Tutorial: How to Install Firefly III on Linux Mint

Firefly III is a personal finance manager that helps you keep track of your expenses, budget, and investments. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Firefly III on Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following:

A Linux Mint installed on your system
An Apache web server installed and running
A database management system like MariaDB or MySQL installed and running
PHP installed on your system

Step 1: Download Firefly III

First, we need to download the latest version of Firefly III from their website. You can do this by going to https://firefly-iii.org/ and clicking on the "Download Firefly III" button, or by running the following command:

wget https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii/releases/download/5.5.5/firefly-iii-5.5.5.zip

This will download the Firefly III zip file to your current working directory.

Step 2: Extract the Firefly III archive

Next, we need to extract the Firefly III zip file to our Apache web server root directory. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo unzip firefly-iii-5.5.5.zip -d /var/www/html/

This will extract the Firefly III files to the "/var/www/html/" directory.

Step 3: Set file permissions

We need to set the file permissions for the Firefly III directory. You can do this by running the following commands:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/firefly-iii/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/firefly-iii/

This will ensure that Apache has read and write access to the Firefly III directory.

Step 4: Create a database

Now, we need to create a new database for Firefly III. You can do this by logging in to your database management system using the following command:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Once you're logged in, create a new database with the following command:

CREATE DATABASE firefly_db;

Replace "firefly_db" with the name you want for your database.

Step 5: Create a database user

Next, we need to create a new database user with privileges to access our Firefly III database. You can do this by running the following command:

CREATE USER 'firefly_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Replace "firefly_user" and "password" with your desired username and password.

Grant the user all privileges on the Firefly III database with the following command:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON firefly_db.* TO 'firefly_user'@'localhost';

Step 6: Configure Firefly III

Now, we need to configure Firefly III to use our new database.

Copy the ".env.example" file to ".env" with the following command:

cd /var/www/html/firefly-iii/
sudo cp .env.example .env

Edit the ".env" file with your favorite text editor and fill in your database credentials:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_DATABASE=firefly_db
DB_USERNAME=firefly_user
DB_PASSWORD=password

Replace "firefly_db", "firefly_user", and "password" with the information you set earlier.

Step 7: Enable required PHP extensions

We need to enable some PHP extensions that Firefly III requires. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install php-mbstring php-dom php-curl php-gd php-xml php-zip -y

This will install the required PHP extensions.

Step 8: Restart Apache

Finally, we need to restart Apache to apply the changes we made. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 9: Access Firefly III

Open your favorite web browser and navigate to your server's IP address or domain name followed by "/firefly-iii/public". For example, if your server's IP address is "192.168.1.100", you would go to "http://192.168.1.100/firefly-iii/public".

You should see the Firefly III login screen. Congratulations! You have successfully installed Firefly III on Linux Mint.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we showed you how to install Firefly III on Linux Mint, from downloading the software to configuring it for your database. With Firefly III, you can now manage your personal finances more effectively.