How to Install Kanboard on CentOS 7 with Nginx and Let’s Encrypt SSL

This is a complete guide to install and configure Kanboard on CentOS 7 with Nginx web server, and optional Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. Kanboard is a project management software that uses the Kanban methodology to help you visualize your workflow and complete tasks faster and efficiently.

Features of Kanboard

• It is a free and open source
• It enables you to customize your boards according to your business activities
• Has native support for reports and analytics
• You can have multiple projects with the ability to drag and drop tasks
• Provides an easy to use web dashboard that can be accessed from anywhere with a modern browser
• Capability to extend functionalities with plugins and integration to other external services

Kanboard on CentOS 7 setup

• Database – By default Kanboard use SQLite but we will use MariaDB which is recommended for large teams.
• Web Servers: We will install and configure Nginx.
• PHP 7.2
• Below are PHP extensions that will be can be installed:

Install Kanboard on CentOS 7

Follow the steps below to install Kanboard on CentOS 7.

Step 1: Install MariaDB database server

Install MariaDB database server on your CentOS 7 server using the following guide:

Install MariaDB 10.x on Ubuntu 18.04 and CentOS 7

Once the installation is complete, create a database with a user. First, log in to the database CLI as a root user.

$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 39
Server version: 10.3.9-MariaDB-1:10.3.9+maria~bionic-log mariadb.org binary distribution

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]>

Then run the commands to create database and user with required privileges

CREATE DATABASE kanboard CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON kanboard.* TO 'kanboard'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
\q

Step 2: Install Nginx and PHP

Next, we can install the Nginx web server and required php extensions

sudo yum -y install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
sudo yum -y install epel-release yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --disable remi-php54
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php72
sudo yum -y install php php-{fpm,mbstring,cli,json,opcache,zip,xml,gd,ldap,mysql,json,sqlite3}

Install nginx

sudo yum -y install nginx

Step 3: Download and Install Kanboard

You have two options to download Kanboard:

• From stable release
• From Github development branch

To download a specific stable release of Kanboard, check Kanboard releases page. As of this writing, the latest release is version 1.2.5

export VER=1.2.5
wget https://github.com/kanboard/kanboard/archive/v${VER}.tar.gz
tar xvf v${VER}.tar.gz
rm -f v${VER}.tar.gz
sudo mv kanboard-${VER}/ /var/www/kanboard

To download development release, use

sudo git clone https://github.com/kanboard/kanboard.git /var/www/kanboard

Create a config file

sudo cp /var/www/kanboard/config.default.php /var/www/kanboard/config.php
sudo vim /var/www/kanboard/config.php

// Database driver: sqlite, mysql or postgres (sqlite by default)
define('DB_DRIVER', 'mysql');

// Mysql/Postgres username
define('DB_USERNAME', 'kanboard');

// Mysql/Postgres password
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'StrongPassword');

// Mysql/Postgres hostname
define('DB_HOSTNAME', 'localhost');

// Mysql/Postgres database name
define('DB_NAME', 'kanboard');

This extensive configuration reference for Kanboard is helpful for proper configuration of other features like LDAP authentication, SMTP settings, Brute-force protection, Logging, Secure HTTP headers settings e.t.c.

Set Proper permissions

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/kanboard

Configure php-fpm

Edit the file /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Set like below

user = nginx
group = nginx
listen = /run/php-fpm/php7.2-fpm.sock
listen.owner = nginx
listen.group = nginx
listen.mode = 0660

Step 4: Configure Nginx

Create Nginx configuration file /etc/nginx/conf.d/kanboard.confwith the following content

server {
        listen       80;
        #listen       443 ssl;
	#ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/kanboard.crt;
	#ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/kanboard.key;
        server_name  kanboard.example.com;
        index        index.php;
        root         /var/www/kanboard;
        client_max_body_size 32M;

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
            fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php7.2-fpm.sock;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_index index.php;
            include fastcgi_params;
        }

        location ~* ^.+\.(log|sqlite)$ {
            return 404;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
            return 404;
        }

        location ~* ^.+\.(ico|jpg|gif|png|css|js|svg|eot|ttf|woff|woff2|otf)$ {
            log_not_found off;
            expires 7d;
            etag on;
        }

        gzip on;
        gzip_comp_level 3;
        gzip_disable "msie6";
        gzip_vary on;
        gzip_types
            text/javascript
            application/javascript
            application/json
            text/xml
            application/xml
            application/rss+xml
            text/css
            text/plain;
    }

# HTTP

server {
	listen 80;
        server_name  kanboard.example.com;
        root         /var/www/kanboard;
	location / {
        	rewrite     ^ https://kanboard.example.com$request_uri? permanent;
    }
}
	
# HTTPS
server {
        listen       443 ssl;
	ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/kanboard.example.com/fullchain.pem;
	ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/kanboard.example.com/privkey.pem;
        server_name  kanboard.example.com;
        index        index.php;
        root         /var/www/kanboard;
        client_max_body_size 32M;

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
            fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php7.2-fpm.sock;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_index index.php;
            include fastcgi_params;
        }

        location ~* ^.+\.(log|sqlite)$ {
            return 404;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
            return 404;
        }

        location ~* ^.+\.(ico|jpg|gif|png|css|js|svg|eot|ttf|woff|woff2|otf)$ {
            log_not_found off;
            expires 7d;
            etag on;
        }

        gzip on;
        gzip_comp_level 3;
        gzip_disable "msie6";
        gzip_vary on;
        gzip_types
            text/javascript
            application/javascript
            application/json
            text/xml
            application/xml
            application/rss+xml
            text/css
            text/plain;
    }

# nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

If it returns OK then you can start nginx service

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm nginx
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm nginx

Step 5: Access Kanboard Web UI

Access  Kanboard Web UI by opening the link http://kanboard.example.com with your favorite web browser. Replace kanboard.example.com with your correct domain name.

To login use:

Username: admin
Password: admin

You should get to a dashboard like below

Reset admin password

To be safe, reset admin password by navigating to Admin > Users Management > admin

That’s all. You now have a working Kanboard on CentOS 7 server. To further tune your Kanboard, refer to Admin guide.