Just for fun: Installing 2019 Vanilla Forums software on LTS Debian 11 Bullseye in 2025!

Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer
in Technical

Thanks to and following the kind suggestions from @nwnuyhs here at LES, I decided to try installing the 2019 Version 3.3 of Vanilla Forums on Debian 11 LTS Bullseye.

I am posting here as I go along, just for fun. Besides a few laughs, I also will appreciate friendly suggestions and corrections.

The steps should be, approximately, the same as recommended by @nwnuyhs:

  • Get a VPS
  • Install aapanel
  • Use aapanel to install nginx, PHP 7.4, and mysql 5.7 database
  • Download the Vanilla zip
  • Extract the Vanilla zip in the website root
  • Visit website URL to install

I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

Thanked by (1)nwnuyhs
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  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Step 1: Get a VPS

    I provisioned a small VPS at Upcloud. The reason I selected Upcloud was that they still offer one click installation of Debian 11. Plus I had some unused account credits.

    Thanked by (1)nwnuyhs

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Step 2: Install aapanel

    With one click I can copy the aapanel install command! Then I can paste the command into root's terminal on the VPS.

    Here is a paste of the aapanel install command as I copied it:

    URL=https://www.aapanel.com/script/install_7.0_en.sh && if [ -f /usr/bin/curl ];then curl -ksSO "$URL" ;else wget --no-check-certificate -O install_7.0_en.sh "$URL";fi;bash install_7.0_en.sh aapanel

    I was surprised to be asked for my email at the critical moment when I was wondering whether the one click copy had succeeded:

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Running the pasted command as root seems to have succeeded.

    root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~# echo $?
0
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~#

    I saved 2,024 lines of terminal output. Hundreds of packages were installed.

    At the end of the terminal output, I saw login credentials:


    ==================================================================
Congratulations! Installed successfully!
==================================================================
aaPanel Internet Address: https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxxxx/xxxxxxxx
aaPanel Internal Address: https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:xxxxx/xxxxxxxx
username: xxxxxxxx
password: xxxxxxxx
Warning:
If you cannot access the panel, 
release the following port (xxxxx|xxx|xx|xxx|xx|xx) in the security group
==================================================================
Time consumed: 1 Minute!
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~#

    Let's go see if we can access the panel. . . .

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Yes.

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Mostly in accordance with @nwnuyhs' instructions I changed some of the default aapanel software install versions to older versions:

    • Nginx stayed at 1.24 (@nwnuyhs said he uses 1.28)
    • MySQL 5.7
    • PHP 7.4

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer
    edited October 8

    I clicked the One-click button. A pop-up appeared with lots of installs listed. I watched for a while as the installs rushed by, then ate some dinner. When I returned, I saw that there were no remaining tasks and no messages, so maybe that means success. Clicking Execution log shows what seemed like an okay result.

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer
    edited October 8

    Should an nginx default page be showing on WAN port 80 at this point in the process? I don't see anything on port 80 from outside. Is that a problem? Ah! Lynx does seem to find something at http://127.0.0.1:

    Yes, looks like nginx is running:

    root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~# ps aux | grep ngin[x]
root       30582  0.0  0.8 200108  7624 ?        Ss   Oct07   0:00 nginx: master process /www/server/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /www/server/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
root       31890  0.0  0.0   9248   224 ?        Ss   Oct07   0:00 nginx: master process /www/server/panel/webserver/sbin/webserver -c /www/server/panel/webserver/conf/webserver.conf
www        31891  0.0  0.8  13188  7300 ?        S    Oct07   0:01 nginx: worker process
www        41447  0.0  2.9 221320 26256 ?        S    Oct07   0:00 nginx: worker process
www        41448  0.0  0.5 199724  4456 ?        S    Oct07   0:00 nginx: cache manager process
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~#

    The next step is to download and extract the Vanilla zip. There doesn't seem to be a /var/www or a /var/www/html directory, so I decided to try to wget the zip to the root directory and extract it later. But where to extract? I never used aapanel or nginx before. . . . Maybe aapanel has a special location for the root directory. Maybe I should look at the aapanel some more. @nwnuyhs

    Here below is the interesting download transcript for the Vanilla zip. Can anyone give me a hint about what's going on with those long strings? Also, is there a checksum for the download? Thanks!

