How to install FreeScout on NetBSD

FreeScout is a help desk and ticketing system that can assist businesses in managing customer inquiries and support tickets. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the steps to install FreeScout on NetBSD.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, you need to ensure that you have the following prerequisites installed:

  • NetBSD (version 7.x or later)
  • Web server with PHP (version 7.1 or later) and MySQL (version 5.7 or later)
  • Git

Step 1: Clone the FreeScout repository

Git is a version control system that is used to manage source code. We will use Git to clone the FreeScout repository into your NetBSD system.

  1. Open the terminal on your NetBSD system.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you want to clone the FreeScout repository.
  3. Run the following command to clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout.git

This will clone the repository into a directory called freescout in your current working directory.

Step 2: Install dependencies

Before we can run FreeScout, we need to install its dependencies. The recommended way to install dependencies is by using Composer.

  1. If you don’t have Composer installed, follow the instructions in this tutorial to install it on your NetBSD system.
  2. Navigate to the freescout directory on your terminal.
  3. Run the following command to install the dependencies:
php composer.phar install

This will download and install all the required dependencies listed in the composer.json file.

Step 3: Create a MySQL database

To store FreeScout data, we need to create a new MySQL database. You can use the following steps to create a new MySQL database:

  1. Log in to the MySQL server using the following command:
mysql -u root -p
  1. Enter the MySQL server password when prompted.
  2. Run the following command to create a new database:
CREATE DATABASE freescout;

In this example, we’ve named the database freescout, but you can use any name you like.

Step 4: Configure FreeScout

Next, we need to configure FreeScout to connect to the MySQL database.

  1. Navigate to the freescout directory on your terminal.
  2. Make a copy of the .env.example file using the following command:
cp .env.example .env
  1. Open the .env file in a text editor.
  2. Update the following fields as shown:
APP_URL=http://localhost
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=freescout
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=<your_mysql_password>
  1. Save and close the file.

Step 5: Run migrations

We’re now ready to set up the FreeScout database. FreeScout comes with pre-built database migrations that will create the necessary tables in the database.

  1. Navigate to the freescout directory on your terminal.
  2. Run the following command to run the migrations:
php artisan migrate

This will create the database tables needed for FreeScout to run.

Step 6: Install FreeScout

Finally, we’re ready to install FreeScout on your NetBSD system.

  1. Navigate to the freescout directory on your terminal.
  2. Run the following command to start the install wizard:
php artisan freescout:install

Follow the instructions in the install wizard to complete the installation.

Conclusion

You now have FreeScout running on your NetBSD system! You can access the application by navigating to the URL you specified in the .env file. From here, you can start creating tickets, managing customer inquiries and tracking support requests.