How to Install Booked Scheduler on Ubuntu 16.04

Introduction

Booked is an open source web based application specially designed to improve scheduling and manage resource utilization. It is written in PHP and uses MySQL or MariaDB to store its data. It is a simple and powerful scheduler with flexible layouts, administrative backend and custom rules. Booked comes with lots of features including reservation start and end reminders, user-based security, flexible quota system, export to Outlook, reservation reminders, and much more.

Prerequisites

• A Vultr Ubuntu 16.04 server instance.

• A sudo user.

Step 1: Update the System

First, update your Ubuntu server to the latest version.

sudo apt-get update -y

sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Once your system is up-to-date, restart the system and login with sudo user.

Step 2: Install LAMP

Before starting, you will need to install Apache, PHP, MySQL and other PHP libraries on your system.

You can install all of them with the following command.

sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data libaio1 libapache2-mod-php7.0 libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libmysqlclient18 libterm-readkey-perl libwrap0 ssl-cert tcpd mariadb-server php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-json php7.0-mysql php7.0-readline -y

Once installation is complete, start Apache and MariaDB and enable them to start on boot time.

sudo systemctl start apache2

sudo systemctl enable apache2

sudo systemctl start mysql

sudo systemctl enable mysql

Step 3: Configure MariaDB

First, you will need to secure MariaDB. You can secure it by running the mysql_secure_installation script.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Answer all the questions as shown below.

Set root password? [Y/n] Y

New password: <STRONG_PASSWORD>

Re-enter new password: <STRONG_PASSWORD>

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] Y

Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Y

When all is done, connect to the MySQL shell.

mysql -u root -p

Enter your password, then create a new database and user for Booked Scheduler.

MariaDB [(none)]>create database bookeddb;

MariaDB [(none)]>create user booked@localhost identified by 'password';

MariaDB [(none)]>grant all privileges on bookeddb.* to booked@localhost identified by 'password';

MariaDB [(none)]>flush privileges;

MariaDB [(none)]>exit;

Step 4: Install Booked Scheduler

You can download the latest version of the Booked Scheduler from the Sourceforge download page.

wget https://excellmedia.dl.sourceforge.net/project/phpscheduleit/Booked/2.6/booked-2.6.7.zip

After downloading, extract the downloaded file.

unzip booked-2.6.7.zip

Next, move the extracted directory to the apache web root directory.

sudo mv booked /var/www/html/

Next, change ownership of the booked directory to the www-data user and group.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/booked

Step 5: Configure Apache for Booked Scheduler

Next, you will need to create a new Apache virtual host file for Booked Scheduler.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/booked.conf

Add the following lines.

<VirtualHost *:80>

  ServerName yourdomain.com

  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/booked

<Directory /var/www/bookedscheduler>

  Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews

  AllowOverride All

  Require all granted

</Directory>

  ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/booked-error.log

  CustomLog /var/log/apache2/booked-access.log combined

</VirtualHost> 

Save the file, then enable the site.

sudo a2ensite booked.conf

Next, restart the Apache service to read the new virtualhost configuration.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 6: Configure Booked Scheduler

First, you will need to copy the sample configuration file.

cd /var/www/html/booked/config/

sudo cp config.dist.php config.php

Next, open the config.php file and make some changes as per your requirements.

sudo nano config.php

Make the following changes.

$conf['settings']['default.timezone'] = 'Asia/Kolkata';           // your timezone

$conf['settings']['admin.email'] = 'example@example.com';         // email address of admin user

$conf['settings']['admin.email.name'] = 'John Smith';             

$conf['settings']['script.url'] = 'http://yourdomain.com/Web';    // your domain

$conf['settings']['database']['type'] = 'mysql';

$conf['settings']['database']['user'] = 'booked';

$conf['settings']['database']['password'] = '';

$conf['settings']['database']['hostspec'] = '127.0.0.1';          // your IP    

$conf['settings']['database']['name'] = 'bookeddb';

Save the file when you are finished.

Next, import database schema and data.

cd /var/www/html/booked

mysql -u booked -p bookeddb < database_schema/create-schema.sql

mysql -u booked -p bookeddb < database_schema/create-data.sql

Step 7: Access Booked Scheduler

Once the Booked Scheduler is configured. Open your web browser and navigate to the URL http://yourdomain.com/Web/register.php. You will be redirected to the Registration page:

Provide all of the details and click on the Register button. You will see the Booked Scheduler dashboard: