• Nginx is a web server that seems to have overtaken Apache in terms of popularity and number of active sites on the Internet today.
• It is fresh, lightweight, fast, scales well and is able to take a lot of load without overwhelming your system.
• Nginx is the new Apache so to speak.
• This section will cover the steps you have to go through to get RADIUSdesk Basic working with a LEMP stack on Ubuntu 20.04
  • * A LEMP stack is one of those acronyms you can impress your friends with. It stands for Linux NginX MySQL and PHP.

• A standard Nginx install on Ubuntu is actually very simple.
• The part that is more involved is to tweak Nginx to do the following:

• If you do not yet have a working network configuration on the server you plan to do the installation on, please use this section as reference, else just proceed to the next section.
• Since there is such a huge difference between the way of doing things in earlier releases if Ubuntu and those from Ubuntu 18.04 onward; we felt that adding this section will help those who are getting used to this newer way of doing things.
• For this we assume you have a bare VM (like the ones from https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu-server/ )
• We also assume you used this to create a VM in Virtualbox and are now faced with only the local loopback interface (127.0.0.1) when issuing the ifconfig command.
• To see which interfaces are available (yet some might just not yet be configured)

ip a
 

• On my system it lists three since I plan to use the VM also as a router with Coova Chilli running on the one interface. So we have lo, enp0s3 and enp0s8.
• For now I will just configure both of those interfaces to be DHCP clients.

sudo vi /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml
 

• We edit the file to look like this (adapt to fit your system's interfaces)

# This file is generated from information provided by
# the datasource.  Changes to it will not persist across an instance.
# To disable cloud-init's network configuration capabilities, write a file
# /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-disable-network-config.cfg with the following:
# network: {config: disabled}
network:
    version: 2
    ethernets:
            enp0s3:
                    addresses: []
                    dhcp4: true
                    optional: true
            enp0s8:
                    addresses: []
                    dhcp4: true
                    optional: true

• Apply the network configuration using command:

sudo netplan --debug apply

• If all went well our VM will now have an IP Address (via DHCP) which we can use.

ip addr
#Feedback contains
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp0s3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:fe:57:09 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.111/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic enp0s3
       valid_lft 255675sec preferred_lft 255675sec
    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fefe:5709/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: enp0s8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:8c:d3:32 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe8c:d332/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

• Now that we have a working network setup on our machine we can continue.

• We assume you have a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04 WITHOUT Apache installed.

   sudo systemctl stop apache2.service
   sudo apt-get remove apache2
 

• Make sure it is up to date.

# Get the latest package lists
sudo apt-get update
# Update the system to the latest
sudo apt-get upgrade

• Ensure the English language pack is installed

sudo apt-get install language-pack-en-base

• Install Nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx

• Ensure the web server starts up and is running

sudo systemctl stop nginx.service
sudo systemctl start nginx.service

• Navigate to the IP Address of the server where you installed Nginx using a browser to ensure Nginx serves content e.g. http://127.0.0.1

• The default install of Nginx does not support the serving of .php files.
• We will install a program (actually a service) called php-fpm.
• This service will listen for requests to interpret.
• Install the php-fpm service:

sudo apt-get install php-fpm
sudo systemctl enable php7.4-fpm
sudo systemctl start php7.4-fpm

• Now that the php-fpm service is installed we should change the default Nginx server to make use of it.
• Edit the default server file:

    sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

• Add index.php to this line:

    #add index.php
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

• Activate PHP precessing by uncommenting this this section. Note that we use the UNIX socket:

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    #
    location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        #
        #       # With php-fpm (or other unix sockets):
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        #       # With php-cgi (or other tcp sockets):
        #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
     }

• Enable the hiding of .htaccess files

    # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
    # concurs with nginx's one
    #
    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }

• Reload the Nginx web server's configuration

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

• Create a test .php file to confirm that it does work

sudo vi /var/www/html/test.php

• Contents:

    <?php
        phpinfo();
    ?>

• Navigate to http://127.0.0.1/test.php and see if the page display the PHP info.

• Be sure to supply a root password for the MySQL database when asked for it if you are security conscious else simply hit the ESC key.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server php-mysql
sudo systemctl enable mysql

• With the 18.04 release of MySQL there were some changes to the MySQL configuration which causes problems on the current RADIUSdesk database implementation.
• We will disable Strict SQL Mode in MySQL 5.7.

sudo vi /etc/mysql/conf.d/disable_strict_mode.cnf

• Enter these two lines:

[mysqld]
sql_mode=IGNORE_SPACE,NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,NO_ZERO_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION

• Save the file and restart the MySQL service

sudo systemctl restart mysql.service

• Edit the /etc/nginx/sites-available/default file:

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

• Add the following inside the server section:

location ~ ^/cake2/.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|js|css)$ {
    rewrite ^/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/(.*)$ /cake2/rd_cake/webroot/$1 break;
    rewrite ^/cake2/rd_cake/(.*)$ /cake2/rd_cake/webroot/$1 break;
    access_log off;
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control public;
}
 
location ~ ^/cake3/.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|js|css)$ {
    rewrite ^/cake3/rd_cake/webroot/(.*)$ /cake3/rd_cake/webroot/$1 break;
    rewrite ^/cake3/rd_cake/(.*)$ /cake3/rd_cake/webroot/$1 break;
    access_log off;
    expires max;
    add_header Cache-Control public;
}

• Reload Nginx:

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

• The first part prepared everything to install RADIUSdesk. This part will go through the steps to install the latest RADIUSdesk.
• RADIUSdesk consists of three components.
  • rd directory with its contents contains all the HTML and JavaScript code and is used as the presentation layer.
  • rd_cake is a CakePHP application and can be considered the engine room. Here the data is processed before being presented by the presentation layer. (We currently use one CakePHP v2 and one CakePHP v3 application in order to migrate from CakePHP v2 to CakePHP v3)
  • login is a directory with various login pages which are centrally managed through the RADIUSdesk Dynamic Login Pages applet. Although this is optional, it is used by most installs.

