How to Install BookStack on Alpine Linux Latest

BookStack is an open-source platform for creating documentation and knowledge bases. It offers a highly customizable interface and user-friendly collaborative features.

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of BookStack on Alpine Linux Latest.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with the BookStack installation, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

• A server or virtual machine with Alpine Linux Latest installed.
• A non-root user with sudo privileges.
• A static IP address configured on your server.

Step 1: Update and Upgrade the System

First, before we install any packages, we should update and upgrade our system to make sure everything is up to date.

sudo apk update && sudo apk upgrade

Step 2: Install Required Dependencies

To run BookStack on Alpine Linux, we need to install a few dependencies:

sudo apk add php7 php7-fpm php7-json php7-intl php7-dom php7-gd php7-mbstring php7-xml php7-pdo_mysql nginx supervisor composer curl

• php7 is the main PHP package
• php7-fpm is the FastCGI Process Manager module for PHP
• php7-json, php7-intl, php7-dom, php7-gd, php7-mbstring, php7-xml, and php7-pdo_mysql are PHP modules required for BookStack to run.
• nginx is the web server that will handle requests to your BookStack installation.
• supervisor is a process control system that will manage and monitor our web server and PHP processes.
• composer is the package manager for PHP that will be used to install BookStack.

Step 3: Configure Nginx Server Block

To configure Nginx for BookStack, first, we'll create a new server block.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/bookstack.conf

In the file, add the following content:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-server-name;

    root /var/www/bookstack/public;
    index index.php;

    client_max_body_size 100M;

    # Turn off gzip to avoid conflicts with BookStack's own gzip handling
    gzip off;

    # Ensure requests for pagespeed optimized resources go to the pagespeed
    # handler and no extraneous 404s are returned.
    # location ~ "\.pagespeed\.([a-z]\.)?[a-z]{2}\.[^.]{10}\.[^.]+" {
      # pass to pagespeed handler
      # add_header "" "";
    # }

    # Bookstack rewrite rules
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # PHP-FPM configuration
    location ~ .php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php7-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

}

Change your-server-name to the appropriate domain or IP address to match your server.

Save and exit the file.

Step 4: Configure PHP-FPM

Now, we will configure PHP-FPM so that it will work with the BookStack installation.

Open the PHP-FPM configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Find the following lines and uncomment them:

listen = /run/php7-fpm.sock
listen.owner = nobody
listen.group = nobody
listen.mode = 0660

Save and exit the file.

Restart PHP-FPM and Nginx to apply the changes:

sudo service php-fpm restart
sudo service nginx restart

Step 5: Create Database and User for BookStack

Let's create a new MySQL/MariaDB database and a user for BookStack.

Log in to your MySQL server as the root user:

mysql -u root -p

Create a new database:

CREATE DATABASE bookstack;

Create a new user:

CREATE USER 'bookstack'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';

Grant the user permissions to the database:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON bookstack.* TO 'bookstack'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Then, exit from the MySQL shell:

exit;

Step 6: Download and Install BookStack

Finally, we can download and install BookStack itself.

Create a new directory for BookStack in /var/www:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/bookstack
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/bookstack

Change to the newly created directory:

cd /var/www/bookstack

Download the latest version of BookStack from its official GitHub repository using git:

git clone https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack.git --branch release --single-branch .

Now, use composer to install and configure the required dependencies:

sudo composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Copy the .env.example file to .env:

cp .env.example .env

In the .env file, set the database information you created earlier:

DB_DATABASE=bookstack
DB_USERNAME=bookstack
DB_PASSWORD=your_password

Generate a new application key:

php artisan key:generate --no-interaction --force

Migrate the database tables:

php artisan migrate --no-interaction --force

Set the correct permissions on the storage directory:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data storage

Now you should be ready to log in to your Bookstack installation by going to http://your-server-name/ in a web browser!

If you want to self-host in an easy, hands free way, need an external IP address, or simply want your data in your own hands, give IPv6.rs a try!

Alternatively, for the best virtual desktop, try Shells!