Installation Prerequisites - Which version should be used?

Good morning,

I want to try SuiteCRM and reading this page https://docs.suitecrm.com/admin/installation-guide/downloading--installing/ didn’t seem clear to me which version of the prequisites I should use.

For example, which version of php should I use?

I will install it on Debian 9.4.

Thanks in advance!

Check this out

https://docs.suitecrm.com/admin/compatibility-matrix/

For PHP, I would go with 7.1, or even 7.2 although it’s not so well tested yet.

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Thank you for your fast reply!

I don’t know if I should ask here or create a new thread, but I’m trying to follow your instructions from another thread here: https://suitecrm.com/suitecrm/forum/installation-upgrade-help/11561-installing-on-ubuntu-16-04-1#45976

It seems packages are a bit different for php 7.1, right?

The apt command results in this:

E: Unable to locate package php7.1-mbstring
E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘php7.1-mbstring’
E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php7.1-mbstring’
E: Unable to locate package php-xml-parser
E: Unable to locate package php7.1-zip
E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘php7.1-zip’
E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php7.1-zip’
E: Unable to locate package php7.1-imap
E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘php7.1-imap’
E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php7.1-imap’
E: Unable to locate package php7.1-gd
E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘php7.1-gd’
E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php7.1-gd’
E: Unable to locate package php7.1-curl
E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘php7.1-curl’
E: Couldn’t find any package by regex ‘php7.1-curl’

Doing apt-cache search mbstring for example, gives me this list:

php-mbstring - MBSTRING module for PHP [default]
php-patchwork-utf8 - UTF-8 strings handling for PHP
php-symfony-polyfill-mbstring - Symfony polyfill for the Mbstring extension
php-symfony-polyfill-util - Symfony utilities for portability of PHP codes
php7.0-mbstring - MBSTRING module for PHP

Aside from that, can you follow the rest of your instructions to the letter?

Thank you!

Yes I think you can basically follow all the instructions. The only thing you need to adapt is the PHP modules, like you said, and the Web server user name (if it’s not www-data).

This might help with PHP: https://docs.suitecrm.com/admin/compatibility-matrix/

And for the web server user name, this command should get it (if you’re running Apache):

ps -ef | egrep '(httpd|apache2|apache)' | grep -v `whoami` | grep -v root | head -n1 | awk '{print $1}'

Use that user name for the “chown” command.

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Hey @ffgs

I’ve been running Suite 7.9.x on Debian 9 for about 9 months. It was a bit different to set up than the Ubuntu instructions but I’ve posted some pointers in the forums. Link to Debian fixes

This week I upgraded to SuiteCRM 7.10.1. It looks to be running great on php 7.0.

As to PHP, the default install on Debian 9.2 or 9.3 which was my clean install was php 7.0. It has worked very well.

I understand that Debian 9.4 will be released in a week or so. I don’t know which version of php will be the default. I suspect if you stay with the default you’ll be OK.

If you have any specific questions re Suite on Debian, just pm me.

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I did a quick look at Debian site.

php7.0 is the only php available on stable.

php7.1 and php7.2 are only available on testing and unstable.

That is why you can’t find the packages in Debian 9 “Stretch” ie. stable.

If you want to use php7.1 or php7.2 you’ll have to go to testing or unstable.

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This isn’t true. I’ve got 7.2 working splendidly on Debian 9

https://www.colinodell.com/blog/201711/installing-php-72

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Thank you!

Cool. I hadn’t seen that. I might look to update!

I should have said that you can only get php7.0 using Debian 9 sources & apt-get.

Hi nuke, thank you for your quick reply!

Your link is really helpful but I’m not quite there yet, now I can’t seem to find php-xml-parser for Debian, and by the way 9.4 was released last weekend if I recall correctly. Do you have any tips on that?

Thank you very much!

Tried apt-get install php7.2-xml?

Not really, I thought php-xml-parser was a different package than php7.2-xml (or php7.1-xml in my case), as I’m basing from this list here: https://suitecrm.com/suitecrm/forum/installation-upgrade-help/11561-installing-on-ubuntu-16-04-1#45976

I will try and report! Thank you!

Try to search for the package using
apt-cache search [package]

ie. apt-cache search php7*

I suspect it will be php7-xml or php7.1-xml as you indicated ??

BTW here is the apt-get command I used when I installed php.

apt-get install php-mbstring php7.0-mbstring php-gettext php-xml-parser php7.0-zip php7.0-gd php7.0-curl php-xdebug php7.0-json php7-imap

I also installed dovecot for email. Hence the php7-imap

I have Debian 9.4 now too. This is the stable branch so all the updates from 9.4 are now included in my install. Originally I started with 9.2 but over the months the rolling stable updates came to my server. I would expect that all the instructions for installing a server and SuiteCRM for Debian 9.0-9.4 should be the same.

I have stayed with the stable branch so everything is well tested before I get the notice to update and more importantly I don’t have to manually check specific application updates (ie. custom install php7.1 or php7.2) and manually update. If stable gets updated to php7.1 or php7.2, then I will get those properly tested through the normal course.

Here is what I get when I run the apt-cache search for your php-xml.

apt-cache search php-xml
php-xml - DOM, SimpleXML, WDDX, XML, and XSL module for PHP [default]
php-xmlrpc - XMLRPC-EPI module for PHP [default]
php-pear - PEAR Base System
php-xml-htmlsax3 - SAX parser for HTML and other badly formed XML documents
php-xml-rpc2 - PHP XML-RPC client/server library
php-xml-svg - XML_SVG API
php7.0-xml - DOM, SimpleXML, WDDX, XML, and XSL module for PHP
php7.0-xmlrpc - XMLRPC-EPI module for PHP

As far as I can see I only installed php-xml-parser. Interestingly it isn’t in the list above. :frowning: ???

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply. I’ve finally installed SuiteCRM! Had a few troubles here and there because my database server is in another VM than application, but all is running fine in php7.2 and MariaDB 10.1.

@nuke: if you use the php from sury.org you will get latest php releases within stable, it is the Debian recommended way of having latest php. See here: https://packages.sury.org/php/README.txt

My question now is related to implementation, but first I should ask: do you guys prefer that I create a new topic for this?

I’ve never messed with a CRM before, so I don’t know what should be my first step implementing this. I want to control how many quotations I have per day, from who, by who, which products etc. Is there a guide for this?

Thank you!

You can check

docs.suitecrm.com

specifically the User guide.

And then ask whatever you need (yes, it’s better on a new thread)