FreeScout is a free and open-source help desk and customer support software, designed to make it easy for businesses to manage their customer support requests. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to install FreeScout on Void Linux.
Before we get started, make sure your system meets the following prerequisites:
FreeScout requires some dependencies to be installed on your system, so let's start by installing these first. Open a terminal and run the following command:
sudo xbps-install -S mariadb mariadb-client php7 php7-fpm php7-gd php7-mbstring php7-pdo_mysql php7-session php7-xml php7-zip nginx
This will install MariaDB (a MySQL-like database), PHP 7 and its required extensions, and Nginx (a web server). You also need to start the MariaDB service using the command:
sudo ln -s /etc/sv/mariadb /var/service/
Next, we need to install Composer, a dependency manager for PHP. Run the following command to download and install Composer:
sudo php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');" && \ sudo php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/bin --filename=composer
This will download and install Composer on your system.
Now, we need to download and extract FreeScout from its Github repository. Run the following command to clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout.git /var/www/freescout
Then, navigate to the freescout directory:
cd /var/www/freescout
Next, we need to install FreeScout dependencies using Composer. Run the following command:
sudo composer update --no-dev --no-interaction
This will download and install all necessary dependencies for FreeScout.
Now, we need to configure Nginx to serve FreeScout. Create a new Nginx configuration file with the following command:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/freescout
Copy and paste the following configuration:
server {
listen 80;
server_name your.domain.com;
root /var/www/freescout/public;
index index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Make sure to change the server_name to your domain name or IP address. Save and close the file.
Then, create a symlink to enable the configuration:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/freescout /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/freescout
Finally, restart Nginx to apply the changes:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Now, we need to create a new database for FreeScout. Run the following command to log in to the MariaDB shell:
sudo mysql -u root
Then, create a new database and user using the following commands:
CREATE DATABASE freescout;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON freescout.* TO 'freescout'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
Make sure to replace 'yourpassword' with a strong password of your choosing.
Exit the MariaDB shell:
exit
Finally, we need to configure FreeScout by creating a new .env file. Run the following command to copy the example .env file:
sudo cp .env.example .env
Then, open the .env file using a text editor and modify the following lines:
APP_ENV=production
APP_URL=http://your.domain.com/
DB_DATABASE=freescout
DB_USERNAME=freescout
DB_PASSWORD=yourpassword
Again, make sure to replace 'yourpassword' with the password you chose when creating the database user.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed FreeScout on your Void Linux system. You can now access FreeScout by navigating to http://your.domain.com/ in your web browser.
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