PlaySMS Install Guide for Debian 11

PlaySMS is an open source SMS management system.  It can be used as an SMS gateway, bulk SMS provider, personal messaging system, and for corporate and group communications. 

It has built in gateway connectivity to various providers such as Twilio, Nexmo, BulkSMS, Clickatell, Infobip, RouteSMS etc.  It also has a generic plugin that can be adapted to work with other providers.

Our changes from the original repository are shown at the following link.
https://github.com/playsms/playsms/compare/master...powerpbx:playsms:master

We have created a custom gateway for Telnyx.

Tested using the following software:

• Debian 11 (Bullseye) x64 minimal install
• PlaySMS 1.5
• Apache 2.4
• PHP 8.1
• MariaDB 10

Prerequisites

Verify locale is set to C.UTF-8 or en US.UTF-8.

locale

If it is not then set it now.  You may also set your own UTF-8 locale.

# Select C.UTF-8 UTF-8
apt update && apt -y install locales && dpkg-reconfigure locales

Log out/in or close/open shell for changes to take effect. 

Install some basics

Ensure a basic server install with intial dependencies to start with.

apt update && apt -y upgrade

apt -y install nano git dbus sudo wget curl dirmngr openssl ntp dnsutils mariadb-client mariadb-server postfix gettext apache2

Postfix

If a postfix configuration wizard pops up you can select the default Internet Site and also the default mail name.  These settings can be manually changed later in /etc/postfix/main.cf.

## FIND YOUR TIMEZONE
tzselect

## SET TIMEZONE EXAMPLE
timedatectl set-timezone America/Vancouver

systemctl restart rsyslog
timedatectl status

PHP

Install repository

# install this section one line at a time.
apt -y install gnupg2 apt-transport-https ca-certificates software-properties-common
wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list

Install PHP v8.1

apt update && apt -y install php8.1 php8.1-opcache php8.1-cli php8.1-mysqli php8.1-gd php8.1-mbstring php8.1-xml php8.1-curl php8.1-zip php8.1-fpm

update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php8.1

Configure Apache

cat >> /etc/apache2/sites-available/playsms.conf << EOF
<VirtualHost *:443>

  ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
  ServerName playsms.somedomain.com 
  # ServerAlias www.playsms.somedomain.com 
  DocumentRoot /var/www/playsms
    
  SSLEngine on
  SSLCertificateFile    /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
  SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

</VirtualHost>

<Directory /var/www/playsms>
  Options SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Indexes
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  Require all granted
</Directory> 

<Directory /var/www/storage>
  Require all denied
</Directory>
EOF

Enable website

a2dissite 000-default.conf
a2dissite default-ssl.conf
a2ensite playsms.conf
a2enmod proxy_fcgi ssl
a2enconf php8.1-fpm
systemctl restart php8.1-fpm
systemctl restart apache2

Install PlaySMS

cd /usr/src
git clone -b master https://github.com/powerpbx/playsms.git
cd playsms

DBPASS=somepassword

mysqladmin create playsms
mysql -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON playsms.* TO 'playsms'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '${DBPASS}';"
mysql -e "flush privileges;"

SERVER_IP=$(ifconfig | sed -En 's/127.0.0.*//;s/.*inet (addr:)?(([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*).*/\2/p' | head -n1 | cut -d " " -f1)

echo $SERVER_IP

cat >> /usr/src/playsms/install.conf << EOF
ADMINPASSWORD="admin"
DBUSER="playsms"
DBPASS="${DBPASS}"
DBNAME="playsms"
DBHOST="localhost"
DBPORT="3306"
URLWEB="https://${SERVER_IP}"
PATHSRC="/usr/src/playsms"
PATHWEB="/var/www/playsms"
PATHBIN="/usr/local/bin"
PATHLOG="/var/log/playsms"
PATHSTR="/var/www/storage"
PATHSRC="$(pwd)"
EOF

Check configuration before running script and modify as necessary.

nano /usr/src/playsms/install.conf

Run PlaySMS install script and answer y to all questions

/usr/src/playsms/install.sh

Create systemd file

cat >> /etc/systemd/system/playsms.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=playsms
After=mariadb.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/playsmsd start
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/playsmsd stop

User=www-data
Group=www-data

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/playsmsd
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable playsms
systemctl restart playsms
systemctl status playsms

Post Install

Set ownership and permissions

Run this any time there are any changes/moves/adds/upgrades or if experiencing problems.

# Set owner and group to www-data
chown -R www-data. /var/log/playsms /var/www

# Directory permissions to 755 (u=rwx,g=rx,o='rx')
find /var/log/playsms -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

# File permissions to 644 (u=rw,g=r,o=r)
find /var/log/playsms -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

apt -y install firewalld

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service={http,https}
firewall-cmd --reload
firewall-cmd --list-all

Lock down DB

mysql_secure_installation

Answer Y to everything.

Login

browse to https://x.x.x.x

username: admin
password: admin

Browse to My account > Preferences and change password

Optional

Optimize PHP-FPM

sed -i "s/;request_terminate_timeout = 0/request_terminate_timeout = 300/" /etc/php/8.1/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
sed -i "s/max_execution_time = 30/max_execution_time = 60/" /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini
sed -i "s/upload_max_filesize = 2M/upload_max_filesize = 20M/" /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini
sed -i "s/post_max_size = 8M/post_max_size = 20M/" /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini
sed -i "s/memory_limit = 128M/memory_limit = 512M/" /etc/php/8.1/fpm/php.ini

systemctl restart php8.1-fpm

Setup SSL Certificate

This assumes you already have some domain or subdomain pointed at the server IP address. For example, playsms.somedomain.com. 

Edit the playsms.conf to remove the port 443 virtualhost and add a port 80 virtualhost.  So the new playsms.conf should look like the following

cat >> /etc/apache2/sites-available/playsms.conf << EOF
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName playsms.somedomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/playsms
</VirtualHost>

<Directory /var/www/playsms>
  Options SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Indexes
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  Require all granted 
</Directory> 

<Directory /var/www/storage>
  Require all denied 
</Directory>
EOF

systemctl reload apache2

Install certbot and get letsencrypt certificate

apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache
certbot --apache -d playsms.somedomain.com
systemctl reload apache2

Update the web url if necessary

nano /var/www/playsms/appsetup.php

$core_config['http_path']['base'] = 'https://playsms.somedomain.com';

Test automatic renewal.

certbot renew --dry-run

Set up the automatic renewal routine to run weekly.

crontab -e

0 0 * * 0 root /usr/bin/certbot renew >/dev/null 2>&1

Disable Captcha

Captcha can be disabled at storage/application/plugin/core/auth/config.php.

Adding Additional Gateways

Most gateways are not installed by default and are located in /usr/src/playsms/storage/application/plugin/gateway
The generic gateway can be used as a basis for creating a new gateway for some other provider.

Troubleshooting

To show all errors in /var/log/apache2/error.log, go to storage/custom/application/configs/config.php and uncomment

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ (E_NOTICE | E_WARNING | E_DEPRECATED));

For verbose run time logging to /var/log/playsms/playsms.log , change the following setting just below the above one.

$core_config['logstate'] = 4;