the official instructions, right?) don’t tell you to do that. The installer takes care of all that for you.

Hello Bhupendra,

just to clarify - you’ve got a virtual machine or similar with Linux on top of your Windows system?

Since SuiteCRM 8.x, Windows is not supported anymore:

therefore you might run into all sorts of issues.
Best to stick to supported / standard environments - then installation just takes a few minutes.