How to install Kanboard on OpenBSD

Author: Solène

Date: 07 July 2023

Tags: openbsd selfhosting nocloud

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Introduction

Let me share an installation guide on OpenBSD for a product I like: kanboard. It's a Kanban board written in PHP, it's easy of use, light, effective, the kind of software I like.

While there is a docker image for easy deployment on Linux, there is no guide to install it on OpenBSD. I did it successfuly, including httpd for the web server.

Kanboard official project website

Setup

We will need a fairly simple stack:

httpd for the web server (I won't explain how to do TLS here)

php 8.2

database backed by sqlite, if you need postgresql or mysql, adapt

Kanboard files

Prepare a directory where kanboard will be extracted, it must be owned by root:

install -d -o root -g wheel -m 755 /var/www/htdocs/kanboard

Download the latest version of kanboard, prefer the .tar.gz file because it won't require an extra program.

Kanboard GitHub releases

Extract the archive, and move the extracted content into `/var/www/htdocs/kanboard`; the file `/var/www/htdocs/kanboard/cli` should exists if you did it correctly.

Now, you need to fix the permissions for a single directory inside the project to allow the web server to write persistent data.

install -d -o www -g www -m 755 /var/www/htdocs/kanboard/data

PHP configuration

For kanboard, we will need PHP and a few extensions. They can be installed and enabled using the following command: (for the future, 8.2 will be obsolete, adapt to the current PHP version)

pkg_add php-zip--%8.2 php-curl--%8.2 php-zip--%8.2 php-pdo_sqlite--%8.2
for mod in pdo_sqlite opcache gd zip curl
do
  ln -s /etc/php-8.2.sample/${mod}.ini /etc/php-8.2/
done
rcctl enable php82_fpm
rcctl start php82_fpm

Now you have the service php82_fpm (chrooted in /var/www/) ready to be used by httpd.

HTTPD configuration

Configure the web server httpd, you can use nginx or apache if you prefer, with the following piece of configuration:

server "kanboard.my.domain" {
    listen on * port 80

    location "*.php" {
        fastcgi socket "/run/php-fpm.sock"
    }

    # don't rewrite for assets (fonts, images)
    location "/assets/*" {
        root "/htdocs/kanboard/"
        pass
    }

    location match "/(.*)" {
        request rewrite "/index.php%1"
    }

    location "/*" {
        root "/htdocs/kanboard"
    }
}

Now, enable httpd if not already done, and (re)start httpd:

rcctl enable httpd
rcctl restart httpd

From now, Kanboard should be reachable and usable. The default credentials are admin/admin.

Sending emails

If you want to send emails, you have three choices:

use php mail() which just use the local relay

use sendmail command, which will also use the local relay

configure an smtp server with authentication, can be a remote server

Local email

If you want to use one of the first two methods, you will have to add a few files to the chroot like `/bin/sh`; you can find accurate and up to date information about the specific changes in the file `/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readms/php-8.2`.

Using a remote smtp server

If you want to use a remote server with authentication (I made a dedicated account for kanboard on my mail server):

Copy `/var/www/htdocs/kanboard/config.default.php` as `/var/www/htdocs/kanboard/config.php`, and changes the variables below accordingly:

define('MAIL_TRANSPORT', 'smtp');

define('MAIL_SMTP_HOSTNAME',   'my-server.local');
define('MAIL_SMTP_PORT',       587);
define('MAIL_SMTP_USERNAME',   'YOUR_SMTP_USER');
define('MAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD',   'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx');
define('MAIL_SMTP_HELO_NAME',  null);
define('MAIL_SMTP_ENCRYPTION', "tls");

Your kanboard should be able to send emails now. You can check by creating a new task, and click on "Send by email".

NOTE: Your user also NEED to enable email notifications.

Cronjob configuration

For some tasks like reminding emails or stats computation, Kanboard requires to run a daily job by running a the CLI version.

You can do it as the www user in root crontab:

0 1 * * * -ns su -m www -c 'cd /var/www/htdocs/kanboard && /usr/local/bin/php-8.2 cli cronjob'

Conclusion

Kanboard is a fine piece of software, I really like the kanban workflow to organize. I hope you'll enjoy it as well.

I'd also add that installing software without docker is still a thing, this requires you to know exactly what you need to make it run, and how to configure it, but I'd consider this a security bonus point. Think that it will also have all its dependencies updated along with your system upgrades over time.

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