OpenSTAManager on Ubuntu 24.04 on Azure User Guide

Overview

OpenSTAManager is an open-source, web-based management suite for small and medium businesses that run technical assistance or field service: customer and supplier registries, service interventions, quotes, sales and purchase documents, electronic invoicing, warehouse stock and the accounting that ties it together. The cloudimg image installs OpenSTAManager 2.10.4 on a full LAMP stack from the Ubuntu 24.04 repositories (nginx, PHP 8.3-FPM and MariaDB), builds the database schema and initialises the appliance at build time so there is no web setup wizard for you to complete, seeds a small demo customer registry so a fresh VM shows a populated interface immediately, stores the database and uploaded documents on a dedicated Azure data disk, and rotates the database password, the administrator account and the application key on the first boot of every VM. Backed by 24/7 cloudimg support.

What is included:

• OpenSTAManager 2.10.4 served on port 80 by nginx via the PHP 8.3-FPM FastCGI socket
• The full database schema built with OpenSTAManager's own installer, plus a demo customer registry
• MariaDB on loopback with its data directory on a dedicated Azure data disk
• A dedicated Azure data disk at /var/lib/openstamanager for the database and uploaded documents
• A per-VM database password, administrator account and Laravel application key generated on first boot
• nginx.service, php8.3-fpm.service and mariadb.service as systemd units, enabled and active
• 24/7 cloudimg support

Prerequisites

An active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet plus subnet in the target region. Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is a good starting point. NSG inbound: allow 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp for the OpenSTAManager web interface (front with TLS for public exposure - see Enabling HTTPS).

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for OpenSTAManager by cloudimg, and select Create. On Basics pick your subscription, resource group, region and size; under Administrator account choose SSH public key and paste your key; under Inbound port rules allow SSH (22) and HTTP (80). Review the dedicated data disk on the Disks tab, then Review + create -> Create.

Step 2 - Deploy with the Azure CLI

az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> --name openstamanager \
  --image <cloudimg-openstamanager-image-urn> \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --ssh-key-values ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --vnet-name <your-vnet> --subnet <your-subnet> \
  --public-ip-sku Standard

az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name openstamanager --port 80 --priority 1010

Step 3 - Connect to your VM

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Step 4 - Confirm the stack is running

On first boot OpenSTAManager rotates its database password, resets the administrator account to a fresh per-VM password, regenerates the Laravel application key, and starts the stack.

systemctl is-active mariadb php8.3-fpm nginx

All three report active. You can confirm the component versions and that the app answers on port 80, and that MariaDB is bound to loopback only:

php -v | head -1
mariadb --version
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/

The sign-in page returns HTTP 200.

Step 5 - Retrieve the administrator password

The administrator account is unique to your VM and is generated on first boot. Read it as root:

sudo cat /root/openstamanager-credentials.txt

The file is 0600 root:root and names the login (admin), a unique administrator password, and the database name, user and password. The values are unique to your VM; change the password from the interface after your first sign-in.

Step 6 - Sign in

Browse to http://<vm-public-ip>/ and sign in with admin and the password from the credentials file.

After signing in you land on the dashboard - the control centre for customers, interventions, quotes, invoices, warehouse and accounting.

The interface ships primarily in Italian (OpenSTAManager is an Italian-origin suite with built-in support for the Italian electronic-invoicing standard). You can review the available interface languages from Strumenti after signing in.

Step 7 - Manage the customer and supplier registry

Open Anagrafiche to see the registry of customers, suppliers, technicians and carriers. The image ships with a small demo customer registry so the module is populated on first boot; you can add, edit and filter records from here.

Step 8 - Quotes, interventions and invoicing

Under Vendite you manage quotes (Preventivi), contracts and sales invoices (Fatture di vendita), including Italian electronic invoicing (the FE plugins). Service interventions are managed under Attività, and purchases under Acquisti.

Step 9 - Security: configuration and internals are not web-served

The database credential (config.inc.php) and the Laravel application key (.env) are stored outside the web-served path and are denied over HTTP, and application internals (the Composer vendor/ tree, the SQL schema under update/) are not reachable from a browser. MariaDB listens on loopback only.

for p in /config.inc.php /.env /vendor/autoload.php /update/2_0.sql; do
  printf '%-24s HTTP %s\n' "$p" "$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}' -m 10 http://127.0.0.1$p)"
done

Each returns 403 (denied), while / returns 200.

Step 10 - The dedicated data disk

The MariaDB database and OpenSTAManager's uploaded documents live on a dedicated Azure data disk mounted at /var/lib/openstamanager, separate from the OS disk. This keeps your business data independent of the OS image and lets you resize the disk as your data grows.

df -h /var/lib/openstamanager
findmnt /var/lib/openstamanager
mysql -N -B -e "SELECT @@datadir" 2>/dev/null || sudo mysql -N -B -e "SELECT @@datadir"

Step 11 - Enabling HTTPS

For any public deployment, front OpenSTAManager with TLS. Point a DNS A record at your VM's public IP, then install a certificate with Certbot and the nginx plugin. Run the following as prose-driven steps on your VM (replace the placeholders with your real values; do not paste them verbatim):

• Install Certbot: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
• Obtain and install a certificate for your domain, supplying your contact email when prompted, by running certbot with the nginx plugin for your-domain.example.com.
• OpenSTAManager derives its base URL from the request, so it automatically answers on https:// once TLS is terminated in front of it. No configuration change is required.

Certbot installs a renewal timer automatically; certificates renew without further action.

Step 12 - Maintenance

• Updates: the OS continues to receive unattended security updates. OpenSTAManager itself can be updated by replacing the application files with a newer release; its built-in updater then applies any database migrations on the next visit.
• Backups: back up the MariaDB openstamanager database (for example with mysqldump) and the /var/lib/openstamanager/files directory, which together hold your business data and uploaded documents.
• Logs: web server logs are under /var/log/nginx/; PHP-FPM logs are under /var/log/php8.3-fpm.log.

Support

This image is maintained by cloudimg and backed by 24/7 support. If you need help deploying or operating OpenSTAManager on Azure, contact the cloudimg team through the cloudimg website.