Part-DB installation guide for Debian 11 (Bullseye)

This guide shows you how to install Part-DB directly on Debian 11 using apache2 and SQLite. This guide should work with recent Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions with little to no changes. Depending on what you want to do, using the prebuilt docker images may be a better choice, as you don’t need to install this many dependencies. See here for more information on the docker installation.

The methods described here, configure PHP without HTTPS and therefore should only be used locally in a trusted network. If you want to expose Part-DB to the internet, you HAVE to configure an SSL connection!

It is recommended to install Part-DB on a 64-bit system, as the 32-bit version of PHP is affected by the Year 2038 problem and can not handle dates after 2038 correctly.

Installation with SQLite database

Install prerequisites

For the installation of Part-DB, we need some prerequisites. They can be installed by running the following command:

sudo apt install git curl zip ca-certificates software-properties-common apt-transport-https lsb-release nano wget

Install PHP and apache2

Part-DB is written in PHP and therefore needs a PHP interpreter to run. Part-DB needs PHP 8.1 or higher. However, it is recommended to use the most recent version of PHP for performance reasons and future compatibility.

As Debian 11 does not ship PHP 8.1 in its default repositories, we have to add a repository for it. You can skip this step if your distribution is shipping a recent version of PHP or you want to use the built-in PHP version. If you are using Debian 12, you can skip this step, as PHP 8.1 is already included in the default repositories.

# Add sury repository for PHP 8.1
sudo curl -sSL https://packages.sury.org/php/README.txt | sudo bash -x

# Update package list
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Now you can install PHP 8.1 and the required packages (change the 8.1 in the package version according to the version you want to use):

sudo apt install php8.1 libapache2-mod-php8.1 php8.1-opcache php8.1-curl php8.1-gd php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xml php8.1-bcmath php8.1-intl php8.1-zip php8.1-xsl php8.1-sqlite3 php8.1-mysql

The apache2 webserver should be already installed with this command and configured basically.

Install composer

Part-DB uses composer to install required PHP libraries. As the version shipped in the repositories is pretty old, we will install it manually:

# Download composer installer script
wget -O /tmp/composer-setup.php https://getcomposer.org/installer
# Install composer globally
php /tmp/composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
# Make composer executable
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer

Install yarn and nodejs

To build the front end (the user interface) Part-DB uses yarn. As it depends on Node.js and the shipped versions are pretty old, we install new versions from the official Node.js repository:

# Add recent node repository (nodejs 18 is supported until 2025)
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash -
# Install nodejs
sudo apt install nodejs

We can install yarn with the following commands:

# Add yarn repository
curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg] https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
# Install yarn
sudo apt update && sudo apt install yarn

Create a folder for Part-DB and download it

We now have all prerequisites installed and can start to install Part-DB. We will create a folder for Part-DB in the webroot of apache2 and download it to this folder. The downloading is done via git, which allows you to update easily later.

# Download Part-DB into the new folder /var/www/partdb
git clone https://github.com/Part-DB/Part-DB-symfony.git /var/www/partdb

By default, you are now on the latest development version. In most cases, you want to use the latest stable version. You can switch to the latest stable version (tagged) by running the following command:

# This finds the latest release/tag and checks it out
git checkout $(git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1))

Alternatively, you can check out a specific version by running ( see GitHub Releases page for a list of available versions):

# This checks out the version 1.5.2
git checkout v1.5.2

Change ownership of the files to the apache user:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/partdb

For the next steps we should be in the Part-DB folder, so move into it:

cd /var/www/partdb

Create configuration for Part-DB

The basic configuration of Part-DB is done by a .env.local file in the main directory. Create on by from the default configuration:

cp .env .env.local

In your .env.local you can configure Part-DB according to your wishes. A full list of configuration options can be found here. Other configuration options like the default language or default currency can be found in config/parameters.yaml.

Please check that the partdb.default_currency value in config/parameters.yaml matches your mainly used currency, as this can not be changed after creating price information.

