Server and Client Installation Linux

This documentation is only for power users who have worked with Linux before.

Disclaimer for Linux installations

farmerswife only provides support for the farmerswife applications, not Linux itself. Therefore a Linux System Administrator is a prerequisite for installing the applications.

Client Installation on Linux

Please Note: This has been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa)

Prerequisites

You will need the Windows Client Application that you can download from here:

Windows Client 7.3.

Installation of Client App

Install wine:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 
wget -O - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main' 
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y --install-recommends winehq-stable

Install winetricks:

sudo apt install -y cabextract
cd "${HOME}/Downloads"
wget  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks

Install corefonts with winetricks:

./winetricks corefonts

Install the farmerswife Client desktop app for Windows to be used via wine on Linux:

wget https://farmerswife.com/downloadsWeb/fw_client_v703.exe
wine fw_client_v703.exe /SILENT /TASKS=""

Server Installation on Linux

Please Note:

• Installations have been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa)

• farmerswife server-side PDF printing is not yet available on Linux.

• Running the fw Server app on Linux is only recommended for those companies who have a Linux-only server environment infrastructure, and have an in-house Linux System Administrator

Prerequisites

You can download the latest Linux Server Application from here:

Linux Server Application 7.3.

Use of a Graphical User Interface
We recommend that you should install the farmerswife Server app with the Graphical User Interface (GUI) on the host machine, or on a headless host machine with X11 forwarding.  This is needed for its configuration process.

It can run as a service with a daemon, but the GUI is required when you need to add/modify/delete users or modify the server setup.

Tested Distributions

Spot tested Linux Distributions:

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

The applications might also work on these Linux Distributions:

• Debian 8
• Debian 9
• CentOS 7
• Fedora 27
• RedHat 7.4
• Amazon Linux

Please Note: Other versions may work but are not tested.

Recommended packages to be Installed

• ZIP
• Java - OpenJDK
  • As of January 2026, the recommended version of Open JDK to use for Linux is Hotspot 17.0.18+8
  • For more information please see our article here
• x11-xserver-utils (only on "deb" based distributions, and if your server doesn’t have GUI)
• x11-apps (xorg-x11-apps on "RPM" based distributions, and if your server doesn’t have GUI)
• xauth (xorg-x11-xauth on "RPM" based distributions, and if your server doesn’t have GUI)

Server preparation

The fw Server app requires "OpenJDK" to be installed. 

Since the release of farmerswife v6.8 OpenJDK v11 or later is needed, however upgrading to 7.2 SP3 and above requires Java / OpenJDK hotspot v17 to be installed.

Please Note: The following links have not been tested and might not work.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Installation

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre-headless zip unzip x11-xserver-utils x11-apps xauth

Modify sshd_config to allow X11 forwarding.

Debian 9 Installation

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-17-jre-headless zip unzip x11-xserver-utils x11-apps xauth

Modify sshd_config to allow X11 forwarding.

CentOS 7 / RedHat 7.4 / Fedora 27 Installation

sudo yum makecache fast
sudo yum install java-1.17.0-openjdk-headless zip unzip xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-apps

Modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow X11 forwarding.

Amazon Linux Installation

sudo yum makecache fast
sudo yum install java-1.17.0-openjdk-headless zip unzip xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-apps

Modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow X11 forwarding.

Post-server preparation

Connect to your server allowing X11 forwarding and (if you haven't already) download the fw_server_v703.bin installer for Linux. For example:

wget -O farmerswife-installer

Once installed, create a folder called "system" inside the installation folder you selected and place the license files inside (and DB files and other needed files and folders if you just migrated to Linux).

Then manually launch the farmerswife server with X11 forwarding executing the binary farmerswife at the root of the installation folder. This way you can configure users, SMTP port, Full Backup folders and so on.

Once finished stop the server, execute the file systemd-installer.sh or initd-installer.sh from the same folder where it is. For example, if the script is located at /opt/farmerswife-server go with cd to that folder and execute the script, that’s because the script takes the pwd value to configure the systemd/init-d service unit.

As the installation process is completed you can just launch the service and start working. From time to time you will need to stop the service, launch the server manually with X11 forwarding to add/modify/delete users.

Demo or Empty DB

On first launch of a new server application, you may be prompted to choose between DemoDB or the Empty DB.

• To run DemoDB, select this and click OK
• To run EmptyDB, select this and you will next be asked for a license file.  This should have been sent to you by farmerswife Support

Known-issues

Sometimes when you add users fw Server-side it can take a long time, because the host machine itself doesn’t have enough entropy to hash and salt the user password.

To check your entropy just execute the following command:

sudo cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail

If the entropy is below 1000 you should generate more so it doesn’t take that long.

To do this for a Linux desktop it should be enough to just move the mouse or open applications, but for servers you can install the package rng-tools and execute the following command:

rngd -r /dev/urandom -o /dev/random -b -n 1

For Debian you need to modify the file /etc/default/rng-tools and add the following line:

HRNGDEVICE=/dev/urandom

And start the rng-tools daemon:

/etc/init.d/rng-tools start

If you have any queries over the installation of farmerswife applications on Linux machines, please contact support@farmerswife.com for further information.