Chamilo is an e-learning platform, also called "LMS", published under the GNU/GPLv3+ license. It has been used by more than 30M people worldwide since its inception in 2010. This is a development version. For the current stable branch, please select the 1.11.x branch in the Code tab.
Chamilo 2.0 is still in development. This installation procedure below is for reference only. For a stable Chamilo, please install Chamilo 1.11.x. See the 1.11.x branch's README.md for details.
Chamilo 2.0 has been tested on a 2 vCPUs, 2GB RAM virtual machine under Ubuntu 24.04 and has been shown to work.
At this stage, we haven't made any load testing to evaluate the number of users that could use the system simultaneously.
Remember this is an alpha version. As such, it will run in "dev" mode (see the .env file), considerably more slowly the "prod" mode.
We assume you already have:
- composer 2.x - https://getcomposer.org/download/
- yarn 4.x+ - https://yarnpkg.com/getting-started/install
- Node >= v18+ (lts) - https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/blob/master/README.md
- Configuring a virtualhost in a domain, not in a sub folder inside a domain.
- A working LAMP/WAMP server with PHP 8.3+
These are local testing instructions for a fictitious domain name "my.chamilo.net" configured in your hosts file and pointing at a local machine's IP address. These instructions do NOT provide a secure environment.
Spawn an Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS Virtual Machine. Login as root (or sudo -s once connected) through SSH.
Install the software stack and Chamilo using the commands below.
apt update && apt -y upgrade
apt install -y apache2 libapache2-mod-php mariadb-client mariadb-server redis php-pear php-{apcu,bcmath,cli,curl,dev,gd,intl,mbstring,mysql,redis,soap,xml,zip} git unzip curl certbot
mysql -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON chamilo2.* TO chamilo2@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'chamilo2';"
cd /var/www && wget https://github.com/chamilo/chamilo-lms/releases/download/v2.0.0-alpha.2/chamilo-2.0.0-alpha.2.tar.gz
tar zxf chamilo-2.0.0-alpha.2.tar.gz
mv chamilo-2.0.0-alpha.2 chamilo
vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/my.chamilo.net.conf
# copy-paste the following into the config file
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName my.chamilo.net
DocumentRoot /var/www/chamilo/public/
RewriteEngine On
<Directory /var/www/chamilo/public>
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
php_value session.cookie_httponly 1
php_admin_value session.save_handler "redis"
php_admin_value session.save_path "tcp://127.0.0.1:6379"
php_admin_value upload_max_filesize 256M`
php_admin_value post_max_size 256M
</VirtualHost>
# exit with "escape, :, wq"
a2ensite my.chamilo.net
a2enmod rewrite ssl headers expires
systemctl restart apache2
# Open http://my.chamilo.net in your browser
# Complete the installation information using DB credentials chamilo2/chamilo2/chamilo2 and the default host and port
# Done
By default, it is installed in "dev" mode to have more debugging features at hand. If you want to change it to "prod"
mode, you will have to install yarn, run yarn encore prod and modify /.env to change APP_ENV to 'prod'. See
other installation methods below.
You will need PHP8.3+ and NodeJS v18+ to run Chamilo 2.
On Ubuntu 24.04+, the following should take care of all dependencies (certbot is optional).
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php mariadb-client mariadb-server redis php-pear php-{apcu,bcmath,cli,curl,dev,gd,intl,mbstring,mysql,redis,soap,xml,zip} git unzip curl certbot
sudo mysql
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON chamilo.* TO chamilo@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '{password}';
mysql> exit
(replace 'chamilo' by the database name and user you want, and '{password}' by a more secure password)
On older Ubuntu versions (like 22.04), you have to install PHP through third-party sources:
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo apt -y install ca-certificates curl gnupg software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php8.3 mariadb-client mariadb-server redis php-pear php8.3-{apcu,bcmath,cli,curl,dev,gd,intl,mbstring,mysql,redis,soap,xml,zip} git unzip curl
(replace 'chamilo' by the database name and user you want, and '{password}' by a more secure password)
If you already have nodejs installed, check the version with node -v
Otherwise, install Node.js 18 or above.
The following lines use a static version of Node.js 20 from https://deb.nodesource.com/
cd ~
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
Another option to install Node.js is by using NVM (Node Version Manager). You can install it following the instructions here. You can install the desired node version (preferably, the LTS version):
sudo nvm install --lts
sudo nvm use --lts
With NodeJS installed, you must enable corepack and then continue with the requirements
sudo corepack enable
cd ~
Follow the instructions at https://getcomposer.org/download/ to get Composer, then add to the local binaries for easier use:
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
Apache's rewrite module is mandatory. The rest is optional and depends on your needs.
