How to Install Xibo on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS

[LHammonds]

------------- WORK-IN-PROGRESS -------------

Greetings and salutations,

I hope this thread will be helpful to those who follow in my foot steps as well as getting any advice based on what I have done / documented.

To discuss this thread, please participate here: Ubuntu Forums

High-level overview

Xibo allows multiple displays to show media contained on multiple different screen layouts on a scheduled basis.

This tutorial will cover how to manually setup a Xibo server which will use a separate dedicated database server rather than using the Docker image system.

The server will be installed inside a virtual machine in vSphere running on ESXi servers. Notes will also be supplied for doing the same thing for VirtualBox on a Windows 10 PC. Although there are some VMware-specific and VirtualBox-specific steps, they are very few and the majority of this documentation will work for other Virtual Machines or even directly installed onto a physical machine (e.g. bare-metal install). If you have any advice on doing things better, please let me know by replying to the Ubuntu forums thread above.

Tools utilized in this process

• Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS (Legacy Installer)
• Apache 2.4.41
• PHP 7.4.3
• MariaDB 10.5.15
• Xibo 3.1.2 (3.1.0 and 3.1.1 have bugs in the installer)
• Portable PuTTY 0.76
• VMware vSphere 6.0.0
• VirtualBox 6.1.34

Helpful links

The list below are sources of information that was helpful in the creation of this document.

• Ubuntu Documentation
• Xibo Documentation

These links may or may not be helpful:

• Install Linux on Android TV Box
• How to install LibreELEC on Android TV Box

Assumptions

This documentation will need to make use of some very-specific information that will most-likely be different for each person / location. And as such, this information will be noted in this section. They will be highlighted in red throughout the document as a reminder that you should plug-in your own value rather than actually using these "place-holder" values.

Under no circumstance should you use the actual values listed below. They are place-holders for the real thing. This is just a checklist template you need to have answered before you start the install process.

Wherever you see RED in this document, you need to substitute it for you will use in your environment.

• Ubuntu Server name: srv-xibo
• Ubuntu Server IP address: 192.168.107.12
• Database Server Name (remote): srv-mariadb
• Database Server IP (remote): 192.168.107.20
• Database Admin ID: root
• Database Admin Password: rootpass
• Database ID: xibouser
• Database Password: xibouserpass
• Xibo Library Location: /srv/xibo-library
• Xibo Secret Key: YourSecretXiboKey
• Email Server Name (remote): srv-mail
• Email Server IP (remote): 192.168.107.25
• Ubuntu Admin ID: administrator
• Ubuntu Admin Password: myadminpass

Xibo Ubuntu Server - Setup an Ubuntu server for use as the Xibo server. This tutorial assumes the server was configured according to this tutorial: How to install and configure Ubuntu Server

MySQL/MariaDB server - Setup a separate and dedicated database server. This tutorial assumes the server was configured according to this tutorial: How to install and configure MariaDB

It is also assumed the reader knows how to use the VI editor. If not, you will need to beef up your skill set or use a different editor in place of it.

[LHammonds]

Partition Changes

We will be using the /srv partition to store the large video files so we will need to increase this partition. We will assume we have an additional 30 GB of free space available in our volume group. Here are the commands to increase the volume to 21 GB and then expand the file system to 20 GB.

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sudo lvextend -L21G /dev/LVG/srv
sudo resize2fs /dev/LVG/srv 20G

Server Name Resolution

You might need to edit your local host file so you can use friendly names for servers if you don't add them to your internal DNS servers.

Edit the local host file:

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sudo vi /etc/hosts

Add your servers to the end of the file as needed. Example:

192.168.107.20 srv-database 192.168.107.25 srv-mail

Configure MariaDB / MySQL

In this scenario, a dedicated and general-purpose database server already exists and it will be used to hold the application's database.

1. Connect to the MariaDB/MySQL server using PuTTY.
2. At the login prompt, login with your administrator account (administrator / myadminpass)
3. Type the following commands:
   sudo mysql -u root -p Enter password: rootpass
   CREATE DATABASE xibo CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin; CREATE USER 'xibouser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'xibouserpass'; GRANT ALL ON xibo.* TO 'xibouser'@'%'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit
   The above commands will allow the database account to connect from any machine from anywhere in the world. This might be OK if your database is not accessible outside your local network or if your machine name changes or you have multiple servers that connect to the same database that use the same ID. You can make this more secure by specifying your application server when granting access. Make sure the database server will recognize the server name (via hosts file or DNS) or just use the IP address:
   
   CREATE USER 'xibouser'@'srv-xibo' IDENTIFIED BY 'xibouserpass'; GRANT ALL ON xibo.* TO 'xibouser'@'srv-xibo';
   or
   CREATE USER 'xibouser'@'192.168.107.12' IDENTIFIED BY 'xibouserpass'; GRANT ALL ON xibo.* TO 'xibouser'@'192.168.107.12';
   This will prevent anyone knowing the credentials from logging into the database from any other remote machine not specified in the grant command.
   
