Summary

Joomla! is one of popular PHP content management systems (aka CMS). It is good for portal-like websites as well as blogging platforms.
The first version was released in 2005 and, after long progress, the latest major one was done two years ago (on 2021-08-17).

This post shows how to install Joomla! with PHP/PHP-FPM on OpenBSD, the solid OS. All of them are the latest as of today.

Environment

• OS: OpenBSD 7.3
• Database: MariaDB 10.9
• Web: OpenBSD's httpd
  • managed with httpd.conf
• App: PHP 8.2
  • PHP-FPM
• CMS: Joomla! 4.3.4

Reference posts

In case any of them are not done:

• Install MariaDB
• Set up httpd
• Install PHP

Notes on Joomla!'s system requirements

PHP 8.2 is not what is recommended officially by them today (See: their Technical Requirements). It got, however, "improved support" in 4.3 release, which is described in their "What’s new in Joomla 4.3.0 Stable?". Therefore, PHP 8.2 should be a better option than 8.1 now. Besides, as to the other option, 8.0, its support will come to an end soon (See: PHP's Supported Versions).

Tutorial

Prepare database

Connect to the server with client tool (for example, running mysql -u root -p), and run:

-- create database
CREATE DATABASE <dbname> \
    CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 \
    COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

-- create user
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES \
    ON <dbname>.* \
    TO <dbuser>@'localhost' \
    IDENTIFIED BY '<dbpass>';

-- flush
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Install and activate PHP extensions

Get mysqli for MariaDB connection:

$ doas pkg_add php-mysqli

The output, my choice and the result were:

quirks-6.122 signed on 2023-09-01T21:25:11Z
Ambiguous: choose package for php-mysqli
a   0: <None>
    1: php-mysqli-7.4.33
    2: php-mysqli-8.0.30
    3: php-mysqli-8.1.22
    4: php-mysqli-8.2.9
Your choice: 4
php-mysqli-8.2.9: ok

It is necessary to activate it (and also opcache). Run:

$ doas ln -s /etc/php-8.2.sample/* /etc/php-8.2/

Now they are activated:

$ ls -l /etc/php-8.2
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  30 Sep  2 10:09 mysqli.ini -> /etc/php-8.2.sample/mysqli.ini
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  31 Sep  2 10:09 opcache.ini -> /etc/php-8.2.sample/opcache.ini

Get Joomla! package

Suppose that our working directory is /var/www/joomla.

Run to download from their releases in GitHub:

$ curl -LO https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/releases/download/4.3.4/Joomla_4.3.4-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz

Decompress and extract it:

$ tar xzf Joomla_4.3.4-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz

Set permissions for web user:

$ doas chown -R www:www ./*

Add httpd (Web) server(s)

If you don't have the activated daemons of either httpd or PHP-FPM 8.2, you have to make them ready. (See Reference posts.)

If so, continue and add defition on Joomla! server(s):

$ doas nvim /etc/httpd.conf

Write like below in it. Here, <fqdn> is up to you. <chroot-parent-dir> must be empty. (It is up to your working directory.) In addition, TLS configuration files are necessary to enable TLS (see below).

server "<fqdn>" {
        listen on egress tls port https
        tls {    
                certificate     "/etc/ssl/<fqdn>.crt"
                key             "/etc/ssl/private/<fqdn>.key"
        }
        log {
                access  "<fqdn>-access.log"
                error   "<fqdn>-error.log"
        }

        # it depends on your working directory under `/var/www` and `chroot` settings:
        root "<chroot-parent-dir>/joomla"
        directory index index.php

        location "/*.php" { 
                fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
        } 
        location "/*.php[/?]*" { 
                fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
        } 
}

Restart the daemon:

$ doas rcctl restart httpd
httpd(ok)
httpd(ok)

Now we can access to Joomla!'s web installer with web browser. Connect to https://<fqdn>/ !!

TLS configuration files

It is able to get them via requests to Let's Encrypt with acme-client. (See: How to conifugre OpenBSD acme-client).

Alternatively, you can get them as self-signed certificates with command lines such as:

$ cd /etc/ssl



$ # [ consts ]

$ # case ksh:

$ export MY_DOMAIN="..."

$ export MY_COUNTRY_CODE="XX"

$ export MY_STATE="..."

$ export MY_ORGANIZATION="..."

$ # case fish:

$ # set -x MY_DOMAIN "..."; (...)



$ # [ generate ]

$ doas openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -new -nodes -x509 -days 36500 -keyout private/$MY_DOMAIN.key -out $MY_DOMAIN.crt </span>

    -subj "/C=$MY_COUNTRY_CODE/ST=$MY_STATE/L=/O=$MY_ORGANIZATION/OU=/CN=$MY_DOMAIN"

$ doas chmod 400 private/$MY_DOMAIN.key



$ # return to your working directory

Server without TLS connection (Optional)

You may build another server which uses http instead of https (less secure):

# httpd.conf

<         listen on egress tls port https

<         tls {


<                 certificate     "/etc/ssl/<fqdn>.crt"

<                 key             "/etc/ssl/private/<fqdn>.key"

<         }

>         listen on egress port http

Servers with and without TLS connection (Optional)

In addition, you can also redirect all http requests to https as needed:

# httpd.conf

server "<fqdn>" {

        listen on egress http

        # (...)

        block return 301 "https://$SERVER_NAME$REQUEST_URI"

}

server "<fqdn>" {

        listen on egress tls port https

        # (...)

}

Set it up with web installer

All you have to do is just follow them. Well, in my case, the <fqdn> above was 192.168.122.175.

Select default language and enter site name:

Create the system administrator:

Enter database information, and clicking the button will start the actual installation:

Success messages will be shown:

Validate installation

You will see the front page when https://<fqdn>/ is accessed to:

The admin entrance will be shown with https://<fqdn>/administrator/ accessed to:

When authentication is successful, the admin panel will be shown:

Conclusion

Now you are ready to build your website with the latest Joomla! Here shows an example about a very small step. Upload a media file in Media view:

Click "Upload" and choose a file. I tried one of the OpenBSD logos. It was successful :)

As shown in this post, it is not tough work to build and serve PHP apps on OpenBSD, when httpd and PHP-FPM are configured. It's because their project and community support PHP and also components around web service.

🕊 Happy serving 💫