Installation overview

A hub runs on a Linux server with PHP 8.2, MariaDB, and a web server in front of PHP. Installing one takes two steps, each with its own part of this book:

1. Preparing the server. Choose your system there and follow its page, which takes a server with nothing on it to one ready for the hub: the packages, the code, and the web server. Each system's page is complete on its own. The section also helps you choose, if you have not already: hosted hubs currently run on Enterprise Linux 8.
2. Installing the hub, which every system's page ends at: the database, the installer, and what comes after. It is the same on every system.

To run the hub as a Docker image that holds its code, with MariaDB in a container beside it, follow A self-contained hub in Docker instead. It does both steps, and the upgrades after.

If the hub you are asking about is already installed and answering, go to The first week with a new hub instead.

What every system needs

• A Linux server. Hubzero does not run on Windows; the installer refuses to start there.
• A name for the hub, pointing at the server, and a TLS certificate for it. A hub is always served over HTTPS: the administrator sign-in form always posts to an https:// address, so on plain HTTP the administrator can never sign in. A self-signed certificate will do to start with, before the real one or the name is ready; each system's page shows where to find or make one.
• MariaDB, with its default SQL mode, which is strict. See MariaDB's SQL mode.
• SELinux turned off, on a system that has it. Hubs run with it off and are not tested with it on.
• git and unzip. Composer itself ships in the repository as core/bin/composer; you do not install it separately.
• PHP 8.2 and the extensions the installer checks for, read here from its own requirements check:

    public const MIN_PHP_VERSION = '8.2.0';

    /**
     * Required PHP extensions with descriptions
     */
    public const REQUIRED_EXTENSIONS = [
        'pdo'       => 'Database abstraction layer',
        'pdo_mysql' => 'MySQL database driver',
        'json'      => 'JSON data handling',
        'mbstring'  => 'Multibyte string support',
        'openssl'   => 'Encryption and SSL support',
        'curl'      => 'HTTP client for APIs',
        'gd'        => 'Image processing',
        'fileinfo'  => 'MIME type detection',
        'zip'       => 'Archive handling',
    ];

The libraries Composer installs need the XML extensions, sockets and posix as well. Each system's page installs all of them, and the installer's check asks Composer for the libraries' own list, so it finds any that are missing.

What installing does

Installing the hub runs one of two installers that do the same job: muse install on the command line, which can also take its answers from a file, or the installer in the browser. Both load the database, write the hub's configuration into app/config/, bring the database up to date with the migrations, and create the administrator. The hub's code is a git checkout of its release branch, 2.4-main, which is what Upgrading a hub brings up to date later.

What was tested

• Full installs, browser and command line: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS behind Apache and nginx, with Ubuntu's own PHP 8.3, and FrankenPHP's PHP 8.2 Docker image.
• Full installs, command line: Enterprise Linux 8 and 10 behind Apache, and 9 behind nginx, with PHP 8.2 from the packages their pages name, in Rocky Linux containers. A container has no SELinux, firewall or systemd, so those steps were not run.
• PHP 8.2 packages installed and every extension checked: Debian 12 and 13, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and 24.04 LTS.
• Databases: MariaDB 10.11 and 11.8.