Install on a GNU/Linux server¶

Tested distributions: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE.

Warning

Only 64 bits distributions are supported. Do not try to install on a 32 bits operating system!

Prerequisites¶

eLabFTW uses Docker containers. This saves you from dealing with a ton of dependencies, as everything is packed in a container. But we still need a few programs installed before we can get started.

Dependencies:¶

curl, to get files from command line (very likely already installed)
docker, the container engine
docker-compose, the tool to orchestrate containers
dialog, to display nice user interface during installation
git, the version control system
zip, the compression tool (for the backups)

Make sure your user is in the docker group so you can execute docker commands without sudo (see documentation).

Install eLabFTW¶

Install elabctl, a tool to help you manage the elabftw installation:

# get the program (a bash script)
curl -sL https://get.elabftw.net -o elabctl && chmod +x elabctl
# add it to a directory in your $PATH
sudo mv elabctl /usr/local/bin/

Configure eLabFTW:

elabctl install

(optional) Edit the configuration:

You might want to edit the configuration here to suit your server setup. For instance, you might want to edit /etc/elabftw.yml to change the port binding (default is 443 but it might be already used by a traditional webserver). See below for using the container with a reverse proxy.
Start eLabFTW:

elabctl start

Register a Sysadmin account:

Point your browser to https://<your-elabftw-site.org> (or https://<IP address>)

Post install¶

Don’t forget to read the post install page, setup backup, and subscribe to the newsletter!

ENJOY! :D

Documentation for advanced setups¶

Using mod_proxy to run eLabFTW Docker container behind Apache2 (https enabled)¶

If eLabFTW’s Docker container runs on a machine with several web applications you can use mod_proxy to access the application without opening another port on your server.

The following example forwards the URL https://your.domain/elabftw/ to the docker URL https://localhost:444. The default Docker port can be changed by setting the ports parameter in /etc/elabftw.yml to “444:443”.

SSLProxyEngine on
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPass /elabftw/ https://localhost:444/
ProxyPassReverse /elabftw/ https://localhost:444/

Using mod_proxy to run eLabFTW Docker container behind Apache2 (https disabled)¶

It is also possible to disable https in the elabftw docker container’s web server, if Apache2 handles SSL:

DISABLE_HTTPS=true

One can then forward to elabftw without the option SSLProxyEngine on, if the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO header is set:

RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Proto "https"
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPass /elabftw/ http://localhost:444/
ProxyPassReverse /elabftw/ http://localhost:444/

Using nginx to run eLabFTW Docker container¶

If you already have nginx running, you’ll want to use the proxy capapbilities of nginx to forward packets to the Docker container.

The following example forwards the URL https://demo.elabftw.net to the docker URL http://localhost:3148. The default Docker port can be changed by setting the ports parameter in /etc/elabftw.yml to “3148:443”. In this example, nginx is listening to port 8888, and HAProxy is doing SSL termination. Adapt to your needs.

server {
    server_name demo.elabftw.net;

    listen 8888;
    listen [::]:8888;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/demo.elabftw.net.log proxy;

    location / {
        proxy_pass       http://localhost:3148;
        proxy_set_header Host      $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        # add this if nginx is terminating TLS
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Add this to /etc/nginx/nginx.conf to get the real IP address in the logs:

log_format proxy '$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for - $remote_user [$time_local] '
                 '"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent '
                 '"$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" "$gzip_ratio"';