Setup IT And Asset Management System With GLPI On Debian/Ubuntu

GLPI is the Information Resource-Manager with an additional Administration Interface. You can use it to build up a database with an inventory for your company. It has enhanced functions to make the daily life for the administrators easier, like a job-tracking-system with mail-notification and methods to build a database with basic information about your network-topology.

Features

GLPI has the following features.

– Inventory of computers, peripherals, network printers etc.
– Management of issues on many environments through creation of tickets, management of tickets, assignment, tickets scheduling, etc.
– Licenses management (ITIL compliant).
– Assignment of equipment by geographical area to users and groups.
– Management of business and financial information (purchase, guarantee and extension, damping).
– Equipment status management.
– Management of applications for assistance of all types of equipment inventory.
– Interface to allow the user to file a support ticket.
– Business management, contracts, documents related to inventory items.
– Equipment booking.
– FAQ Management.
– Report generator for hardware, network or interventions.
– Multi-language support including 41 languages available.

Moreover, GLPI has many plugins with added features.

Install GLPI on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Let us setup GLPI Asset management system using GLPI on our Debian 7 server. Although this method is same for all Debian/Ubuntu derivatives. Hence GLPI is web based deployment software, we have to setup a LAMP server in our Debian server. Follow the below link to setup LAMP server on Debian 7 and Ubuntu 13.10.

Install LAMP Server On Debian 7

Install LAMP Server On Ubuntu 13.10

Now we have to create a database for GLPI. To do so, log in to your MySQL server using command:

# mysql -u root -p

Now create a database called ‘glpidb’ and database user called ‘glpiuser’ with password ‘debian’ as described below.

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 190
Server version: 5.5.31-0+wheezy1 (Debian)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> create database glpidb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL ON glpidb.* TO glpiuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'debian';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye

Getting GLPI

Download the latest GLPI package here. Or you can directly download it from your terminal using command:

# wget https://forge.indepnet.net/attachments/download/1615/glpi-0.84.3.tar.gz

Extract the tarball using command:

# tar -zxvf glpi-0.84.3.tar.gz

Move the extracted files to your webserver root document folder.

# mv glpi/ /var/www/glpi

Set Read/Write permissions of the following directories.

# chmod -R 777 /var/www/glpi/files/
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/glpi/config/

Begin Installation

The rest of the installation is web based and pretty easy. Point your web browser with URL http://ip-address/glpi or http://domain-name/glpi and follow the onscreen instructions.

You should see the following screen. Select your language and click Ok.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_001Accept the License agreement and click Ok.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_002If it is a new installation click Install button, else click Upgrade button to upgrade from old version to most recent new version. I want to install a fresh version of GLPI, hence i clicked Install button.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_003If all seems well, you should see the following screen. If there are any errors, check for the file permissions and start over the installation again.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_004

Enter the MySQL credentials such as hostname, user and password and click Continue.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_005If you have already created a MySQL database it should have listed in the next screen as shown below, else you have to create a new one by clicking on the link Create new database. I have already created a database called ‘glpidb’, hence i selected it.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_006Click Continue.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_007Congratulations! We have installed GLPI on our server successfully.

Setup GLPI - Mozilla Firefox_008The default user accounts and their passwords will be shown in the above window. However i have listed them below for the sake of clarity.

glpi/glpi for the administrator account
tech/tech for the technician account
normal/normal for the normal account
post-only/postonly for the postonly account

Please note them. You can change them later.

Click Use GLPI to proceed. Let us log in to GLPI administrative Dashboard. The administrative user name is glpi and password is also glpi. Enter them and click Post.

GLPI - Authentication - Mozilla Firefox_009This is how my Administrative dashboard looks.

GLPI - Standard interface - Mozilla Firefox_010At the first log in it will show some precautions that be made before using GLPI further.

First you above to change the default users passwords for security reasons. To do that. Go to Administration -> Users -> glpi and input your new password in the password column.

GLPI - Users - Mozilla Firefox_012

And also you have to remove the install/install.php file for security reasons.

# rm -fr /var/www/glpi/install/install.php

If you made any mistakes or just forgot the password for the administrative account, you can re-run the above setup by deleting the following config/config.php file.

After completing your installation change the permission of the config/config_db.php file to avoid any misconfiguration by users.

# chmod 400 /var/www/glpi/config/config_db.php

Now start using GLPI asset management system by navigating to http://ip-address/glpi.

Usage of GLPI is not that difficult. Just go-through every menus and explore things. If you still want a help documentation, i suggest you to read the Official wiki page.

References: GLPI Project