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-xsendfile #only for optimization if used in the vhost config
sudo a2enmod rewrite ssl headers expires
sudo systemctl restart apache2
When your system is all set, you can use the following:
cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/chamilo/chamilo-lms.git chamilo
cd chamilo
composer install
We do not recommend running composer as the root user! When asked whether you want to execute the recipes or install plugins for some of the components, you can safely type 'n' (for 'no').
yarn set version stable
# delete yarn.lock if present, as it might contain restrictive packages from a different context
yarn up && yarn install && yarn dev
# you can safely ignore any "warning" mentioned by yarn dev
sudo touch .env
sudo chown -R www-data: var/ .env config/
In your web server configuration, ensure you allow for the interpretation of .htaccess (AllowOverride all and Require all granted), and point the DocumentRoot to the public/ subdirectory.
Finally, make sure your PHP config points at Redis for sessions management.
This should look similar to this very short excerpt (in your Apache vhost block):
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName my.chamilo.net
RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch 302 (.*) https://my.chamilo.net$1
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
DocumentRoot /var/www/chamilo/public/
ServerName my.chamilo.net
# Error logging rules...
# SSL rules...
RewriteEngine On
<Directory /var/www/chamilo/public>
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
<LocationMatch "/.git">
Require all denied
</LocationMatch>
php_value session.cookie_httponly 1
php_admin_value session.save_handler "redis"
php_admin_value session.save_path "tcp://127.0.0.1:6379"
php_admin_value upload_max_filesize 256M
php_admin_value post_max_size 256M
</VirtualHost>
Don't forget to reload your Apache configuration after each change:
sudo systemctl reload apache2
Once the above is ready, use your browser to lo
ad the URL you have defined for your host, e.g. https://my.chamilo.net (this should redirect you to main/install/index.php) and follow the UI instructions (database, admin user settings, etc).
After the web install process, change the permissions back to a reasonably safe state:
chown -R root .env config/
If you have already installed it and just want to update it from Git, do:
git pull
composer install
php bin/console doctrine:schema:update --force --complete
php bin/console cache:clear
yarn install && yarn dev
Note for developers in alpha stage: the doctrine command will try to update your database schema to the expected database schema in a fresh installation. This is not always perfect, as Doctrine will take the fastest route to do this. For example, if you have a migration to rename a table (which would apply just fine to a system in Chamilo 1 being migrated), Doctrine might consider that the destination table does not exist and the original (which should not be there in a new installation) is still there, so it will just drop the old table and create a new one, losing all records in that table in the process. To avoid this, prefer executing migrations with the following instead.
php bin/console doctrine:migrations:execute "Chamilo\CoreBundle\Migrations\Schema\V200\Version[date]"
This will respect the migration logic and do the required data processing.
The commands above will update the JS (yarn) in public/build/ and PHP (composer) dependencies in vendor/.
Sometimes there are conflicts with existing files so, to avoid those, here are some hints :
- for composer errors, you can remove the vendor folder and composer.lock file
- for yarn errors, you can remove yarn.lock .yarn/cache/* node_modules/*
- when opening Chamilo, if the page does not load, then you might want to delete var/cache/*
In case you believe some settings in Chamilo might not have been processed correctly based on an incomplete migration or a migration that was added after you installed your development version of Chamilo, the /admin/settings_sync URL is built to try and fix that automatically by updating PHP classes based on the database state. This issue rarely happens, though.
If you have it installed in a dev environment and feel like you should clean it up completely (might be necessary after changes to the database), you can do so by:
- Removing the
.envfile - Loading the {url}/main/install/index.php page again
The database should be automatically destroyed, table by table. In some extreme cases (a previous version created a table that is not necessary anymore and creates issues), you might want to clean it completely by just dropping the database, but this shouldn't be necessary most of the time.
If, for some reason, you have issues with either composer or yarn, a good first
step is to delete completely the vendor/ folder (for composer) or the
node_modules/ folder (for yarn).
If you are a developer and want to contribute to Chamilo in the current development branch (not stable yet), then please follow the instructions below. Please bear in mind that the development version is NOT STABLE at this time, and many features are just not working yet. This is because we are working on root components that require massive changes to the structure of the code, files and database. As such, to get a working version, you might need to completely uninstall and re-install from time to time. You've been warned.
First, apply the procedure described here: Managing CSS and JavaScript in Chamilo (in particular, make sure you follow the given links to install all the necessary components on your computer).
