Hardware requirements
The hardware required to run LedgerSMB greatly depends on the number of users. However, with up to 10 users, a 32bit server with 1GB of memory (including Linux Server OS) and just a few hundred MB of storage (excluding OS) should be enough to get good performance.
For a 64bit server, you need 2GB of memory, but otherwise the requirements are the same.
Operating system requirements
LedgerSMB runs on Linux/Unix (for the Server) and any platform with a compatible Web Browser (for the Client).
Platforms that have known-compatible browsers are Linux, Windows, MacOS, most smart phones and tablets should also work although the current UI requires a large screen for optimum usability. (Minimal size: 9.7" tablet in landscape mode.)
Unix includes all flavours (variants) of Linux including
- Debian
- Mint
- Ubuntu
- RedHat
- Fedora
- BSD
- MacOS / OS X
- and many more
MS Windows
- While in the past the server would run on Windows as well, this is currently not tested and not expected to work.
- LedgerSMB has a client / server architecture, so while it is often better to run the server on Linux, this will not stop you from running the clients on windows. In fact this is a common situation and is fully supported.
For more information on running on windows please look at the FAQ item Can I use LedgerSMB on MS Windows?
Software requirements (client)
On the client, LedgerSMB requires a compatible browser. As of version 1.9, the development team keeps track of which exact browser capabilities that are used by LedgerSMB to determine which browser versions are supported and which ones are not. On versions 1.8 and older, the indicated minimum requirement is based on the indication provided by the Dojo Toolkit development team in combination with a rough impact estimation of additional capabilities used by LedgerSMB's own JavaScript.
| Chrome | Safari | Firefox | Opera | Edge | Internet Explorer |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | Mobile | |||||||
| 1.4 | 13 | 5 | 3.6 | 10.50 | (all) | 8 | ||
| 1.5 | 10 | |||||||
| 1.6 | ||||||||
| 1.7 | ||||||||
| 1.8 | n/a | |||||||
| 1.9 | 2017-09 (61) | 2017-03 (10.1) | 2017-03 (10.3) | 2018-05 (60) | 2017-09 (48) | 2017-10 (16) | n/a | |
| 1.10 | 2017-09 (61) | 2017-09 (11) | 2017-09 (11) | 2018-05 (60) | 2017-09 (48) | 2020-01 (79) | n/a | |
| 1.11 | 2018-03 (65) | 2018-03 (11.1) | 2018-03 (11.3) | 2018-05 (60) | 2018-03 (52) | 2020-01 (79) | n/a | |
| 1.12 | 2018-03 (65) | 2018-09 (12) | 2018-09 (12) | 2018-05 (60) | 2018-03 (52) | 2020-01 (79) | n/a | |
Please note that on Android, browsers are being pushed to end-user devices so that most devices always have the latest Chrome, FireFox or Opera browser. To that extent, there's little point in mentioning the oldest supported version. If you would be interested to know anyway: the desktop versions of the same browsers are a good indication of support of the required capabilities on mobile as well.
Explicitly unsupported clients include:
- Lynx
- w3m
- IE9 or earlier
Software requirements (server)
LedgerSMB builds upon technology of some very widely used - proven - projects:
- PostgreSQL - the enterprise level quality open source database
- Starman (perl webserver)
- Perl - the programming language of the web
- (Xe)LaTeX - the typesetting language (optional)
This is used by the Templating system to generate PDF and Postscript output for printing, email or saving to disk
Each version of LedgerSMB has its own requirements. The high level requirements are listed in the table below.
| PostgreSQL | Application server / HTTP server |
Perl | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDF/A | |||||
| 1.4 | 8.4 and up | Apache 1.3 and up | 5.10 and up | LaTeX for ASCII or XeLaTeX for UTF-8 characters |
LuaTeX with pdfx TeX package |
| 1.5 | 9.4 and up | Starman* | |||
| 1.6 | 5.14 and up | ||||
| 1.7 | 5.18 and up | ||||
| 1.8 | 9.6 and up | 5.20 and up | |||
| 1.9 | 10 and up | 5.24 and up | |||
| 1.10 | 13 and up | 5.32 up to 5.38 | Customizable; default: LaTeX for ASCII or XeLaTeX for UTF-8 characters |
Customizable; default: LuaTeX with pdfx TeX package |
|
| 1.11 | 13 and up | 5.32 and up | |||
| 1.12 | 13 and up | 5.36 and up | |||
* While Starman is the prefered (and tested) webserver for 1.5 and newer.
It should ALWAYS be reverse proxied as HTTPS using Apache/Nginx or possibly other HTTP servers.
It may be possible to run directly from another HTTPD server, but this is not a supported configuration.
Also, in most cases there are performance gains to be had by using Starman.
Perl module dependencies
The Perl module dependencies are listed in the 'cpanfile' in the root of the project tree. Many distributions include at least some of the dependencies in their repositories, so that it shouldn't be necessary to install all the dependencies listed in the cpanfile from CPAN.
During the installation process, the availability of the "cpanm" binary is required.