How to Install Zen Cart on Debian 9

Zen Cart is a free open source e-commerce content management and shopping cart platform. The software is written in PHP programming language and often installed on Linux under Apache/Nginx web servers, PHP and MySQL/MariaDB database management system, also known as LAMP or LEMP stack.  Zen Cart e-commerce solution is used to easily create online shops for different businesses and advertise and sell services and merchandise.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to install and configure the latest version Zen Cart on Debian 9, in order to create a free online shopping store.

Requirements

• Minimal Installation of Debian 9 server on a bare-metal machine or on a virtual private server
• A static IP address configured for one of your system network interfaces cards
• sudo root privileges for a local or remote account or direct access to root account
• A domain name, private or public, depending on your deployment, with the proper DNS records configured for web services. If don’t have a valid or a registered domain name you can perform the installation and access the website via your server IP address
• If you want to use website registration, comment moderation and other features, your should have a running mail server properly configured at your premises with remote access to its IMAP and SMTP services.

Pre-Requirements

Before starting to install and configure Zen Cart from sources in your own server, first assure the system meets all the software requirements for compiling and installing the application.  On the first step, update your system repositories and software packages by issuing the following command.

apt update

apt upgrade

Next, set up the name for your system by executing the following command (replace your hostname variable accordingly).

hostnamectl set-hostname zencart

Verify machine hostname and hosts file by issuing the following commands.

hostnamectl 

cat /etc/hostname 

hostname –s

hostname –f

On the next step, execute the following command in order to install some necessary utilities that will be used to further manage your system from command line.

apt install wget bash-completion zip unzip curl

 Finally, reboot Debian server in order to apply kernel updates and the hostname changes properly.

systemctl reboot

Install Apache and PHP

Zen Cart is a web-based CMS e-commerce platform written mostly in PHP server-side programming language. In order to execute the PHP file scripts of the application, a web server, such as Apache HTTP server, and a PHP processing gateway must be installed and operational in the system.  In order to install Apache web server and the PHP interpreter alongside with all required PHP modules needed by the application to run properly, issue the following command in your server console.

apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0 php7.0-curl php7.0-gd php7.0-mbstring php7.0-xml

After Apache and PHP have been installed, test if the web server is up and running and listening for network connections on port 80 by issuing the following command with root privileges. 

netstat –tlpn

In case netstat network utility is not installed by default in your Debian system, execute the following command to install it.

apt install net-tools

By inspecting the netstat command output you can see that the Apache web server is listening for incoming network connections on port 80. For the same task you can also use the ss command, which is automatically installed by default in Debian 9.

ss- tulpn

Configure the Firewall

In case you have a firewall enabled in your system, such as UFW firewall application, you should add a new rule to allow HTTP traffic to pass through the firewall by issuing the following command.

ufw allow WWW

or

ufw allow 80/tcp

If you’re using iptables raw rules to manage Firewall rules in your Debian server, add the following rule to allow port 80 inbound traffic on the firewall so that visitors can browse the online shop.

apt-get install -y iptables-persistent

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --destination-port 80 -j ACCEPT

systemctl iptables-persistent save 

systemctl iptables-persistent reload

Configurae Apache and SSL/TLS

Next, enable and apply the following Apache modules required by the e-commerce application to run properly, by issuing the following command.

a2enmod rewrite expires env alias deflate mime

systemctl restart apache2

Finally, test if Apache web server default web page can be displayed in your client's browsers by visiting your Debian machine IP address or your domain name or server FQDN via the HTTP protocol, as shown in the following image. If you don’t know your machine IP address, execute ifconfig or 'ip a' commands to reveal the IP address of your server.

http://yourdomain.tld

In order to install and access Zen Cart web admin panel backed and the frontend website via HTTPS protocol that will secure the traffic for your clients, issue the following command to enable Apache web server SSL module and SSL site configuration file.

a2enmod ssl 

a2ensite default-ssl.conf

Next, open Apache default SSL site configuration file with a text editor and enable URL rewrite rules by adding the following lines of code after DocumentRoot directive, as shown in the following sample:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf

SSL site configuration file excerpt:

<Directory /var/www/html>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

 Also, make the following change to VirtualHost line to look like as shown in the following excerpt:

<VirtualHost *:443>

Close the SSL Apache file and open the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf file for editing and add the same URL rewrite rules as for SSL configuration file. Insert the lines of code after DocumentRoot statement as shown in the following example.

 <Directory /var/www/html>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

Finally, restart Apache daemon to apply all rules configured so far and visit your domain via HTTP protocol. Because you’re using the automatically Self-Signed certificates pairs issued by Apache at installation, an error warning should be displayed in the browser. 

systemctl restart apache2

https://yourdomain.tld

Accept the warning concerning the untrusted certificate in order to continue and be redirected to Apache default web page.

In case the UFW firewall application blocks incoming network connections to HTTPS port, you should add a new rule to allow HTTPS traffic to pass through firewall by issuing the following command.

ufw allow 'WWW Full'

or

ufw allow 443/tcp

If iptables is the default firewall application installed to protect your Debian system at network level, add the following rule to allow port 443 inbound traffic in the firewall so that visitors can browse your domain name.

