Introduction
PhpIPAM is a reliable web Internet Protocol address management system. It’s a robust open-source application that is designed to facilitate seamless, modern and effective management of IP address. The package is based on PHP and features a MySQL database backend. This tutorial will show you how to install the phpIPAM on your Ubuntu 18.04 VPS or Dedicated server.
Before You Begin
The following dependencies are required by phpIPAM and should be installed before installing and configuring phpIPAM:
- Apache/Nginx (web servers)
- PHP modules
- PHP and PHP-FPM for Nginx
- MariaDB or MySQL database hosting
Step 1 – Installing A Database Server (MariaDB)
The first step when installing phpIPAM is creating a database for this application. Install MariaDB database server on the system. Once you install and set up the database server, create a new database for the PhpIPAM user. First, issue the command below to login to MariaDB command line:
$ sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter the root password for MariaDB and press ENTER to access the database shell. Now, to create the database issue the command below: MariaDB [(none)]>
createdatabase phpipam;
Next, execute the command below to grant the new user all privileges: MariaDB [(none)]>
grant all on phpipam.* to phpipam@localhost identifiedby'strongpassword';
Note: Remember to replace the placeholder “strongpassword” with your preferred password.
Then, run the following command to flush the privileges: MariaDB [(none)]>
flushprivileges;
You can issue the command below to check the privileges granted to the phpIPAM user: MariaDB [(none)]>
showgrantsfor phpipam@localhost;
This will give you an output similar to the one below:
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Grants for phpipam@localhost | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | GRANTUSAGEON *.* TO'phpipam'@'localhost'IDENTIFIEDBYPASSWORD'*FAB0955B2CE7AE2DAFEE46C36501AFC6E65A445D' | | GRANT ALL PRIVILEGESON`phpipam`.* TO'phpipam'@'localhost' | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 2rowsinset (0.000 sec)
That is it! The database is successfully configured. Issue the command below to exit the MariaDB command line: MariaDB [(none)]>
Quit
Step 2 – Installing PHP and All The Required Modules
To install PHP and all the required modules, execute the command below:
$ sudo apt-get -y install php7.2-mysql php7.2-curl php7.2-gd php7.2-intl php-pear php7.2-imap php-memcache php7.2-pspell php7.2-recode php7.2-tidy php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-mbstring php-gettext php7.2-gmp php7.2-json php7.2-xml
Next, run the command below to install the PHP-FPM module
$ sudo apt-get install php-fpm
By now you have installed PHP and all the required dependencies. To check the status of the just installed modules, run the command below:
$ sudo systemctl status php7.2-fpm.service
This will give an output similar to the one below:
●php7.2-fpm.service-ThePHP7.2FastCGIProcessManager Loaded: loaded(/lib/systemd/system/php7.2-fpm.service;enabled;vendor preset: enabled) Active: active(running)sinceWed2018-10-2405:43:35UTC;13sago Docs: man:php-fpm7.2(8) Main PID: 19135(php-fpm7.2) Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 2, Requests: 0, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec" Tasks: 3(limit:1152) CGroup: /system.slice/php7.2-fpm.service ├─14688 php-fpm: masterprocess(/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php-fpm.conf) ├─14705 php-fpm: poolwww └─14706 php-fpm: poolwww Oct2405:43:34server-01systemd[1]:StartingThePHP7.2FastCGIProcessManager... Oct2405:43:35server-01systemd[1]:StartedThePHP7.2FastCGIProcessManager.
Step 3 – Downloading and Installing PhpIPAM
The stage is set and it’s now safe to install the phpIPAM on your Ubuntu 18.04 system. Here, we’ll download the application from GitHub and for this reason, we should install the Git system first:
$ sudo apt-get install git
Next, run the command below to clone the phpIPAM code on GitHub page:
$ sudo git clone --recursive https://github.com/phpipam/phpipam.git /var/www/phpipam
Chage to the directory /var/www/phpipam, and then check the stable release:
$ sudo cd /var/www/phpipam $ sudo git checkout -b 1.3 origin/1.3
If everything is okay, you will get the output below:
Branch '1.3' set up to track remote branch '1.3'from'origin'. Switched to a new branch '1.3'
Step 4 – Configuring PhpIPAM
Now, change directory to /var/www/phpipam, then copy the config.dist.php file to config.php.
$ sudo cd /var/www/phpipam $ sudo cp config.dist.php config.php
Run the command below to open the config.php
$ sudo nano config.php
Edit this file to match the credentials in step 1:
/** * database connection details ******************************/$db['host'] = 'localhost'; $db['user'] = 'phpipam'; $db['pass'] = 'strongpassword'; $db['name'] = 'phpipam'; $db['port'] = 3306;
Step 5 – Installing And Configuring Nginx
To install the Nginx web server,run the command below:
$ sudo apt-get install nginx
Then, execute the command below to open the configuration file /etc/nginx/conf.d/phpipam.conf:
$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/phpipam.conf
Once the file opens, add the following text:
server {
# root directory
root /var/www/;
# phpipam
location /phpipam/ {
try_files$uri$uri/ /phpipam/index.php;
index index.php;
}
# phpipam - api
location /phpipam/api/ {
try_files$uri$uri/ /phpipam/api/index.php;
}
# php-fpm
location~ .php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
try_files $uri$uri/ index.php = 404;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}Complete Nginx configuration by changing the ownership of this directory; /var/www/ to the user www-data
$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/
Step 6 – installing And Configuring Apache
If you intend to utilize Apache as your web server, you need to install it at this point:
$ sudo apt-get install apache2
Next, run the command below to enable module rewrite:
$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
Now, issue the command below to install the PHP modules for Apache:
$ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php php-curl php-xmlrpc php-intl php-gd
Then, execute the command below to open the Apache configuration file:
$ sudo /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/phpipam.conf
Once the configuration file opens, add the content below:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@phpipam.yourdomain.com DocumentRoot"/var/www/phpipam" ServerName phpipam.computingforgeeks.com ServerAlias www.phpipam.computingforgeeks.com <Directory "/var/www/phpipam"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverrideAll Requireall granted </Directory> ErrorLog"/var/log/phpipam.yourdomain.com-error_log" CustomLog"/var/log/phpipam.yourdomain.com-access_log" combined </VirtualHost>
Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2
Step 7 – Completing The Installation
By now, everything is set and you can easily complete the installation. Navigate to your favorite browser and search https://example.com/install.
Note: Remember to replace example.com with a Fully Qualified Domain Name.
This will take you to the installation homepage for phpIPAM. Click “New phpipam installation” 
Note: The database name is set as phpipam and the database location is set as localhost.
There is a button for Show advanced options. By clicking this button you will get additional installation options but it’s always wise to leave all these options to their default values. Simply enter your MySQL login credentials (username and password) and hit the Install phpipam database icon. 
Conclusion
Congratulation! You have successfully installed and configured phpIPAM on your Ubuntu 18.04 VPS or Dedicated server. You can now use this application to monitor your IP address usage in your infrastructure.
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