Installation

The recommended way to install Kimai v2 is via SSH, you need GIT and Composer.

Recommended setup

To install Kimai 2 in your production environment, connect with SSH to your server and change to your webservers (document) root directory. You need to install Git and Composer if you haven’t already.

First clone this repo (1.9 is the latest stable release):

git clone -b 1.9 --depth 1 https://github.com/kevinpapst/kimai2.git
cd kimai2/

Now install all dependencies:

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Configure the database connection in the .env file:

DATABASE_URL=mysql://user:password@127.0.0.1:3306/database

And run the Kimai installer:

bin/console kimai:install -n

File permissions

The webserver needs write permissions for several directories, so make sure the file permissions are correct.

Fix Kimai file permission

You have to allow PHP (your webserver process) to write to var/ and it subdirectories.

Here is an example for Debian/Ubuntu (to be executed inside the Kimai directory):

chown -R :www-data .
chmod -R g+r .
chmod -R g+rw var/
chmod -R g+rw public/avatars/

Test Kimai before executing these commands (they are likely not required in a shared-hosting environment). You probably need to prefix them with sudo and the group might be called different than www-data.

Create your first user

There are several options to create your first user:

via command: bin/console kimai:create-user username admin@example.com ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN
via login screen: you can register a user, the first one will be promoted to the role ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN
you can configure LDAP or SAML for authentication

If you are going to import data from Kimai v1 choose a username & email that was not used in v1.

Webserver

Configure your web server (like Nginx or Apache) to point its DocumentRoot at the public/ directory. For more details, see the Webserver How-To.

Installation complete: enjoy time-tracking!

Oh … wait! Before you leave, please read the initial setup guide.

Docker

There is a dedicated article about Docker setups for Kimai, suitable for development and production.

Hosting and 1-click installations

The following platforms adopted Kimai 2 to be compatible with their one-click installation systems.

YunoHost

Kimai 2 package for YunoHost.

Cloudron

Cloudron provides a secure and ready to use Kimai package, which will be kept up-to-date automatically.

Vesta Control Panel

Be aware that VestaCP uses the admin user instead of www-data. Replace the names in the permission commands above. Read this issue if you have further questions.

Shared hosting

How to install Kimai at shared hosting companies. Please share our insights if you have managed to get it up and running with another company!

If you can’t find the correct version, ask your hoster! Or let us help you.

Ionos / 1&1

GIT is normally pre-installed and can be used via SSH
composer has to be installed manually
The default PHP version is often too low (PHP 5.x) - you can check that with php -v
- If it is lower than 7.2, you have to prefix all commands with the proper version, eg. /usr/bin/php7.3-cli (even composer)
- Example composer: /usr/bin/php7.3-cli composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
- Example installation: /usr/bin/php7.3-cli bin/console kimai:install -n

Domainfactory

GIT is pre-installed and can be used via SSH
composer has to be installed manually: curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php7.3.5-cli
The default PHP version is often too low (PHP 5.x or even PHP 4.x) - you can check that with php -v
- If it is lower than 7.2, you have to prefix all commands with the proper version, eg. php7.3.5-cli (even composer)
- Example composer: php7.3.5-cli composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
- Example installation: php7.3.5-cli bin/console kimai:install -n

Strato

Strato has a special setup of PHP, you need to find the proper version first.

PHP-Directory: /opt/RZphp{major}{minor}/bin/php-cli (Shared Hosting)
PHP-Directory: /usr/bin/php{major}{minor} (Managed Server)

For example, if you want to use PHP 7.3 use always the absolute path when running a PHP based command: so prefix all commands with eg. /opt/RZphp73/bin/php-cli in bash.