   If your application is running on the database server (typical on a developer machine / non-production scenario), create the user like this:
   CREATE USER 'xibouser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'xibouserpass'; GRANT ALL ON xibo.* TO 'xibouser'@'localhost';
   This will prevent anyone knowing the credentials from logging into the database from any other remote machine.
   
   If you mess anything up, you can remove the database and user by issuing these commands:
   DROP USER xibouser; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; DROP DATABASE xibo;

Binlog Format

If you cannot login but you have the right ID and password, you might need to enable mixed mode binary logging on the database server. Here is how you can change the logging mode if necessary.

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vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf

The default value is as follows even if it does not exist in the config file:

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[mysqld]
binlog-format=STATEMENT

To change to mixed mode, set it as follows:

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[mysqld]
binlog-format=MIXED

And restart the service:

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systemctl restart mysql

Install Apache Web Server

Follow this tutorial on how to install and configure Apache web server.

Your site will need to upload files larger than 8 MB which requires increasing this limit in PHP. The below will modify the upload limit to allow files as large as 4 GB to be uploaded (adjust to your needs).

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sudo vi /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini

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max_execution_time = 200
post_max_size = 4096M
upload_max_filesize = 4096M

Reload Apache for changes to the config to take affect:

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sudo systemctl reload apache2

Install Xibo Prerequisites

1. At the server console, type the following:

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   sudo apt -y install php7.4-mysql php7.4-gd php7.4-soap php7.4-xml php7.4-zip php7.4-curl php7.4-mbstring php-zmq
   a2enmod rewrite
   systemctl restart apache2

2. If you plan on utilizing email functions (and who doesn't!!!), type the following commands:

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   sudo apt -y install php-pear
   sudo pear install mail
   sudo pear install Net_SMTP

3. Create a test file with the following commands:

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   sudo printf '%s\n' '<?php' 'phpinfo();' '?>' > /var/www/html/testphp.php
   sudo chown www-data:root /var/www/html/testphp.php
   sudo chmod 644 /var/www/html/testphp.php

4. Now visit http://192.168.107.12/testphp.php and see if you get the phpinfo page.
5. When finished with the test page and validating all require modules are enabled, delete the info page.

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   sudo rm /var/www/html/testphp.php

[LHammonds]

1. Copy the URL of the current release by visiting https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases

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   wget https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases/download/3.1.2/xibo-cms-3.1.2.tar.gz -O /tmp/xibo.tar.gz
   sudo mkdir -p /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com
   sudo tar xvzf /tmp/xibo.tar.gz -C /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com/ --strip-components=1
   sudo chown www-data:root --recursive /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com
   sudo find /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com/web. -type d -exec chmod 755 '{}' \+
   sudo find /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com/web. -type f -exec chmod 644 '{}' \+
   rm /tmp/xibo.tar.gz
   mkdir /srv/xibo-library
   sudo chown www-data:root /srv/xibo-library

2. Create the Apache web config file for Xibo

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   sudo touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/xibo.mydomain.com.conf
   sudo chown root:root /etc/apache2/sites-available/xibo.mydomain.com.conf
   sudo chmod 644 /etc/apache2/sites-available/xibo.mydomain.com.conf
   sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/xibo.mydomain.com.conf

   Copy/Paste the contents into the xibo configuration file:

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   <VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
     ServerName mydomain.com
     ServerAlias xibo.mydomain.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com/web
     <Directory /var/www/xibo.mydomain.com/web>
       Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
       AllowOverride All
       Require all granted
     </Directory>
     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/xibo.mydomain.com-error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/xibo.mydomain.com-access.log combined
   </VirtualHost>
   

   Validate the configuration file syntax and ensure it shows "Syntax OK"

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   sudo apache2ctl configtest

   Enable the host configuration:

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   sudo a2ensite xibo.mydomain.com

3. Visit http://xibo.mydomain.com/
4. If you are missing any libraries such as "ZIP" you can run the following command to search the repository for available libraries to install:

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   apt-cache search php zip

5. If the installation wizard shows all requirements have been met, click Next
6. Select the "Use an existing database" tab and set the following, then click Next:
   * Check: Use an existing database
   * Host: srv-database
   * Database Name: xibo
   * Database Username: xibouser
   * Database Password: xibouserpassword
7. Xibo Administrator Account - Set the following and click Next:
   * Admin Username: xiboadmin
   * Admin Password: xiboadminpass
8. Library Location - Set the following and click Next:
   * Library Location: /srv/xibo-library
   * Server Key: YourSecretXiboKey
   * Check: Statistics
9. Xibo was successfully installed - If you see this screen, login with your xiboadmin user account you just specified.