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --destination-port 443 -j ACCEPT

systemctl iptables-persistent save 

systemctl iptables-persistent reload

In the next step, we need to make some further changes to PHP default configuration file in order to assure that the following PHP variables are enabled and the PHP timezone setting is correctly configured and matches your system's geographical location.  Open the /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini file for editing and assure that the following lines are set up as follows. Also, initially, make a backup of PHP configuration file.

cp /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini{,.backup}

nano /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

Search, edit and change the following variables in php.ini configuration file:

file_uploads = On
memory_limit = 128 M
upload_max_file_size = 64M
post_max_size = 64M
date.timezone = Europe/London

Increase post_max_size and upload_max_file_size variables as suitable to support large file attachments and replace the time.zone variable accordingly to your physical time by consulting the list of time zones provided by PHP docs at the following link http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

If you want to increase the load speed of your website pages via OPCache plugin available for PHP7, append the following OPCache settings at the bottom of the PHP interpreter configuration file, as detailed below:

opcache.enable=1 
opcache.enable_cli=1 
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8 
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000 
opcache.memory_consumption=128 
opcache.save_comments=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=1

Close the php.ini configuration file and verify the end of PHP configuration file to check if the variables have been correctly added by issuing the below command.

tail /etc/php/7.0/apache2/php.ini

After you’ve made all the changes explained above, restart the apache daemon to apply the new changes by issuing the following command.

systemctl restart apache2

Finally, create a PHP info file by executing the following command and check if the PHP time zone has been correctly configured by visiting the PHP info script file from a browser at the following URL, as illustrated in the below image. Scroll down to date setting to check the php time zone configuration.

echo '<?php phpinfo(); ?>'| tee /var/www/html/info.php

https://yourdomain.tld/info.php

Zen Cart e-commerce web application stores different configurations, such as users, sessions, contacts, products, catalogs and others, in an RDBMS database. In this guide, we’ll configure Zen Cart application to use MariaDB database as backend. Issue the following command to install MariaDB database and the PHP module needed to access the mysql database.

apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client php7.0-mysql

After you’ve installed MariaDB, verify if the daemon is running and listens for connections on localhost, port 3306, by running netstat command.

netstat –tlpn | grep mysql

Then, log in to MySQL console and secure MariaDB root account by issuing the following commands.

mysql -h localhost

use mysql;
update user set plugin='' where user='root';
flush privileges;
exit

On the next step, secure MariaDB by executing the script mysql_secure_installation provided by the installation packages from Debian stretch repositories. While running the script will ask a series of questions designed to secure MariaDB database, such as: to change MySQL root password, to remove anonymous users, to disable remote root logins and delete the test database. Execute the script by issuing the following command and assure you type yes to all questions asked in order to fully secure MySQL daemon. Use the following script output excerpt as a guide.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MariaDB

      SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE!  PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!

 

In order to log into MariaDB to secure it, we'll need the current

password for the root user.  If you've just installed MariaDB, and

you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,

so you should just press enter here.

 

Enter current password for root (enter for none):

OK, successfully used password, moving on...

 

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MariaDB

root user without the proper authorisation.

 

You already have a root password set, so you can safely answer 'n'.

 

Change the root password? [Y/n] y

New password:

Re-enter new password:

Password updated successfully!

Reloading privilege tables..

 ... Success!

 

By default, a MariaDB installation has an anonymous user, allowing anyone

to log into MariaDB without having to have a user account created for

them.  This is intended only for testing, and to make the installation

go a bit smoother.  You should remove them before moving into a

production environment.

 

Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y

 ... Success!

 

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'.  This

ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network.

 

Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y

 ... Success!

 

By default, MariaDB comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can

access.  This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed

before moving into a production environment.

 

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

 - Dropping test database...

 ... Success!

 - Removing privileges on test database...

 ... Success!

 

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far

will take effect immediately.

 

Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

 ... Success!

 

Cleaning up...

 

All done!  If you've completed all of the above steps, your MariaDB

installation should now be secure.

Thanks for using MariaDB!

In order to test MariaDB security, try login to the database from the console with no root password. The access to the database should be denied if no password is provided for the root account, as illustrated in the following command excerpt:

root@cubecart:~# mysql -h localhost -u root

Enter password:
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)

If the password is supplied, the login process should be granted to MySQL console, as shown in the command sample:

root@cubecart:~# mysql -h localhost -u root -p

Enter password:
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 15
Server version: 10.1.26-MariaDB-0+deb9u1 Debian 9.1
Copyright (c) 2000, 2017, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
MariaDB [(none)]> exit
Bye

Next, log in to the MariaDB database console, create a database for Zen Cart application and a user with a password that will be used to manage the application database, by issuing the following commands. Replace the database name, user and password accordingly. 

mysql –u root -p

create database zencart;
grant SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, ALTER, INDEX, DROP on zencart.* to 'zencart_user'@'localhost' identified by 'password1';
flush privileges;
exit

In order to apply all changes made so far, restart MySQL and Apache daemons and verify if daemons are running by issuing the following commands.

systemctl restart mysql apache2

systemctl status mysql apache2

Install Zen Cart 

After all system requirements are met for your e-commerce online shop installation, visit SourceForge Zen Cart official download page at https://sourceforge.net/projects/zencart/files/ and download the latest zip package compressed archive by with the help of the wget utility, as illustrated in the following sample.

wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/zencart/CURRENT%20-%20Zen%20Cart%201.5.x%20Series/zen-cart-v1.5.5f-12312017b.zip

After the zip archive download finishes, extract Zen Cart zip compressed archive directly and list the extracted files by issuing the following commands. Also, remove the default index.html file installed by Apache web server to webroot path and also delete the info.php file created earlier. 

rm /var/www/html/index.html 

rm /var/www/html/info.php

unzip zen-cart-v1.5.5f-12312017b.zip

ls

The installation fil