• We will use SVN (subversion) to check out the latest version (trunk) of RADIUSdesk.

• Make sure the following packages are installed:

sudo apt-get install php-cli php-mysql php-gd php-curl php-xml php-mbstring php-intl 

• Download the 2.x version of CakePHP (Version 2.10.19 as of this writing). https://github.com/cakephp/cakephp/tags
• There are two formats to choose from when selecting to download, Zip or Tar.gz. Select Tar.gz.
• Copy and extract it inside the directory that Nginx is serving its content from (/usr/share/nginx/html)

sudo cp 2.10.19.tar.gz /usr/share/nginx/html
cd /usr/share/nginx/html
sudo tar -xzvf 2.10.19.tar.gz 
sudo ln -s ./cakephp-2.10.19 ./cake2

• Reload php7.2-fpm

sudo systemctl reload php7.2-fpm.service

• Install subversion in order for you to check out the latest source for RADIUSdesk.

sudo apt-get install subversion

• Check out the rd_cake branch from trunk to /usr/share/nginx/html.

cd /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2
sudo svn checkout svn://dvdwalt@svn.code.sf.net/p/radiusdesk/code/trunk/rd_cake ./rd_cake

• Change the following directories to be writable by www-data:

sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/tmp
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/Locale
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/img/flags
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/img/nas
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/img/realms
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/img/dynamic_details
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/img/dynamic_photos
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/webroot/files/imagecache

• Check out the cake3 branch from trunk to /usr/share/nginx/html.

cd /usr/share/nginx/html/
sudo svn checkout svn://dvdwalt@svn.code.sf.net/p/radiusdesk/code/trunk/cake3 ./cake3

• Change the following directories to be writable by www-data:

sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/tmp
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/logs
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/webroot/img/realms
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/webroot/img/dynamic_details
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/webroot/img/dynamic_photos
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/webroot/img/access_providers
sudo chown -R www-data. /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/webroot/files/imagecache

• Create the following blank database:

sudo su
mysql -u root
create database rd;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON rd.* to 'rd'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'rd';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON rd.* to 'rd'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'rd';
exit;

• Populate the database (trunk):

    sudo mysql -u root rd < /usr/share/nginx/html/cake3/rd_cake/setup/db/rd.sql

• Since CakePHP uses rewrite rules, we have to configure Nginx in such a way as to allow rewriting of the URL's that starts with /cake2/rd_cake or with /cake3/rd_cake.
• Edit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

    sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

• Add the following section inside the server section:

location /cake2/rd_cake {
     rewrite ^/cake2/rd_cake/(.*)$ /cake2/rd_cake/webroot/$1 break;
     try_files $uri $uri/ /cake2/rd_cake/webroot/index.php?q=$uri&$args;
}
 
location /cake3/rd_cake {
   rewrite ^/cake3/rd_cake(.+)$ /cake3/rd_cake/webroot$1 break;
   try_files $uri $uri/ /cake3/rd_cake/index.php$is_args$args;
}

• Reload the Nginx web server:

   sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

• Congratulations you are almost there. Next we will install the viewer component

• Check out the latest code of the viewer component under the /usr/share/nginx/html/ directory:

cd /usr/share/nginx/html/
sudo svn checkout svn://dvdwalt@svn.code.sf.net/p/radiusdesk/code/trunk/rd ./rd

• For the viewer component you need the ExtJS toolkit. We've added version 6.2.0 to the SVN repository for easy download
• Checkout and unzip the GPL version under the /usr/share/nginx/html/rd directory. NOTE: This is a single big file which will take some time to download over slow connections.

cd /usr/share/nginx/html/
sudo svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/radiusdesk/code/extjs ./
sudo mv  ext-6-2-sencha_cmd.tar.gz ./rd
cd /usr/share/nginx/html/rd
sudo tar -xzvf ext-6-2-sencha_cmd.tar.gz

• Now try to log in on the following URL with username root and password admin: http://127.0.0.1/rd/build/production/Rd/index.html
• Alternatively (also if you do not have Internet Access on the machine) use this URL which is a bit slower: http://127.0.0.1/rd/index.html?cache

• RADIUSdesk requires a few scripts to run periodically in order to maintain a healthy and working system.
• To activate the cron scripts execute the following command, which will add RADIUSdesk's crons scripts to the Cron system

sudo cp /usr/share/nginx/html/cake2/rd_cake/Setup/Cron/rd /etc/cron.d/

• If you want to change the default intervals at which the scripts get executed, just edit the /etc/cron.d/rd file.

• Be sure to also install FreeRADIUS and Node.js,
• Install FreeRADIUS
• Install node.js