    root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~# cd /var/www
-bash: cd: /var/www: No such file or directory
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~# cd /var
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:/var# ls
backups              bt_setupPath.conf  lib    lock  mail  run    tmp
bt_apacheVersion.pl  cache              local  log   opt   spool
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:/var# cd
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~# ls
install_7.0_en.sh
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~# wget https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/releases/download/Vanilla_3.3/vanilla-3.3.zip
--2025-10-08 01:34:10--  https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/releases/download/Vanilla_3.3/vanilla-3.3.zip
Resolving github.com (github.com)... 140.82.113.4
Connecting to github.com (github.com)|140.82.113.4|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://release-assets.githubusercontent.com/github-production-release-asset/232390/d3d62600-f9b3-11e9-95b8-bcbf47b1f733?sp=r&sv=2018-11-09&sr=b&spr=https&se=2025-10-08T02%3A24%3A18Z&rscd=attachment%3B+filename%3Dvanilla-3.3.zip&rsct=application%2Foctet-stream&skoid=96c2d410-5711-43a1-aedd-ab1947aa7ab0&sktid=398a6654-997b-47e9-b12b-9515b896b4de&skt=2025-10-08T01%3A23%3A28Z&ske=2025-10-08T02%3A24%3A18Z&sks=b&skv=2018-11-09&sig=Gem9KmxIGBJ8Xpl%2FlCbZ1pPPQHO%2B7%2FaNEz%2FL7a8cwMY%3D&jwt=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJnaXRodWIuY29tIiwiYXVkIjoicmVsZWFzZS1hc3NldHMuZ2l0aHVidXNlcmNvbnRlbnQuY29tIiwia2V5Ijoia2V5MSIsImV4cCI6MTc1OTg4OTA1MSwibmJmIjoxNzU5ODg3MjUxLCJwYXRoIjoicmVsZWFzZWFzc2V0cHJvZHVjdGlvbi5ibG9iLmNvcmUud2luZG93cy5uZXQifQ.C168rxS7zCLw_smiVEELCBaBC1v4tuPKfrO_Jg1DocI&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dvanilla-3.3.zip&response-content-type=application%2Foctet-stream [following]
--2025-10-08 01:34:11--  https://release-assets.githubusercontent.com/github-production-release-asset/232390/d3d62600-f9b3-11e9-95b8-bcbf47b1f733?sp=r&sv=2018-11-09&sr=b&spr=https&se=2025-10-08T02%3A24%3A18Z&rscd=attachment%3B+filename%3Dvanilla-3.3.zip&rsct=application%2Foctet-stream&skoid=96c2d410-5711-43a1-aedd-ab1947aa7ab0&sktid=398a6654-997b-47e9-b12b-9515b896b4de&skt=2025-10-08T01%3A23%3A28Z&ske=2025-10-08T02%3A24%3A18Z&sks=b&skv=2018-11-09&sig=Gem9KmxIGBJ8Xpl%2FlCbZ1pPPQHO%2B7%2FaNEz%2FL7a8cwMY%3D&jwt=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJnaXRodWIuY29tIiwiYXVkIjoicmVsZWFzZS1hc3NldHMuZ2l0aHVidXNlcmNvbnRlbnQuY29tIiwia2V5Ijoia2V5MSIsImV4cCI6MTc1OTg4OTA1MSwibmJmIjoxNzU5ODg3MjUxLCJwYXRoIjoicmVsZWFzZWFzc2V0cHJvZHVjdGlvbi5ibG9iLmNvcmUud2luZG93cy5uZXQifQ.C168rxS7zCLw_smiVEELCBaBC1v4tuPKfrO_Jg1DocI&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dvanilla-3.3.zip&response-content-type=application%2Foctet-stream
Resolving release-assets.githubusercontent.com (release-assets.githubusercontent.com)... 185.199.110.133, 185.199.109.133, 185.199.108.133, ...
Connecting to release-assets.githubusercontent.com (release-assets.githubusercontent.com)|185.199.110.133|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 18707111 (18M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: 'vanilla-3.3.zip'

vanilla-3.3.zip           100%[====================================>]  17.84M  79.2MB/s    in 0.2s    

2025-10-08 01:34:11 (79.2 MB/s) - 'vanilla-3.3.zip' saved [18707111/18707111]

root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:~#

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    I am guessing that I have to add a website in aapanel before I get a webroot directory into which to extract the Vanilla zip.

