Invoice Ninja is a free and open-source invoicing application that can help you create and send professional-looking invoices, track time spend on tasks, and manage your business finances.
In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of installing Invoice Ninja on your MXLinux system.
Before you can install Invoice Ninja, you need to ensure that you have the following prerequisites installed on your MXLinux system:
If you don't have these packages installed, you can install them using the following commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php mariadb-server apache2 composer
The first step is to download the latest version of Invoice Ninja from the official website. You can either download it directly from the website, or use the following command to download the latest version:
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/invoiceninja/invoiceninja/releases/latest \
| grep browser_download_url \
| grep zip \
| cut -d '"' -f 4 \
| wget -qi -
This command will download the latest version of Invoice Ninja and save it in your current working directory.
Once the download is complete, you need to extract the files. To do this, run the following command:
unzip invoiceninja*.zip
This command will extract the files to a new directory named "invoiceninja".
The next step is to configure the database for Invoice Ninja. To do this, log in to your MySQL/MariaDB server with the following command:
mysql -u root -p
Then, create a new database and user for Invoice Ninja with the following commands:
CREATE DATABASE invoiceninja_db;
CREATE USER 'invoiceninja_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'invoiceninja_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON invoiceninja_db.* TO 'invoiceninja_user'@'localhost';
Note: Replace "invoiceninja_db", "invoiceninja_user" and "invoiceninja_password" with your preferred values.
Once the database and user are created, you can exit from the MySQL/MariaDB prompt with the following command:
exit
To install the dependencies of Invoice Ninja, navigate to the "invoiceninja" directory and run the following command:
composer install --no-dev -o
This command will install all the necessary dependencies for Invoice Ninja.
The next step is to configure the ".env" file in the "invoiceninja" directory. To do this, make a copy of the ".env.example" file with the following command:
cp .env.example .env
Then, edit the ".env" file with your preferred text editor and update the following variables:
APP_URL=https://yourdomain.com
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=invoiceninja_db
DB_USERNAME=invoiceninja_user
DB_PASSWORD=invoiceninja_password
Note: Replace "https://yourdomain.com", "invoiceninja_db", "invoiceninja_user" and "invoiceninja_password" with your preferred values.
The next step is to generate the application key with the following command:
php artisan key:generate
This command will generate a new key and update the ".env" file.
The next step is to migrate the database with the following command:
php artisan migrate --seed
This command will create the necessary tables in the database.
The final step is to configure Apache to serve Invoice Ninja. To do this, navigate to the "/etc/apache2/sites-available/" directory and create a new configuration file with the following command:
sudo nano invoiceninja.conf
Then, add the following content to the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/invoiceninja/public
<Directory /var/www/html/invoiceninja/public>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/invoiceninja_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/invoiceninja_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Note: Replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name.
After that, enable the new configuration file with the following command:
sudo a2ensite invoiceninja.conf
Then, restart the Apache web server with the following command:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
That's it! Now you can access the Invoice Ninja web interface using your web browser by navigating to "https://yourdomain.com".
You can then log in to the application with the following credentials:
Email: admin@example.com
Password: password
Note: It's highly recommended that you change the default credentials after the first login.
In this tutorial, we have explained the process of installing Invoice Ninja on MXLinux. Now you can start creating invoices and managing your business finances with Invoice Ninja.
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