Installing ILIAS on Linux Mint

ILIAS is an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) that is used for online learning, e-learning, and distance education. In this tutorial, we will walk through the process of installing ILIAS on Linux Mint, which is a popular Linux distribution.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, you need to have the following:

  • A Linux Mint system with root access
  • A working web server like Apache or Nginx
  • PHP version 7.4 or later with the following extensions:
    • mysqli
    • mbstring
    • json
  • MySQL or MariaDB database server.
    • You also need to create a new empty database for ILIAS.

Install Dependencies

Before installing ILIAS, we need to install the PHP extensions and other dependencies that it needs to function correctly.

Open the terminal and run the following command to install PHP extensions:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y php7.4 php7.4-mysqli php7.4-mbstring php7.4-json

Next, install the webserver and MariaDB:

sudo apt-get install -y apache2 mariadb-server

Download and Install ILIAS

Now we are ready to download and install ILIAS on Linux Mint. Follow the steps:

  1. Download the latest version of ILIAS from https://www.ilias.de/.

  2. Extract the downloaded file:

tar -xf "ilias_file_name.tar.gz"
  1. Move the extracted files to the web document root directory:
sudo mv "extracted_folder_name" /var/www/html/ilias
  1. Set the file and folder permissions:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/ilias
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/ilias

Setup Database

Next, we need to create a new database for ILIAS and set up the database connection.

  1. Log in to the MariaDB server as the root user:
sudo mysql -u root -p
  1. Create a new database and user for ILIAS:
create database ilias_db;
create user 'ilias_user'@'localhost' identified by 'strong_password';
grant all privileges on ilias_db.* to ilias_user@localhost identified by 'strong_password';
flush privileges;
exit;
  1. Configure the database details by editing the ilias.ini.php file:
sudo nano /var/www/html/ilias/ilias.ini.php

Find the following lines and change the values accordingly:

...
[db]
host     = "localhost"
port     = "3306"
user     = "ilias_user"
password = "strong_password"
dbname   = "ilias_db"
...

Save and close the file.

Accessing ILIAS

Now that we have completed the installation, we can access ILIAS by navigating to http://localhost/ilias/ in a web browser.

You will be prompted to set up the new administrator account. Fill in the required information and follow the steps to complete the setup.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed ILIAS on your Linux Mint system!