Installing the phpbb forum on Debian
(Squeeze/Sid) Linux
I've just installed the
phpbb forum on a Debian
Linux because we needed a good quick to install communication media
in order to improve our internal communication in a student project
in Strategic HR we're developing right now in Arnhem Business
School.
Here are the exact steps I followed to have a properly it properly
instlled:
1. Install the phpbb3 debian package
This was pretty straight forward:
debian:~# apt-get install phpbb3
At this point of installation I've faced a
dpkg-reconfigure
phpbb deb package configuration issue:
I was prompted to pass in the credentials for my
MySQL
password right after I've selected the
MySQL as my preferred
database back engine.
I've feeded my MySQL root password as well as my preferred forum
database name, however the database installation failed because,
somehow the configuration procedure tried to connect to my MySQL
database with the
htcheck user.
I guess this has to be a bug in the package itself or something
from my previous installation misconfigured the way the debian
database backend configuration was operating.
My assumption is that my previously installed
htcheck
package or something beforehand I've done right after the
htcheck and htcheck-php packages installation.
after the package configuration failed still the package had a
status of properly installed when I reviewed it with
dpkg
I've thought about trying to manually reconfigure it using the
dpkg-reconfigure debian command and I gave it a try like
that:
debian:~# dpkg-reconfigure phpbb3
This time along with the other fields I've to fill in the ncurses
interface I was prompted for a username before the password
prompted appeared.
Logically I tried to fill in the
root as it's my global
privileges MySQL allowed user.
However that didn't helped at all and again the configuration tried
to send the credentials with user
htcheck to my MySQL
database server.
To deal with the situation I had to approach it in the good old
manual way.
2. Manually prepare / create the required phpbb forum
database
To completet that connected to the MySQL server with the mysql
client and created the proper database like so:
debian:~# mysql -u root -p
mysql>
CREATE database phpbb3forum;
3. Use phpmyadmin or the mysql client command line to create a
new user for the phpbb forum
Here since adding up the user using the phpmyadmin was a way easier
to do I decided to go that route, anyways using the mysql cli is
also an option.
From phpmyadmin It's pretty easy to add a new user and grant
privileges to a certain database, to do so navigate to the
following database:
Privileges -> -> Add a new user ->
Now type your
User name: ,
Host ,
Password ,
Re-type password , also for a
Host: you have to
choose
Local from the drop down menu.
Leave the
Database for user field empty as we have already
previously created our desired database in step 2 of this
article
Now press the
"Go" button and the user will get
created.
Further after choose the
Privileges menu right on the bottom
of the page once again, select through the checkbox the username
you have just created let's say the previously created user is
phpbb3
Go to
Action (There is a picture with a man and a pencil on
the right side of this button
Scroll down to the page part saying
Database-specific
privileges and in the field
Add privileges on the following
database: fill in your previosly created database name in our
case it's
phpbb3forum
and then press the
"Go" button once again.
A page will appear where you will have to select the exact
privileges you would like to grant on the specific selected
database.
For some simplicity just check all the checkbox to grant as many
privilegs to your database as you could.
Then again you will have to press the
"Go" button and there
you go you should have already configured an username and database
ready to go with your new phpbb forum.
4. Create a virtualhost if you would like to have the forum as a
subdomain or into a separate domain
If you decide to have the forum on a separate sub-domain or domain
as I did you will have to add some kind of Virtualhost into either
your Apache configuration /etc/apache2/apache2.conf or into where
officially the virutualhosts are laid in Debian Linux in
/etc/apache2/sites-available
I've personally created a new file like for instance
/etc/apache2/sites-available/mysubdomain.mydomain.com
Here is an example content of the new Virtualhost:
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin admin-email@domain.com
ServerName mysubdomain.domain.com
# Indexes + Directory Root.
DirectoryIndex index.php index.php5 index.htm index.html index.pl
index.cgi index.phtml index.jsp index.py index.asp
DocumentRoot /usr/share/phpbb3/www/
# Logfiles
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain/error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain/access.log combined
# CustomLog /dev/null combined
<Directory /usr/share/phpbb3/www/>
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews -Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
In above Virtualhost just change the values for
ServerAdmin
,
ServerName ,
DocumentRoot ,
ErrorLog ,
CustomLog and
Directory declaration to adjust it to
your situation.
5. Restart the Apache webserver for the new Virtualhost to take
affect
debian:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Now accessing your
http://mysubdomain.domain.com should
display the installed phpbb3 forum
The default username and password for your forum you can use
straight are:
username: admin
password: admin
So far so good you by now have the PHPBB3 forum properly installed
and running, however if you try to
Register a new user in
the forum you will notice that it's impossible because of a
terrible ugly message reading:
Sorry but this board is currently
unavailable.
I've spend few minutes online to scrape through the forums before I
can understand what I have to stop that annoying message from
appearing and allow new users to register in the
phpbb
forum
The solution came natural and was a setting that had to be changed
with the forum admin account, thus login as admin and look at the
bottom of the page, below the text reading
Powered by phpBB ©
2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group you will notice a link with
Administration Control Panel
just press there a whole bunch of menus will appear on the screen
allowing you to do numerous things, however what you will have to
do is go to
Board Settings -> Disable Board and change
the radio button there to say
No
That's all now your forum will be ready to go and your users can
freely register and if the server where the forum is installed has
an already running mail server, they will receive an emails with a
registration data concerning their new registrations in your new
phpbb forum.
Cheers and Enjoy your new shiny phpbb Forum :)