🐧 Hosting ERPNext & Edge Home Solutions on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

This guide provides the complete, battle-tested production deployment workflow for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) with automated Let's Encrypt SSL, MariaDB, Redis, and daily backups.

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⚡ Method 1: Docker Compose Production (Recommended)

Docker deployment is the industry standard for Frappe/ERPNext on Ubuntu 24.04 because it isolates Python, Node, MariaDB, and Redis dependencies from host OS package changes.

Step 1: Server Preparation & Firewall

SSH into your fresh Ubuntu 24.04 server as root (or sudo user):

# Update Ubuntu packages
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Install essential utilities
sudo apt install -y curl git ufw fail2ban htop unzip

# Configure UFW Firewall
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

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Step 2: Install Docker & Docker Compose v2

# Add Docker official GPG key & repo
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

# Enable Docker on boot
sudo systemctl enable --now docker

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Step 3: Clone Production Repository & Environment Setup

cd /opt
sudo git clone https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker.git
cd /opt/frappe_docker

# Copy example environment files
cp example.env .env
cp compose.yaml.example compose.yaml

Configure your .env file (nano .env):

FRAPPE_VERSION=v15.x.x
ERPNEXT_VERSION=v15.x.x
MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=YourStrongDatabasePassword123!
SITES=erp.edgehomesolutions.co.ke
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=info@edgehomesolutions.co.ke

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Step 4: Launch the Production Stack

# Start all containers in detached mode
sudo docker compose --project-name ehs-prod up -d

Containers launched:

• traefik / caddy (Automatic SSL certificate generation and reverse proxy)
• mariadb-database (Optimized MariaDB server)
• redis-cache & redis-queue (In-memory caching and background job brokers)
• backend / frontend (Frappe Gunicorn workers and static asset servers)
• websocket (Real-time desk notifications)

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Step 5: Create Production Site & Install ERPNext

# Create the site and set admin password
sudo docker compose --project-name ehs-prod exec backend \
  bench new-site erp.edgehomesolutions.co.ke \
  --admin-password "YourAdminPasswordHere" \
  --db-root-password "YourStrongDatabasePassword123!" \
  --install-app erpnext \
  --set-default

Your ERPNext instance will now be live with free auto-renewing HTTPS at https://erp.edgehomesolutions.co.ke!

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🛠️ Method 2: Native Bare-Metal Bench Installation

If you prefer running Frappe Bench directly on the host without Docker:

# 1. Install System Dependencies
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y git python3-dev python3-setuptools python3-venv python3-pip \
  mariadb-server mariadb-client redis-server-server nginx supervisor \
  libmysqlclient-dev libssl-dev libffi-dev build-essential curl xvfb libfontconfig wkhtmltopdf

# 2. Install Node.js 20 LTS & Yarn
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs
sudo npm install -g yarn

# 3. Configure MariaDB for Frappe
sudo tee /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/99-frappe.cnf > /dev/null <<EOF
[mysqld]
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
EOF

sudo systemctl restart mariadb

# 4. Install Frappe Bench CLI
sudo pip3 install frappe-bench --break-system-packages

# 5. Initialize Bench
bench init --frappe-branch version-15 /home/frappe/frappe-bench
cd /home/frappe/frappe-bench

# 6. Get ERPNext App & Setup Site
bench get-app erpnext --branch version-15
bench new-site erp.edgehomesolutions.co.ke --install-app erpnext

# 7. Configure Nginx & Supervisor for Production
sudo bench setup production $(whoami)

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🔒 Production Hardening & Backups

Automated Daily Backup Cron Job

Add a cron job (crontab -e) on Ubuntu to run daily database and files backup at 2:00 AM:

0 2 * * * cd /opt/frappe_docker && docker compose --project-name ehs-prod exec -T backend bench --site erp.edgehomesolutions.co.ke backup --with-files

Off-Site Backup Sync

Sync backups to AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, or external SFTP storage:

# Example syncing to remote server
rsync -avz /opt/frappe_docker/sites/erp.edgehomesolutions.co.ke/private/backups/ backupuser@backup-server:/backups/ehs/