How to Install Sylius eCommerce Platform on FreeBSD 12

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Sylius is a modern e-commerce platform for PHP, based on the Symfony Framework. Sylius source code is hosted on GitHub.

This guide will walk you through the Sylius installation process on a fresh FreeBSD 12 Vultr instance using PHP, MariaDB as a database, and Nginx as a web server.

Requirements

To be able to install Sylius you will need:

• Vultr server instance with at least 2048 MB of memory.
• Nginx or Apache. In this guide, we use Nginx.
• PHP version 7.2 or greater with some specific PHP extensions: gd, exif, fileinfo, intl
• PHP configuration settings: memory_limit equal to or greater than 1024M, date.timezone
• MySQL version 5.7 or 8.0 or MariaDB equivalent
• Composer
• Node.js
• Yarn

Before you begin

Check the FreeBSD version.

uname -ro
# FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE

Ensure that your FreeBSD system is up to date.

freebsd-update fetch install
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y

Install the necessary packages.

pkg install -y sudo vim unzip curl wget bash socat git

Create a new user account with your preferred username. We will use johndoe.

adduser

# Username: johndoe
# Full name: John Doe
# Uid (Leave empty for default): <Enter>
# Login group [johndoe]: <Enter>
# Login group is johndoe. Invite johndoe into other groups? []: wheel
# Login class [default]: <Enter>
# Shell (sh csh tcsh nologin) [sh]: bash
# Home directory [/home/johndoe]: <Enter>
# Home directory permissions (Leave empty for default): <Enter>
# Use password-based authentication? [yes]: <Enter>
# Use an empty password? (yes/no) [no]: <Enter>
# Use a random password? (yes/no) [no]: <Enter>
# Enter password: your_secure_password
# Enter password again: your_secure_password
# Lock out the account after creation? [no]: <Enter>
# OK? (yes/no): yes
# Add another user? (yes/no): no
# Goodbye!

Run the visudo command and uncomment the %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL line, to allow members of the wheel group to execute any command.

visudo

# Uncomment by removing hash (#) sign
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now, switch to your newly created user with su.

su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo tzsetup

Install PHP

Install PHP and required PHP extensions.

sudo pkg install -y php73 php73-mbstring php73-tokenizer php73-pdo php73-pdo_mysql php73-openssl php73-hash php73-json php73-phar php73-filter php73-zlib php73-dom php73-xml php73-xmlwriter php73-xmlreader php73-curl php73-session php73-ctype php73-iconv php73-gd php73-simplexml php73-zip php73-filter php73-tokenizer php73-calendar php73-fileinfo php73-intl php73-phar php73-soap php73-xmlrpc php73-opcache php73-mysqli php73-bcmath php73-gmp php73-exif

Check the version.

php --version
# PHP 7.3.8 (cli) (built: Aug  8 2019 01:28:36) ( NTS )

Soft-link php.ini-production to php.ini.

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini

Enable and start PHP-FPM.

sudo sysrc php_fpm_enable=yes
sudo service php-fpm start

Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/php.ini and set memory_limit to 1024M or more, and set up date.timezone.

memory_limit = 1024M
date.timezone = Region/City

Restart PHP-FPM.

sudo service php-fpm restart

Install MariaDB and create a database

Install MariaDB.

sudo pkg install -y mariadb102-client mariadb102-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.25-MariaDB, for FreeBSD12.0 (amd64) using readline 5.1

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo sysrc mysql_enable="yes" 
sudo service mysql-server start

Run the mysql_secure installation script to improve security and set the password for the root user.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Connect to the shell as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password

Create an empty database and user for Sylius, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

NOTE: Replace dbname and username with appropriate names for your setup. Replace password with a strong password.

Install Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo pkg install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.16.1

Enable and start Nginx.

sudo sysrc nginx_enable=yes
sudo service nginx start

Configure Nginx for Sylius. Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/sylius.conf and populate the file with the following configuration.

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  root /usr/local/www/sylius/public;
  location / {
    try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
  }
  location ~ ^/index\.php(/|$) {
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $realpath_root;
    internal;
  }
  location ~ \.php$ {
    return 404;
  }
  client_max_body_size 6m;
}

Save the file and exit with :+W+Q.

Now we need to include sylius.conf in the main nginx.conf file.

Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf and add the following line to the http {} block.

include sylius.conf;

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo service nginx restart

Install Composer

Install Composer globally.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'a5c698ffe4b8e849a443b120cd5ba38043260d5c4023dbf93e1558871f1f07f58274fc6f4c93bcfd858c6bd0775cd8d1') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.9.0 2019-08-02 20:55:32

Install Node.js

Install Node.js.

sudo pkg install -y node

Check the version.

node --version
# v12.4.0

Install Yarn

Install the Yarn package manager.

sudo pkg install -y yarn

Check the version.

yarn --version
# 1.16.0

Install Sylius

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/www/sylius

Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/sylius directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /usr/local/www/sylius

Navigate to the document root folder.

cd /usr/local/www/sylius

Initiate a new Sylius project by running this command:

composer create-project sylius/sylius-standard .

Run vim .env.local to enter database details and to run Sylius in an environment of choice.

APP_ENV=prod
DATABASE_URL=mysql://username:[email protected]/dbname

NOTE: Replace username, password and dbname with your database details.

After everything is in place, run the following command to install Sylius:

php bin/console sylius:install -e prod 

In order to see a fully functional front-end, you will need to install its assets. Sylius uses Gulp to build front-end assets using Yarn as a JavaScript package manager. Having Yarn installed, go to your project directory to install the dependencies.

yarn install

Then build the front-end assets by running:

yarn build

Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/sylius directory to www.

sudo chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/sylius

Create /var/lib/php/session/ directory and change ownership to www.

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/php/session && sudo chown -R www:www /var/lib/php/session

Restart the PHP-FPM service.

sudo service php-fpm restart

The Sylius e-commerce platform is installed. By default, administration panel routes to /admin.