Installing ILIAS on Alpine Linux Latest

ILIAS is a web-based learning management system developed in Germany. In this tutorial, we will be installing ILIAS on Alpine Linux Latest.

Prerequisites

• A server running Alpine Linux Latest.
• A user with sudo privileges.

Step 1: Install necessary packages

The first step is to install the necessary packages to run ILIAS on Alpine Linux. Open a terminal and run the following command:

sudo apk add php7 php7-fpm php7-zlib php7-zip php7-bz2 php7-ctype php7-fileinfo php7-gd php7-json php7-ldap php7-mbstring php7-mysqlnd php7-opcache php7-openssl php7-pdo php7-xmlreader php7-xmlwriter php7-session php7-mysqli nginx mysql mysql-client

Step 2: Configure MySQL

Next, we’ll configure MySQL. Run the following command to start the MySQL service:

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

Then, we’ll create a database user and database for ILIAS:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Enter your MySQL root password and run the following SQL commands:

CREATE USER 'iliasadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
CREATE DATABASE iliasdb;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON iliasdb.* TO 'iliasadmin'@'localhost';

Step 3: Download and extract ILIAS

For this step, you can either download the latest version of ILIAS from the official website or use the following command to download it directly from the terminal:

wget https://download.ilias.de/ilias-5.4.11.zip

Once it’s downloaded, extract the zip file:

unzip ilias-5.4.11.zip

This will extract ILIAS to a folder called ilias-5.4.11. Rename this folder to ilias.

Step 4: Configure NGINX and PHP-FPM

Now that we have ILIAS extracted, we’ll configure NGINX and PHP-FPM to run ILIAS.

Configure NGINX

Open the NGINX configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add the following block of code to the http section:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  your_domain.com; # Replace with your domain name or IP address
    root         /path/to/ilias;
 
    location / {
        index  index.html index.htm index.php;
    }
 
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass   unix:/run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include        fastcgi_params;
     }
}

Save the file and exit.

Configure PHP-FPM

Open the PHP-FPM configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Change the following lines:

user = nginx
group = nginx
listen = /run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock

To:

user = nobody
group = nobody
listen = /run/php/php7.3-fpm.sock

Save the file and exit.

Restart both NGINX and PHP-FPM:

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

sudo /etc/init.d/php7-fpm restart

Step 5: Run ILIAS setup

Open your web browser and navigate to http://your_domain.com/setup. Replace your_domain.com with your actual domain name or IP address.

Follow the setup wizard to complete the installation process. When prompted for the database information, use the following details:

• Database Type: MySQL
• Database Name: iliasdb
• Database Host: localhost
• Database User: iliasadmin
• Database Password: yourpassword (the password you set during Step 2)

After the installation is complete, you can access ILIAS by navigating to http://your_domain.com.