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • cybertechcybertech OGBenchmark King

    aapanel best panel

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Okay, added a site with aapanel. Webroot found at /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx. Seems to render from WAN. No security certificate yet. Here's from my Chromebook in Mexico:

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Headed over to /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx and unzipped the vanilla-3.3.zip.

    root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:/www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx# unzip vanilla-3.3.zip

    Unzipping made a new subdirectory called package. Here's what's inside the package subdirectory:

    root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:/www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx/package# ls
README.md     bootstrap.php  conf  environment.php  js       locales  resources  uploads
applications  cache          dist  index.php        library  plugins  themes     vendor
root@debian-1cpu-1gb-us-chi1:/www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx/package#

    The README.md file doesn't seem to offer install instructions. If I go in my browser to http://$site_name.xxx/ the default web page shows the same as in the above screenshot. If I point the browser at http://$site_name.xxx/package, I get

    Fatal Error in Twig\Cache\FilesystemCache.write();
    Unable to create the cache directory (/www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx/package/cache/twig/4d).

    The package subdirectory and all the many, many files and directories inside it are owned by root:root, not www:www. That doesn't seem right.

    Did I unzip incorrectly? Should the contents of the package subdirectory be one level higher, inside /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx? If I had unzipped one level higher in /www/wwwroot and then changed the directory name "package" to $site_name.xxx plus chown everything to www:www, maybe that would have worked? Thanks!

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • somiksomik OG

    @Not_Oles said:
    Headed over to /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx and unzipped the vanilla-3.3.zip.

    look at who owns "$site_name.xxx" or "wwwroot" and chown all directories and files to that user:group

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right!
    IPv4: 32 bits of stress. IPv6: 128 bits of... well, more stress... Have anyone seen my subnet?

  • nwnuyhsnwnuyhs

    sorry too late to reply @Not_Oles
    I find from this step you maybe face some problem, I will record a video for you
    Headed over to /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx and unzipped the vanilla-3.3.zip.
    Just wait for me

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles
  • nwnuyhsnwnuyhs
    edited October 8

    This is the video：
    sorry, the video has a mistake，the aapanel recommend to use free version , rather than the pro version

    aaPanel Free edition install script
    URL=https://www.aapanel.com/script/install_7.0_en.sh && if [ -f /usr/bin/curl ];then curl -ksSO "$URL" ;else wget --no-check-certificate -O install_7.0_en.sh "$URL";fi;bash install_7.0_en.sh aapanel

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles
  • somiksomik OG
    edited October 8

    @cybertech said:
    aapanel best panel

    So good, the professional version gives you the Task Manager twice: https://www.aapanel.com/new/pricing.html

    And had their reddit thread banned... but it's still listed in their website :lol:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/aaPanel_Offical/

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right!
    IPv4: 32 bits of stress. IPv6: 128 bits of... well, more stress... Have anyone seen my subnet?

  • nwnuyhsnwnuyhs
    edited October 8

    @somik said:

    @cybertech said:
    aapanel best panel

    You can use free version

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles
  • cybertechcybertech OGBenchmark King

    @somik said:

    @cybertech said:
    aapanel best panel

    So good, the professional version gives you the Task Manager twice: https://www.aapanel.com/new/pricing.html

    And had their reddit thread banned... but it's still listed in their website :lol:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/aaPanel_Offical/

    You can use free version

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.

  • AlwaysSkintAlwaysSkint OGSenpai

    State owned control panel? :#

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
    It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).

  • AuroraZeroAuroraZero ModeratorHosting ProviderRetired

    @AlwaysSkint said:
    State owned control panel? :#

    Yeap and as far as I can tell no official release to patch the vulnerabilities they had a few years ago

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    Free Hosting at YetiNode | MicroNode| Cryptid Security | URL Shortener | LaunchVPS | ExtraVM | Host-C | In the Node, or Out of the Loop?

  • angstromangstrom OG

    @Not_Oles said:
    Thanks to and following the kind suggestions from @nwnuyhs here at LES, I decided to try installing the 2019 Version 3.3 of Vanilla Forums on Debian 11 LTS Bullseye.

    Just curious: why not use the latest OSS version, which is OSS Release 2025.010 (LTS 2)? See https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/releases

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    "A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)

  • angstromangstrom OG

    As far as I can tell, the OSS version is no longer supported or encouraged by Higher Logic, which is the company that now owns Vanilla (now called "Higher Logic Vanilla"). The web site makes no mention of the OSS version (unless I've missed it): https://www.higherlogic.com/vanilla/

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles

    "A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    Thanks to everyone who has read this thread an also to those who have posted helpful comments!

    Thanks especially to @nwnuyhs for his helpful video! I am at 4:09 of the 8:59 minutes. Of course I will watch the remainder of the video.

