Installing Providence on newer Linux software?

Allerwertester

Hi everyone,
I'd like to test drive CollectiveAccess on my server at home and already have a Debian system. With the recommendations and requirements provided on the CollectiveAccess website I wonder if this might work. Debian is not mentioned and I would be ok with changing to Ubuntu, but the newest version is 25 already.

Is there any experience with newer or different Linux systems and Collective Access?

Thanks!

Allerwertester

Forgot to mention that the server also is used for media streaming, so it runs Plex and/or Jellyfin.

darrigan

Hi!
I tested CA version 2.0.9 on a Raspberry Pi 3 (model B) running under Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit). This OS was previously called "Raspbian" because it's a branch of Debian adapted to Pi.
And this works perfectly.
So I infer that you should be able to run CA under Debian.

(By the way, if you want to test CollectiveAccess for educational purpose with students or have fun at home, the Raspberry Pi can be a great server for less than $50€ !)

Allerwertester

Thanks darrigan!
I want to see if I can get it running on my machine at home. It's a basic machine with a N150 processor and a build in Intel graphics chip. As I already use Debian on my laptop I thought to use Debian here as well. I tried to install My SQL and PHP but got many strange messages, which led me thinking to switch to Ubuntu. I don't have any experience in setting up those packages whatsoever, so let's see what I can brake this weekend.

Allerwertester

Well, took me the whole morning to find out that Ubuntu 20 does not support the network chips of my computer. Will keep on trying Debian server with a small DE - I'm not a big fan of Canonical anyway.

darrigan

I strictly followed the official manual given here https://docs.collectiveaccess.org/providence/user/setup/systemReq with the PHP required extensions.
The Pi OS exists in some version. At first, I installed Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit), but PHP 64 bit was required, so I started again with Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit). I suggest you to check if your Debian is 32 or 64 bit. (I can't explain to you what that means! It just works now.)

If this can help you, currently, my configuration is (updated today):

- Linux rpi1 6.12.47+rpt-rpi-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.47-1+rpt1~bookworm (2025-09-16) aarch64
- PHP Version 8.2.29
- Apache/2.4.65 (Debian)
- mysqlnd 8.2.29 
- MariaDB 10.11.14-MariaDB-0+deb12u2 - Debian 12
- phpMyAdmin  Version : 5.2.1deb1+deb12u1

monica

CA will work on pretty much all OS. Linux, Windows, MacOS. The documentation doesn’t cover each explicitly, but gives the list of requirements. Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, using Apt the packages and setting up really aren’t that different from Ubuntu.

If you let us know what is going wrong when you install and set up MySQL and php, we can direct from there.

Update: We use Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 for all our installs (stick to the LTS versions). We have also supported a client on RHEL 9.

Allerwertester

Thanks guys!

I use Debian on my daily driven laptop, so the logical thing for me to do was installing Debian on my server as well, when Ubuntu 20 failed to recognize parts of my hardware. I haven't checked the kernel version 20 uses, which I think might be the problem here.

The RAID system of my server is still building up, which needs some time. I hope I will have some time left on Wednesday to proceed with installing PHP and MYSQL. I propably will install MariaDB. As Debian came with an Apache 2 web server, that already works fine.

Allerwertester

So, I failed setting up MariaDB on my server. There was an element missing after installing it and as I'm just a curious archivist, I will stop it right here. I already put too much effort into setting up my personal server where I just could have used unRAID.

Also the CollectiveAccess website is down for at least the last two days. At least for me.

I wanted to look into CollectiveAccess again to see if it's something I can recommend to my bosses. But for that I would have loved to test it on my machine, because I would be the one setting up the archive database. Unfortunatelly we do not have IT staff I can ask for help.

Anyways: I wish you all a great expereience with it!

seth

Debian works fine with CollectiveAccess. You might want to try installing MySQL (rather than MariaDb).

The CollectiveAccess web sites are running normally. I don't know why you cannot access them.