Installing Easy!Appointments on NetBSD

Introduction

Easy!Appointments is an open-source appointment scheduling application that can help you manage your bookings and appointments easily. In this tutorial, we will go through the steps of installing Easy!Appointments on NetBSD.

Prerequisites

Before you start, you need to have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

• NetBSD 9.0 or later
• Apache or nginx webserver
• PHP 7.3 or later

Step 1: Downloading Easy!Appointments

To download Easy!Appointments, you can visit the website https://easyappointments.org/ and click on the "Download" button. The latest version will be downloaded as a tar archive file.

Step 2: Installing Dependencies

Easy!Appointments requires some PHP extensions to be installed. To install the dependencies, run the following command:

$ pkgin install php73-mysqli php73-gd php73-curl php73-mbstring php73-zlib

Step 3: Extracting the Package

When the download is complete, extract the contents of the tar archive file to your web server directory. You can extract the files using the following command:

$ tar -xvf easyappointments-x.x.x.tar.gz -C /var/www/

where x.x.x is the version number of Easy!Appointments and /var/www/ is the directory in which you want to install the application.

Step 4: Configuring the Webserver

After extracting the package, you need to configure your web server to host Easy!Appointments. If you are using Apache, you can create a virtual host for Easy!Appointments by creating a file /usr/pkg/etc/httpd.conf.d/easyappointments.conf with the following contents:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName your-domain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/easyappointments
    <Directory /var/www/easyappointments>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

For nginx, create a file /usr/pkg/etc/nginx/sites-available/easyappointments with the following contents:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;
    root /var/www/easyappointments;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;
 
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }
 
    location ~ \.php$ {
        include       /usr/pkg/etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf;
        fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
    }
}

You also need to create a symlink to the sites-enabled directory to enable the site:

$ ln -s /usr/pkg/etc/nginx/sites-available/easyappointments /usr/pkg/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Step 5: Setting up the Database

Before you can start using Easy!Appointments, you need to set up a database for the application. You can use MySQL or MariaDB for this purpose.

Create a new database in MySQL/MariaDB and assign a user to it with the necessary privileges. You can use the following commands to create a new database and assign a user:

$ mysql -u root -p
> CREATE DATABASE ea_database;
> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ea_database.* TO 'ea_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
> EXIT;

Replace ea_database, ea_user and password with appropriate values.

Step 6: Configuring the Application

After you have set up the database, you need to configure Easy!Appointments to use it. Go to the /var/www/easyappointments/config directory and copy the ea_config.php.dist file to ea_config.php. Edit the ea_config.php file and set the database details to match your environment:

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_PORT', '3306');
define('DB_NAME', 'ea_database');
define('DB_USER', 'ea_user');
define('DB_PASS', 'password');

Step 7: Running the Installer

Finally, you need to run the installer script to complete the installation:

$ php /var/www/easyappointments/install/index.php

Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation process.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have gone through the steps of installing Easy!Appointments on NetBSD. You should now be able to access the application from your web browser and start using it to manage your appointments and bookings.

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!