How to install Sylius on Debian 8

In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Sylius on a Debian 8 VPS with MariaDB, PHP-FPM and Nginx. Sylius is a modern e-commerce application build on top of Symfony 2 components. This guide should work on other Linux VPS systems as well but was tested and written for an Debian 8 VPS.

Login to your VPS via SSH

ssh user@vps

Update the system and install necessary packages

[user]$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
[user]$ sudo apt-get install curl

Install MariaDB 10.0

To install the latest MariaDB 10 version, run the following commands:

[user]$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xcbcb082a1bb943db
[user]$ sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://mirror.jmu.edu/pub/mariadb/repo/10.0/debian jessie main'
[user]$ sudo apt-get update
[user]$ sudo apt-get install -y mariadb-server

When the installation is complete, run the following command to secure your installation:

[user]$ mysql_secure_installation

Next, we need to create a database for our Sylius installation.

[user]$ mysql -uroot -p
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE syliusdb;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON syliusdb.* TO 'syliusdbuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'syliusdbuserpasswd';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Install Nginx

The latest version of Nginx, version 1.8 is not available via the default Debian repositories, so we will add the Dotdeb repository. Open the /etc/apt/sources.list file and append the following lines:

[user]$ sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://packages.dotdeb.org jessie all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org jessie all

Fetch and install the GnuPG key:

[user]$ curl -sS http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Update the system and install Nginx:

[user]$ sudo apt-get update
[user]$ sudo apt-get -y install nginx

Install PHP and required PHP modules

To install the latest stable version of PHP version 5.6 and all nessesary modules, run:

[user]$ sudo apt-get -y install php5-fpm php5-cli php5-gd php5-mysqlnd php5-curl php5-intl

Install Composer

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP with which you can install packages. Composer will pull all the required libraries you need for your project.

[user]$ curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
[user]$ sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Install Sylius

[user]$ cd ~/
[user]$ composer create-project sylius/sylius:v0.14.0

The script will ask you several question:

Creating the "app/config/parameters.yml" file
Some parameters are missing. Please provide them.
sylius.database.driver (pdo_mysql):
sylius.database.host (127.0.0.1):
sylius.database.port (null):
sylius.database.name (sylius): syliusdb
sylius.database.path (null):
sylius.database.user (root): syliusdbuser
sylius.database.password (null): syliusdbuserpasswd

[user]$ cd sylius
[user]$ php app/console sylius:install --env prod

The script above will check if everything is setup to run Sylius properly and ask you few additional questions.

PHP-FPM configuration

Create a new PHP-FPM pool for your user:

[user]$ cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/$(whoami).conf
[$(whoami)]
user = $(whoami)  
group = $(whoami)  
listen = /var/run/php5-fpm-$(whoami).sock  
listen.owner = $(whoami)
listen.group = $(whoami)  
listen.mode = 0666  
pm = ondemand  
pm.max_children = 5  
pm.process_idle_timeout = 10s;  
pm.max_requests = 200  
chdir = /
EOF

Restart PHP-FPM:

[user]$ sudo service php5-fpm restart

Nginx configuration

Create a new Nginx server block with the following content:

[user]$ cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/mySylius.com
server {
    server_name mySylius.com;
    listen 80;
    root $HOME/sylius/web;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/sylius-access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/sylius-error.log;

    location / {
        try_files \$uri /app.php\$is_args\$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/app\.php(/|\$) {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm-$(whoami).sock;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)\$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME \$document_root\$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
        fastcgi_buffer_size 16k;
        fastcgi_buffers 4 16k;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }    
}
EOF

Activate the server block by creating a symbolic link :

[user]$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mySylius.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mySylius.com

Test the Nginx configuration and restart nginx:

[user]$ sudo nginx -t
[user]$ sudo service nginx restart

That’s it. You have successfully installed Sylius on your Debian 8 VPS. For more information about how to manage your Sylius installation, please refer to the Sylius website.

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