Table of Contents

Installing RADIUSdesk on Ubuntu 20.04 using Nginx

Skills Required to Install

To install RADIUSdesk you need sufficient knowledge and experience on Linux to:

Background

What do we require

Requirement Comment
Interpret PHP Scripts We would like the web server to call the PHP interpreter when a page ending with .php is requested.
Be able to have access to the MySQL functions of PHP Since we set up a LEMP server, we need to have a MySQL server installed and accessible from PHP.
Modify the expiry date of HTTP headers to encourage caching We want files that does not change (e.g. CSS or images) to be cached on the client's side to make the client's experience more pleasant
Compress text before they are served to the client We can compress the text that flows between the client and the server and in this way reduce the over the line bytes which in turn should also give the client a more pleasant experience
Enable rewrite rules in CakePHP for pretty URL's CakePHP makes use of the .htaccess files in Apache to enable pretty URLs. Since Nginx does not support .htaccess files, we need to change Nginx to behave in the same way.

HOWTO

Add a sudo user

# Add the system user
sudo adduser system
# Update the system to the latest
usermod -aG sudo system

Networking Introduction on Ubuntu 20.04

ip a
 
sudo vi /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml
 
# 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
sudo netplan --debug apply
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

Install Nginx

   sudo systemctl stop apache2.service
   sudo apt-get -y remove apache2
 
# Get the latest package lists
sudo apt-get update
# Update the system to the latest
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get -y install language-pack-en-base
sudo apt-get -y install nginx
sudo systemctl stop nginx.service
sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Configure Nginx to interpret .php files

php-fpm

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

Modify Nginx

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
# Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
# pass PHP scripts to FastCGI server
#
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;
}
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
}
sudo systemctl reload nginx.service
sudo vi /var/www/html/test.php
<?php
    phpinfo();
?>

Install MariaDB

Why MariaDB?

sudo apt-get -y install mariadb-server php-mysql
sudo systemctl enable mariadb
sudo systemctl restart mariadb
sudo systemctl status mariadb

Disable strict mode

sudo vi /etc/mysql/conf.d/disable_strict_mode.cnf
[mysqld]
sql_mode=IGNORE_SPACE,NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,NO_ZERO_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION
sudo systemctl restart mariadb

Performance tune Nginx

Modify expiry date for certain files

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
location ~ ^/cake4/.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|js|css)$ {
    rewrite ^/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/(.*)$ /cake4/rd_cake/webroot/$1 break;
    rewrite ^/cake4/rd_cake/(.*)$ /cake4/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;
}
sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install RADIUSdesk

Required packages

sudo apt-get -y install php-cli php-mysql php-gd php-curl php-xml php-mbstring php-intl php-sqlite3 git wget
sudo systemctl restart php7.4-fpm
cd /var/www
sudo git clone https://github.com/RADIUSdesk/rdcore.git
cd /var/www/html
sudo ln -s ../rdcore/rd ./rd
sudo ln -s ../rdcore/cake4 ./cake4
#If backward compatibility is required for older firmware of MESHdesk
sudo ln -s ../rdcore/cake4 ./cake3
sudo ln -s ../rdcore/login ./login
sudo ln -s ../rdcore/AmpConf/build/production/AmpConf ./conf_dev
sudo ln -s ../rdcore/cake4/rd_cake/setup/scripts/reporting ./reporting

Change Ownerships

sudo mkdir -p  /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/logs
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/files/imagecache
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/tmp
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/tmp
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/logs
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/img/realms
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/img/dynamic_details
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/img/dynamic_photos
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/img/access_providers
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/img/hardwares
sudo chown -R www-data. /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/webroot/files/imagecache

The Database

#NOTE FAILING THIS STEP will break the RADIUS graphs
#There might be some error messages in the output which is fine - no need to be alarmed
sudo su
mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root  mysql
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;
sudo mysql -u root rd < /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/setup/db/rd.sql

Configure Nginx

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
server_name _;
location /cake4/rd_cake/node-reports/submit_report.json {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /reporting/reporting.php;
}
location /cake3/rd_cake/node-reports/submit_report.json {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /reporting/reporting.php;
}
location /cake4/rd_cake {
   rewrite ^/cake4/rd_cake(.+)$ /cake4/rd_cake/webroot$1 break;
   try_files $uri $uri/ /cake4/rd_cake/index.php$is_args$args;
}
location /cake3/rd_cake {
   rewrite ^/cake3/rd_cake(.+)$ /cake3/rd_cake/webroot$1 break;
   try_files $uri $uri/ /cake3/rd_cake/index.php$is_args$args;
}
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Important URLs

sudo cp -R /var/www/html/rd/build/production/Rd/* /var/www/html/
Login Credentials

Username: root Password: admin

Cron Scripts

sudo cp /var/www/html/cake4/rd_cake/setup/cron/cron4 /etc/cron.d/

Add LETSENCRYPT certificate

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install software-properties-common

Next steps