PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board.

Follow these instructions to install PunBB on Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake).

LAMP Installation

PunBB runs on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack of applications.

Use any method to install the LAMP stack packages:

apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server

Set a MySQL root password. This is for the root database user, not the root system user.

mysql -u root

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('yourpassword');

Create a database for punBB. Also, create a user other than the mysql root user with neccessary privileges. Below, "punbbdata" is the database, "punbb" is the username and "punpass" is the password. You may pick a different database name, username and password, of course.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE punbbdata;

mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES ON punbbdata.* TO 'punbb'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'punpass';

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Quit MySQL:

mysql> \q

Install PunBB

Download the latest version from here. These instructions will install PunBB in the /forums directory of your default web site. To put it somewhere else, alter these commands to suit.

wget http://www.punbb.org/download/punbb-1.4.2.tar.gz
 
tar -xvzf punbb-1.4.2.tar.gz

cd punbb-1.4.2

sudo cp -R . /var/www/forums

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/forums/cache/ /var/www/forums/img/avatars/

If you have not restarted Apache2 since you install LAMP, you need to do so

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Otherwise you get this:

Now, browse to "http://localhost/forums" in your browser and click on the "install.php" link.

You will be asked the information regarding the database. You will need to enter the mysql database name, username, and password.

You will then need to cut and paste the text into a file named config.php.

sudo nano /var/www/forums/config.php

And then log into your new forum: