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Installing AcelleMail on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ("Jammy Jellyfish") is supported for AcelleMail through 2027. The install flow is nearly identical to Ubuntu 24.04 — same Ondrej PHP PPA, same MySQL 8.0, same nginx + certbot + supervisor stack. This is the quickstart with the small Ubuntu-22-specific differences called out.

What this is for

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ("Jammy Jellyfish") is supported through April 2027 and remains a perfectly fine host for AcelleMail in 2026. The install flow is nearly identical to Ubuntu 24.04 — same Ondrej PHP PPA, same MySQL 8.0, same nginx + certbot + supervisor stack. This article documents only the differences. For the full step-by-step, follow the canonical guide.

👉 Canonical guide: Install AcelleMail on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Every step in that guide works on Ubuntu 22.04 unchanged, except for the small differences below.

Difference 1 — PHP comes from the Ondrej PPA, not universe

Ubuntu 22.04's universe ships PHP 8.1, which is below AcelleMail's minimum (PHP 8.3). On 24.04 you can ostensibly use universe's PHP 8.3 directly; on 22.04 you must use the Ondrej PPA. The commands in Step 2 of the canonical guide already install via Ondrej, so no change is needed:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y php8.3 php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql php8.3-mbstring \
    php8.3-xml php8.3-curl php8.3-zip php8.3-gd php8.3-intl \
    php8.3-imap php8.3-gmp php8.3-sqlite3 php8.3-mailparse php8.3-bcmath \
    php8.3-redis

Verify Ondrej is the active source before installing — ondrej/php should appear in apt-cache policy php8.3. If you see Ubuntu's universe listed instead, the PPA wasn't added; re-run the add-apt-repository command.

Difference 2 — MySQL 8.0 from universe (same as 24.04)

Both 22.04 and 24.04 ship MySQL 8.0 in universe. Step 3 of the canonical guide works without changes.

Difference 3 — Nginx 1.18 vs 1.24

Ubuntu 22.04's universe ships nginx 1.18; 24.04 ships 1.24. Both work fine with AcelleMail's vhost — there are no AcelleMail-specific nginx 1.24+ features. The vhost from Step 5 of the canonical guide is identical.

If you want nginx 1.24+ on Ubuntu 22.04 (for HTTP/3 or other newer features), add the official nginx.org PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/nginx
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y nginx

For most AcelleMail installs this is unnecessary — nginx 1.18 is stable and well-tested.

Difference 4 — Support window

Version LTS support ends Recommended target
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy) April 2027 Existing installs; staying on 22 is fine
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble) April 2029 New installs in 2026

If you're provisioning a new server today and have a free choice, prefer 24.04. If you're already on 22.04 with a working install, no urgency to upgrade — both are LTS and both receive security updates.

All other steps — follow the canonical 24.04 guide

For:

  • Step 0 (pre-flight checklist)
  • Step 1 (system packages)
  • Step 3 (MySQL 8.0 setup with utf8mb4)
  • Step 4 (Redis 7)
  • Step 5 (nginx vhost — paste verbatim)
  • Step 6 (drop in the bundle)
  • Step 7 (TLS with certbot)
  • Step 8 (supervisor for queue worker)
  • Step 9 (cron)
  • Step 10 (web installer — with all 3 wizard screenshots)
  • Post-install verification + Common Issues table

→ Use Install AcelleMail on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS verbatim.

When to choose 22.04 over 24.04

  • You're standardising on Ubuntu 22 across your infrastructure and don't want OS-version sprawl
  • You already have other 22.04 servers with battle-tested operational tooling
  • Your hosting provider's 22.04 images are more polished than their 24.04 images (some cheaper VPS providers shipped buggy 24.04 images in 2024)

In any other scenario, prefer 24.04 — you get an extra 2 years of LTS support for free.

Common issues specific to 22.04

What you see Likely cause Fix
apt-get install php8.3 fails with "Unable to locate package" Ondrej PPA wasn't added Re-run sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php && sudo apt-get update -y
php -v returns 8.1 after installing 8.3 Both versions installed, 8.1 is default sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php8.3
sudo add-apt-repository says command not found software-properties-common not installed sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common

For all other failure modes, see the Common Issues table in the canonical 24.04 guide.

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7 bình luận

  1. danrey.dev
    Clean walkthrough. The supervisor config copy-paste worked first try.
  2. jmorrison.itop…
    Any reason to use MariaDB over MySQL 8? We default to MariaDB everywhere but I see most Acelle install guides use MySQL.
    1. admin
      Yes — strict alignment requires the From: domain to match exactly. Subdomain-level (`bounce.example.com` vs `example.com`) passes relaxed but fails strict. Most operators run relaxed; the rare strict-DMARC setups need explicit subdomain DKIM configuration.
  3. aisha.khan.pak
    For anyone using systemd-resolved (Ubuntu 22+): set DNSStubListener=no in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf before installing. Otherwise port 53 conflicts when you eventually run a bounce handler.
  4. sobrien.kw
    We use Hetzner instead of DO — same Ubuntu image, identical install. Probably $4/mo cheaper. The PTR record on Hetzner requires opening a support ticket but they respond same-day
  5. emma.whitaker
    followed this on Ubuntu 24.04 last week. Zero issues. The php-imap and php-sqlite3 notes saved me a wizard-error round-trip.
  6. tnovak.cz
    installed on a $12/mo DigitalOcean droplet for our 30k-subscriber list. Performance has been fine. Memory peaks around 1.6 GB during batch sends; comfortable on 2GB...
  7. rafa.silva.br
    Is the install wizard skipable for automated deploys? Asking because we Terraform our infra and clicking through a wizard is awkward.
    1. admin
      Good catch. The bounds (200/32) are hardcoded in the runtime. We've discussed making them configurable; not a near-term priority but it's tracked

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