Install GLPI (IT and Asset Management) Tool with Fusion Inventory in Debian Linux

Step 4: Configuring Apache2 to serve GLPI

8. Apache2 in Debian systems is setup a little differently than other distributions. Some find it easier to manage and others find it more difficult.

This tutorial will keep things as simple as possible and will assume that GLPI is the only website being served by this Apache2 server and that it will be served on the traditional port 80 HTTP port.

This will allow for the least amount of modifications to the default Apache2 install and will allow users to get GLPI up and running quickly. Let’s begin!

The first thing to do is switch directories to the Apache2 configuration files directory. The configuration directory is ‘/etc/apache2/sites-available‘ and the command:

# cd /etc/apache2/sites-available

9. The only items in this directory by default will be the two default Apache2 site configuration files. A new configuration file should be created for GLPI and can be created from the default in this directory using the copy command.

This will copy the configuration of the default site into a new configuration file for GLPI.

# cp 000-default.conf glpi.conf 

This new GLPI configuration file needs to be modified so that apache2 knows where the files to serve for GLPI reside. Open ‘glpi.conf‘ with a text editor and proceed to configure as follows:

1. nano glpi.conf → open glpi.conf in the nano text editor.
2. DocumentRoot /var/www/glpi → This tells Apache2 where the files for GLPI start. This line isn’t a command but rather something that is added to the glpi.conf file.

# nano glpi.conf

DocumentRoot /var/www/glpi

10. Apache2 has a TON of other options but for brevity’s sake, this change is the only change needed in this file. Now apache2 has to be made aware of the new GLPI site as well as told to stop serving the “default” page. This is easily accomplished with two tools a2ensite and a2dissite.

1. a2dissite 000-default.conf → This will disable the default website Apache2 serves.
2. a2ensite glpi.conf → This will enable the newly created GLPI website configuration.
3. service apache2 reload → This will be necessary for Apache2 to stop/start serving the above changes.

# a2dissite 000-default.conf
# a2ensite glpi.conf
# service apache2 reload

At this point, Apache2 should be configured and serving the GLPI site information, the MySQL database is created and has an assigned user. The next step is to run the GLPI installer.

Step 5: Installing and Configuring GLPI

11. To start the installation of GLPI, simply visit the IP address of the server running Apache2. This can be done from the server itself if a graphical desktop environment has been installed; otherwise the other machine requested for this tutorial will be needed.

Upon visiting the IP address of the Apache2 server, the user will be presented with the GLPI installation page:

http://Your-IP-Address

12. At this point, select the appropriate language and click ‘OK‘. The next prompt will ask if this install is an upgrade or a fresh installation. This tutorial is assuming that this will be a fresh installation of GLPI.

13. The next screen will be a quick dependency check by GLPI. Everything on this next page should come back with a green light. Anything with a red light should be addressed and corrected on the server.

14. When all the lights are green, the next step is to inform the GLPI installer where the MySQL database is as well as the credentials to access the database. This information was determined earlier in this guide and should be as follows:

The server name of ‘localhost‘ can be used in this example due to the fact that this installer is running from the same server as the MySQL server.

Click continue after the three fields are filled in and the GLPI installer will run a SQL check to ensure that it can make contact with the SQL database. Since a database was already created earlier be sure to select that database in this step.

15. This next step will take a couple of minutes depending on the speed of the MySQL server. The final page that the GLPI installer will show will be the default username/password page.

The only user account that will be needed for this guide will be the administrator account which defaults to username: ‘glpi‘ and password: ‘glpi‘.

16. At this point, GLPI is ready for usage. Click the ‘Use GLPI‘ button to be taken to the login screen and log in as the administrator. Once logged in to GLPI, the GLPI landing screen will issue some warnings about the user-names above having the default passwords configured.

For now this can be ignored but should be changed when moving GLPI to production! The other warning will be a warning that recommends removing the installer file. This is easily accomplished by running the following ‘rm‘ command on the Debian server:

# rm /var/www/glpi/install/install.php

This concludes the installation of GLPI. At this point users can start adding inventory, creating tickets, creating a document library, and many other tasks. However, the rest of this guide will talk about how to setup the Fusion Inventory plug-in to further extend the capabilities of GLPI.