Introduction

Are you looking for a powerful and open-source analytics tool to visualize and analyze your business data? Look no further than Frappe Insights! Built on the robust Frappe framework, this tool enables users to create insightful dashboards and reports with ease. Whether you’re a developer, business analyst, or data enthusiast, Frappe Insights helps you make sense of your data efficiently.

Imagine having a seamless way to transform raw data into meaningful visual insights—all at your fingertips. With Frappe Insights, you can uncover patterns, track key metrics, and drive data-driven decisions with confidence.

In this guide, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of installing Frappe Insights on Ubuntu 22.04. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a fully functional analytics setup running on your machine. Let's get started!

Prerequisites

The below prerequisites are advised in order to get an optimal functionality of Insights on your server.

Software Requirements

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (fresh installation recommended)
At least 4GB RAM (8GB recommended for smooth performance)
40GB free disk space
A non-root sudo user

Software Dependencies

Python 3.10+
Node.js 16+ & npm
Redis (for caching)
MariaDB 10.6+ ** or mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.3.39-MariaDB** (database for storing data)
Yarn package manager
Bench CLI (Frappe's command-line tool)
Git

Preparing Your System for Installation

Before setting up Frappe Insights, we need to ensure that the system is updated and has all required dependencies installed.

Step 1: Update and Upgrade Ubuntu

Start by updating your system packages to avoid any conflicts:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Step 2: Install Required Dependencies

Add Deadsnakes PPA (Provides Newer Python Versions)
```
 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa -y
```

Install Python and Pip

 sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3.11-dev python3-setuptools python3-pip python3-distutils software-properties-common xvfb libfontconfig wkhtmltopdf libmysqlclient-dev curl -y

Upgrade pip3 to latest version

 python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip==25.0.1

If you want to use Python 3.11 by default, update the alternatives

 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.11 1
 sudo update-alternatives --config python3

Install Python 3.11 virtual environment

 sudo apt-get install python3.11-venv -y
 sudo apt install python-is-python3 -y

Test python installation and version at this stage, ensure python should have version 3.10+ and pip3 should have version 23.0.2+
```
 python3 -V
 python -V
 pip3 -V
```
Install git:
```
 sudo apt-get install git -y
```

Install MariaDB:

 sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y

Install Redis Server:
```
 sudo apt-get install redis-server -y
```

Install Node:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/master/install.sh | bash
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
nvm install 18

Install npm and yarn

sudo apt-get install npm -y

sudo npm install -g yarn

Step 3: Configure MYSQL Server

Setup the server
```
 sudo mysql_secure_installation
```
When you run this command, the server will show the following prompts. Please follow the steps as shown below to complete the setup correctly.
- Enter current password for root: (Enter your SSH root user password)
- Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n]: Y
- Change the root password? [Y/n]: Y
  It will ask you to set new MySQL root password at this step. This can be different from the SSH root user password.
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: N
  This is set as N because we might want to access the database from a remote server for using business analytics software like Metabase / PowerBI / Tableau, etc.
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]: Y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]: Y
Edit MYSQL default config file
```
 sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf
```

Add the following block of code exactly as is:

 [mysqld] character-set-client-handshake = FALSE character-set-server = utf8mb4 collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci [mysql] default-character-set = utf8mb4

Restart the MYSQL Server
```
 sudo service mysql restart
```

Setting Up Frappe Insights

With the prerequisites installed, we can now proceed to set up Frappe and install Frappe Insights.

Step 1: Create a new user – (bench user)

In linux, the root user processes escalated privileges to perform any tasks within the system. This is why it is not advisable to use this user on a daily basis. We will create a user that we can use, and this will be the user we will also use as the Frappe Bench User.

Ensure you have replaced [frappe-user] with your username. eg. sudo adduser frappe

sudo adduser [frappe-user]
sudo usermod -aG sudo [frappe-user]
su - [frappe-user]
cd /home/[frappe-user]

Step 2: Check the database access

Try to login into mysql using password you have created
```
 mysql -u root -p
```
If you can login then you are good to go to step 3 otherwise follow below steps to reset password

Ensure you have replaced <your_password> with your password
```
 sudo mysql -u root
 ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<your_password>';

 # Now try to login again
 mysql -u root -p
```

Step 3: Install , Initialize and Set Up Frappe

Bench is the command-line tool for managing Frappe applications.
```
 sudo pip3 install frappe-bench
```

Now, create a new Frappe site

 bench init --frappe-branch version-15 frappe-bench
 cd frappe-bench

Change user directory permissions, this will give the bench user execution permission to the home directory.
```
 chmod -R o+rx /home/[frappe-user]
```

Now, create a new Frappe site

Ensure you have replaced [unique-site-name] with your unique site name.

 bench new-site [unique-site-name]
 bench use [unique-site-name]
 bench start
 # Access Frappe Insights in your browser at http://localhost:8000

Now open a new terminal and to install insights app

 cd frappe-bench

 # Before running this ensure the bench is running in another terminal
 bench get-app https://github.com/frappe/insights.git

Install the insights app on our site

 bench --site [unique-site-name] install-app insights

If an old instance of Frappe Insights or related services is running, this script ensures that those processes are stopped before starting a fresh instance.

 vi  start-service.sh 

 for port in 13000 8000 9000 10000 11000; do
     pid=$(sudo lsof -t -i:$port)
     if [ ! -z "$pid" ]; then
         echo "Killing process on port $port (PID: $pid)..."
         sudo kill -9 $pid
     else
         echo "No process found on port $port."
     fi
 done

 # Start the bench application again
 bench start

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed Frappe Insights on Ubuntu 22.04. Now, you can start creating dashboards, visualizing data, and gaining valuable insights for your business or personal projects.

Stay tuned for more guides on optimizing and customizing Frappe Insights for your specific needs. Happy coding!

How to Install Frappe Insights in Ubuntu 22.04 – A Step-by-Step Guide