Frequently Asked Questions

Can you recommend a web hosting provider for Kanboard?

Kanboard works well with any great VPS hosting provider such as Digital Ocean, Linode, Gandi, or others.

To have the best performances, choose a provider with fast disk I/O because Kanboard use Sqlite by default. Avoid hosting providers that use a shared NFS mount point.

Using a shared hosting provider is not recommended. Try to use your own server.

To do that, you have to specify the URL of your Kanboard installation in your Application Settings. By default, nothing is defined, so no links will be displayed.

Examples:

Don’t forget the ending slash /.

You need to define that manually because Kanboard cannot guess the URL from a command line script and some people have a very specific configuration.

Page not found and the URL seems wrong (&)

  • The URL looks like /?controller=auth&action=login&redirect_query= instead of ?controller=auth&action=login&redirect_query=
  • Kanboard returns a “Page not found” error

This issue comes from your PHP configuration, the value of arg_separator.output is not the PHP’s default, there is different ways to fix that:

Change the value directly in your php.ini if you can:

arg_separator.output = "&"

Override the value with a .htaccess:

php_value arg_separator.output "&"

Otherwise Kanboard will try to override the value directly in PHP.

Authentication failure with the API and Apache + PHP-FPM

php-cgi under Apache does not pass HTTP Basic user/pass to PHP by default. For this workaround to work, add these lines to your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} ^(.+)$
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

How to test Kanboard with the PHP built-in web server?

If you don’t want to install a web server like Apache on localhost. You can test with the embedded web server of PHP:

unzip kanboard-VERSION.zip
cd kanboard
php -S localhost:8000
open http://localhost:8000/

I get a blank page after installing or upgrading Kanboard

  • Check if you have installed all requirements on your server
  • Check the PHP and Apache error logs
  • Check if the files have the correct permissions
  • If you use an aggressive OPcode caching, reload your web-server or php-fpm

Solving Database Migration Issues

  • SQL migrations are executed automatically when you upgrade Kanboard to a new version
  • For Postgres and Mysql, the current schema version number is stored in the table schema_version and for Sqlite this is stored in the variable user_version
  • Migrations are defined in the file app/Schema/<DatabaseType>.php
  • Each function is a migration
  • Each migration is executed in a transaction
  • If migration generate an error, a rollback is performed

When upgrading:

  • Always backup your data
  • Do not run migrations in parallel from multiple processes

If you got the error Unable to run SQL migrations [...], here are the steps to fix it manually:

  1. Open the file corresponding to your database app/Schema/Sqlite.php or app/Schema/Mysql.php
  2. Go to the failed migration function
  3. Execute manually the SQL queries defined in the function
  4. If you encounter an error, report the issue to the bug tracker with the exact SQL error
  5. When all SQL statements of the migration are executed, update the schema version number
  6. Run other migrations

I’m not able to login with Internet Explorer and Microsoft IIS

If you are not able to login and always get the error “Username or password required” even if you have entered the right credentials, that means there is a problem with the session.

For example, this is a known issue if you meet these criteria:

  • You are using a domain name with an underscore: kanboard_something.mycompany.tld
  • You are using Microsoft Windows Server and IIS
  • Your browser is Internet Explorer

Solution: Do not use underscore in the domain name because this is not a valid domain name.

Explanation: Internet Explorer doesn’t accept cookies with a domain name with underscores because it’s not valid.

For reference: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/316112

How to change attachment size limit?

The file upload size is not defined by Kanboard itself but by PHP and your webserver.

In your php.ini, change the following lines:

# Set size limit to 20MB
upload_max_filesize = 20M
post_max_size = 20M

If you use Nginx, define this value:

client_max_body_size 20M;

See http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#client_max_body_size.

Is it possible to customize table name prefixes?

Short answer: No.

  • Kanboard is designed to use its own database.
  • Changing existing code will require too many changes.
  • Mixing multiple software into the same database is bad practice (shared hosting providers are not recommended).

Why is there no official native mobile application?

The development of a native mobile application is left to the community.

  • Developing a native mobile application for each platform (iOS/Android) for each device type (Smartphone/Tablet) requires a lot of work and money.
  • This requires a different skill-set to developing a web application.
  • To develop a quality application, you have to use the official SDK of each platform. So, you end up developing the same application twice.
  • Publishing a mobile application on a store (App Store/Play Store) is not free, you have to pay, even if your software is free.
  • The web user interface is responsive, this is not perfect but that allows you to quickly check something.
  • It is not really practical to use the board on a tiny screen.