Install hotCRP at a Ubuntu 14 Machine

Update packages

 sudo apt-get update

Install php7. The default php coming with Ubuntu 14 is 5.5.9 while hotCRP prefers 5.6 and later.

1. Install the software-properties-common package to get the add-apt-repository command.

    sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
   

2. Add php7 ppa and do an update

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php	
    sudo apt-get update
   

3. Install php7

    sudo apt-get install php7.2 php7.2-mysql
   

Install other required packages

 sudo apt-get install git apache2 mysql-server zip poppler-utils sendmail

Get hotCRP source code

 git clone https://github.com/kohler/hotcrp.git 

Create the database for hotCRP

 lib/createdb.sh --user root --password  

Add the read permission for conf/options.conf

 chmod +r conf/options.conf

Add the directory to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

 	<Directory "/w/hotcrp">    
 		Options Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks  
 		AllowOverride all  
 		Require all granted  
 	</Directory>  
 	Alias /hotcrp /w/hotcrp  

Set upload_max_filesize, post_max_size, and max_input_vars in hotcrp/.htaccess file. Use default values are good enough.

/etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.in

• Increase the session gc life time

    session.gc_maxlifetime = 86400
  

• Enable mysqli extension, by uncommenting the following line

    ;extension=mysqli
  

Restart the Apache web server

 sudo service apache2 restart

The website is up and running. Visit IP_address/hotcrp to check it out.