    As shown in @nwnuyhs' video I successfully used aapanel to issue the SSL certificate. Chrome now shows a secure connection.

    Here is a screenshot of the beginning of the SSL certificate issuance inside aapanel:

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    I saw that @nwnuyhs' video showed using aapanel to unzip the vanilla-3.3.zip. I am guessing that aapanel probably extracts the files with ownership different than root:root, probably www:www. But I am not sure.

    As root, I unzipped vanilla-3.3.zip into /www/wwwroot. This gave me /www/wwwroot/project, which I changed to /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx. Loading the site again gave the fatal Twig error mentioned above:

    Fatal Error in Twig\Cache\FilesystemCache.write();
    Unable to create the cache directory (/www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx/cache/twig/4d).

    So I changed ownership of /www/wwwroot/$site_name.xxx to www:www.

    Reloading https://site_name.xxx in Chrome gave me progress--an error message from the Vanilla Version 3.3 installer telling me:

    These folders must be readable and writable by the web server:

    /conf
    /uploads

    Rather than changing ownership of all the files, which might be the correct fix, let's just fix these two errors and see which errors are next. /s

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    So now I see the Vanilla 3.1 installer.

    Thanked by (1)nwnuyhs

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • nwnuyhsnwnuyhs
    edited October 8

    @Not_Oles said:
    So now I see the Vanilla 3.1 installer.

    You are welcome.
    And congratulation to you =) .
    you are nearly successful to install Vanilla

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles
  • olokeoloke
    edited October 8

    We really believe in you @Not_Oles !
    Making some great progress in this thread :)

    Please confirm it @wadhah

    Thanked by (1)wadhah
  • somiksomik OG

    @cybertech said:

    @somik said:

    @cybertech said:
    aapanel best panel

    So good, the professional version gives you the Task Manager twice: https://www.aapanel.com/new/pricing.html

    And had their reddit thread banned... but it's still listed in their website :lol:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/aaPanel_Offical/

    You can use free version

    LOL, I'll stick to the free (community) version of Virtualmin, thank you very much! Rather not use a control panel called "AA"Panel, cause they wanted to be listed on top of the, erm, yellow pages? I dont know of any other place that lists companies alphabetically...

    It did remind me of the ABCHosting, XYZHosting and other 3 letter CC hosting on LET...

    @AuroraZero said:

    @AlwaysSkint said:
    State owned control panel? :#

    Yeap and as far as I can tell no official release to patch the vulnerabilities they had a few years ago

    Those are called "features". These so called vulnerabilities allow remote access to ensure you are compliant :lol:

    It’s OK if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right!
    IPv4: 32 bits of stress. IPv6: 128 bits of... well, more stress... Have anyone seen my subnet?

  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer

    @AlwaysSkint @AuroraZero @angstrom

    I know zero about aapanel. I never used it before.

    Apparently the newly released 2025 version of Vanilla might be in some kind of a development status and needs work before it can be used. I messed with it a while back and had a dozen or more errors from composer.

    Yes, if I understand correctly, open source is no longer supported by the company behind Vanilla.

    No plans here to actually run a Vanilla instance in production. Just having some fun trying the install old version 3.3. I am using Debian 11 because that's what @nwnuyhs used. I imagined that old Vanilla version 3.3 might be more likely to work on an old version of Debian.

    Since I invest so much time here at LES using Vanilla, I think it would be fun to have Vanilla running in an isolated throwaway VPS for a day or two and to be able to look at the actually running Vanilla source code in my terminal.

    Thanks, friends, for watching my back! <3 Best wishes! <3

    Thanked by (1)angstrom

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

  • nwnuyhsnwnuyhs
    edited October 9

    Please see this datebase config @Not_Oles

    Thanked by (1)Not_Oles
  • Not_OlesNot_Oles Hosting ProviderContent Writer
    edited October 10

    @nwnuyhs

    Great! Thanks! I am in now, as you can see.

    There seemed to be two problems which now are fixed. First, when set up the database originally, I think the name I originally gave was 18 characters, which might have been a couple of characters too long. I think the name was truncated at 16 characters, without me realizing what had happened.

    Second, when I cut and pasted the information from the aapanel -- exactly as shown in your very helpful screenshot above -- somehow a space was added following the database name. Thank you @nwnuyhs very much! Shishi!

    So now I will ask, please, for configuration hints to make my install look more like @nwnuyhs install which looks a lot like LES.

    Thanks again so much!

    Tom

    I hope everyone gets the servers they want!

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