How to install Kimai:

Install composer: curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | /opt/RZphp73/bin/php-cli
Clone Kimai as stated above and then cd kimai2
Install composer packages with /opt/RZphp73/bin/php-cli ../composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
Configure your .env file, eg. with nano .env
Install Kimai database /opt/RZphp73/bin/php-cli bin/console kimai:install -n

Reload your configuration /opt/RZphp73/bin/php-cli bin/console kimai:reload

Netcup

Clone Kimai in the root folder as stated above and then cd kimai2
Install composer: curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | /usr/bin/php
Install dependencies: php composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
configure your .env file, eg. nano .env
install kimai: php bin/console kimai:install -n
reload config: php bin/console kimai:reload
Configure Netcup (using the customer controlpanel) to use “/kimai2/public” as root folder for the domain (or subdomain) of your choice and add SSL (Letsencrypt) for this domain

See issue #1620.

FTP installation

This is NOT recommended, but still widely used …

Please, do yourself a favour and get a hoster that includes SSH access, it is not 2002 anymore! Nowadays even cheap contracts should support SSH.

Now read on: Kimai FTP installation + tips and tricks.

Ansible

Webarchitects Co-operative have written a Kimai 2 Ansible Galaxy role for automatically installing and upgrading Kimai sites on their shared hosting servers.

Installation FAQ

SQLite not supported for production usage

SQLite is a great database engine for testing, but when it comes to production usage it is not supported for Kimai:

It does not support ALTER TABLE commands and makes update procedures clunky and problematic (I try to support updates, but they are heavy on large databases)
It does not support FOREIGN KEY constraints out of the box, which can lead to critical bugs when deleting users/activities/projects/customers

Kimai tries to work around the Foreign Keys issue by using a Doctrine PostConnect EventSubscriber, but this does not work in all environments (SQLite needs to be compiled with foreign support), it is not intended to be used in production environments and it can’t be guaranteed that SQLite handles everything as expected!

If you insist on using SQLite: make a copy of the database file BEFORE each update to prevent possible data loss and don’t ever delete data that is already linked to other data (like customers/projects/activities used in timesheets) …

And don’t file any bug report - you have been warned!

SQLSTATE[HY000] [2006] MySQL server has gone away

That usually means that your DATABASE_URL is wrong. You can run a command like bin/console doctrine:schema:validate to check, if the software can connect successfully to your database.

If that gives you the same error, it is configuration issue which you need to solve first, before you are able to install Kimai.

Malformed parameter “url”

If you see an error message like this, then you have a special character in your DATABASE_URL.

!!  
!!  In DriverManager.php line 259:
!!                                
!!    Malformed parameter "url".  
!!

This can be a character like @ or / or some others, which need to be urlencoded. This can easily be done with one command, lets assume your password is mG0/d1@3aT.Z)s then you get your password like this:

php -r "echo urlencode('mG0/d1@3aT.Z)s');"
mG0%2Fd1%403aT.Z%29s

Then your DATABASE_URL might look like this:

DATABASE_URL=mysql://root:mG0%2Fd1%403aT.Z%29s@127.0.0.1:3306/kimai2

Which user to use, www-data, httpd or your own?

The installation instructions are intended primarily for server applications.

If you are installing Kimai 2 on your personal computer - maybe for use in a local network, but where the computer primarily serves as a single user computer - you will avoid permission errors by substituting www-data in the relevant commands with your username.

In particular, sudo -u www-data is a command which grants the www-data user temporary administrator/super-user privileges). However, depending on the configuration of your particular computer, you may be able to avoid sudo altogether (your user may already have adequate permissions). Or your webserver user is not called www-data but httpd.

You can try first leaving sudo -u www-data altogether in the relevant commands. If you have permission errors, you can substitute it for sudo -u $USER in the relevant commands, where username is the username that runs the server - if you don’t know, it is likely your own username that you login with.

chown & chmod commands

Further, chown and chmod commands should be for the username that runs the server instead of www-data (again, if you don’t know, it is likely your own username).

Also note that, depending on where you are installing Kimai 2 and how your computer is configured, you may also receive “operation not permitted” errors when setting file permissions (chown and chmod commands). In that case, prefix them with sudo.

Still doesn’t work?

These infos were added to give you some possible guidance if you run into troubles. The Linux (and Mac) filesystem with its permission structure, especially when using server software, can be tricky and challenging.

But this has NOTHING to do with Kimai and we might not be able to help you in such situations … it is your system and responsibility, be aware that wrong permissions might break Kimai and can also lead to security problems.