Install dependencies for Part-DB and build frontend

Part-DB depends on several other libraries and components. Install them by running the following commands:

# Install composer dependencies (please note the sudo command, to run it under the web server user)
sudo -u www-data composer install --no-dev -o

# Install yarn dependencies
sudo yarn install
# Build frontend
sudo yarn build

Clear cache

To ensure everything is working, clear the cache:

sudo -u www-data php bin/console cache:clear

Check if everything is installed

To check if everything is installed, run the following command:

sudo -u www-data php bin/console partdb:check-requirements

Most things should be green, and no red ones. Yellow messages mean optional dependencies which are not important but can improve performance and functionality.

Create a database for Part-DB

Part-DB by default uses a file-based SQLite database to store the data. Use the following command to create the database. The database will normally be created at /var/www/partdb/var/app.db.

sudo -u www-data php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate

The command will warn you about schema changes and potential data loss. Continue with typing yes.

The command will output several lines of information. Somewhere should be a yellow background message like The initial password for the "admin" user is: f502481134. Write down this password as you will need it later for the initial login.

Configure apache2 to show Part-DB

Part-DB is now configured, but we have to say apache2 to serve Part-DB as web application. This is done by creating a new apache site:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/partdb.conf

and add the following content (change ServerName and ServerAlias to your needs):

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName partdb.lan
    ServerAlias www.partdb.lan

    DocumentRoot /var/www/partdb/public
    <Directory /var/www/partdb/public>
        AllowOverride All
        Order Allow,Deny
        Allow from All
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/partdb_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/partdb_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Activate the new site by:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/partdb.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/partdb.conf

Configure apache to show pretty URL paths for Part-DB (/label/dialog instead of /index.php/label/dialog):

sudo a2enmod rewrite

If you want to access Part-DB via the IP-Address of the server, instead of the domain name, you have to remove the apache2 default configuration with:

sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

Restart the apache2 webserver with:

sudo service apache2 restart

and Part-DB should now be available under http://YourServerIP (or http://partdb.lan if you configured DNS in your network to point to the server).

Navigate to the Part-DB web interface and login via the user icon in the top right corner. You can log in using the username admin and the password you have written down earlier.

Update Part-DB

If you want to update your existing Part-DB installation, you just have to run the following commands:

# Move into Part-DB folder
cd /var/www/partdb
# Pull latest Part-DB version from GitHub
git pull

# Checkout the latest version (or use a specific version, like described above) 
git checkout $(git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1))

# Apply correct permission
chown -R www-data:www-data .
# Install new composer dependencies
sudo -u www-data composer install --no-dev -o
# Install yarn dependencies and build new frontend
sudo yarn install
sudo yarn build

# Check if all your configurations in .env.local and /var/www/partdb/config/parameters.yaml are correct.
sudo nano config/parameters.yaml

# Apply new database schemas (you should do a backup of your database file /var/www/partdb/var/app.db before)
sudo -u www-data php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate

# Clear Part-DB cache
sudo -u www-data php bin/console cache:clear

MySQL/MariaDB database

To use a MySQL database, follow the steps from above (except the creation of the database, we will do this later). Debian 11 does not ship MySQL in its repositories anymore, so we use the compatible MariaDB instead:

Install maria-db with:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install mariadb-server

Configure maria-db with:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When asked for the root password, just press enter, as we have not set a root password yet. In the next steps you are asked if you want to switch to unix_socket authentication, answer with n and press enter. Then you are asked if you want to remove anonymous users, answer with y and press enter. Then you are asked if you want to disallow root login remotely, answer with y and press enter. Then you are asked if you want to remove the test database and access to it, answer with y and press enter. Then you are asked if you want to reload the privilege tables now, answer with y and press enter.

Create a new database and user for Part-DB: Run the following commands:

sudo mariadb

A SQL shell will open, in which you can run the following commands to create a new database and user for Part-DB. Replace ‘YOUR_SECRET_PASSWORD’ with a secure password.

CREATE DATABASE partdb;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON partdb.* TO 'partdb'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOUR_SECRET_PASSWORD';

Finally, save the changes with:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

and exit the SQL shell with:

exit

Configure Part-DB to use the new database. Open your .env.local file and search the line DATABASE_URL. Change it to the following (you have to replace YOUR_SECRET_PASSWORD with the password you have chosen in step 3):

DATABASE_URL=mysql://partdb:YOUR_SECRET_PASSWORD@127.0.0.1:3306/partdb

Create the database schema with:

sudo -u www-data php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate

The migration step should have shown you a password for the admin user, which you can use now to log in to Part-DB.