Then make sure your database supports large prefixes (see this Stack Overflow thread if you use MySQL < 5.7 or MariaDB < 10.2.2).
Load the (your-domain)/main/install/index.php URL to start the installer (which is very similar to the installer in previous versions).
If the installer is pure-HTML and doesn't appear with a clean layout, that's probably because you didn't follow these instructions carefully. Go back to the beginning of this section and try again.
If you want hot reloading for assets use the command yarn run encore dev-server.
This will refresh automatically your assets when you modify them under
assets/vue. Access your chamilo instance as usual. In the background, this
will serve assets from a custom server on http://localhost:8080. Do not access
this url directly since Encore
is in charge of changing url assets as needed.
You might want to support PHP 8.3 (for Chamilo 2) and PHP 7.4 (for all other things) on the same server simultaneously. On Ubuntu, you could do it this way:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt install php8.3 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php8.3-{modules} php7.4-{modules}
sudo apt remove libapache2-mod-php8.3 php7.4-fpm
sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/[your-chamilo2-vhost].conf
In the vhost configuration, make sure you set PHP 8.3 FPM to answer this single
vhost by adding, somewhere between your <VirtualHost> tags, the following:
<IfModule !mod_php8.c>
<IfModule proxy_fcgi_module>
<IfModule setenvif_module>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^Authorization$ "(.+)" HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$1
</IfModule>
<FilesMatch ".+\.ph(ar|p|tml)$">
SetHandler "proxy:unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost"
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch ".+\.phps$">
Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "^\.ph(ar|p|ps|tml)$">
Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
Then exit and restart Apache:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Finally, remember that PHP settings will have to be changed in
/etc/php/8.3/fpm/php.ini and you will have to reload php8.3-fpm to take
those config changes into account.
sudo systemctl reload php8.3-fpm
When using 2 versions, you will also have issues when calling
composer update, as this one needs to be called by the relevant PHP version.
This can be done like so:
/usr/bin/php8.3 /usr/local/bin/composer update
or, for Chamilo 1.11
/usr/bin/php7.4 /usr/local/bin/composer update
If your default php-cli uses PHP7.4 (see ln -s /etc/alternatives/php),
you might have issues running with a so-called platform_check.php script
when running composer update anyway. This is because this script doesn't
user the proper launch context, and you might need to change your default
settings on Ubuntu (i.e. change the link /etc/alternatives/php to point to
the other php version) before launching composer update. You can always
revert that operation later on if you need to go back to work on Chamilo 1.11
and Composer complains again.
To use the git hook sample scripts under tests/scripts/git-hooks/, the
following commands can be used.
git config core.hooksPath tests/scripts/git-hooks/
- in general, the main/ folder has been moved to public/main/
- a big part of the frontend has been migrated to VueJS + Tailwind CSS
- app/Resources/public/assets moved to public/assets
- main/inc/lib/javascript moved to public/js
- main/img/ moved to public/img
- main/template/default moved to src/CoreBundle/Resources/views
- src/Chamilo/XXXBundle moved to src/CoreBundle or src/CourseBundle
- bin/doctrine.php removed use bin/console doctrine:xyz options
- Plugin images, CSS and JS libs are loaded inside the public/plugins folder (composer update copies the content inside plugin_name/public inside web/plugins/plugin_name
- Plugins templates use the ``asset()` function instead of using "_p.web_plugin"
main/inc/local.inc.phphas been removed- Translations are managed through Gettext
Libraries
- Integration with Symfony 6
- PHPMailer replaced with Symfony Mailer
- Bower replaced by yarn
This version of Chamilo allows you to use a JWT (token) to use the Chamilo API more securely. In order to use it, you will have to generate a JWT token as follows.
- Run
php bin/console lexik:jwt:generate-keypair
- In Apache setup Bearer with:
SetEnvIf Authorization "(.*)" HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$1
- Get the token:
The response should return something like:
curl -k -X POST https://example.com/api/authentication_token \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"username":"admin","password":"admin"}'{"token":"MyTokenABC"} - Go to https://example.com/api
- Click in "Authorize" button and write the value
Bearer MyTokenABC
Then you can make queries using the JWT token.
See https://github.com/chamilo/chamilo-lms/projects/3
If you want to submit new features or patches to Chamilo 2, please follow the
Github contribution guide https://guides.github.com/activities/contributing-to-open-source/
and our CONTRIBUTING.md file.
In short, we ask you to send us Pull Requests based on a branch that you create
with this purpose into your repository, forked from the original Chamilo repository (master branch).
For more information on Chamilo, visit https://2.chamilo.org/documentation/index.html