Magento 1 reached end of life on June 30, 2020. Adobe no longer provides security patches or support. Do not install Magento 1 for new deployments.
OpenMage LTS is a community-maintained fork of Magento 1 that provides continued security patches and bug fixes. It maintains compatibility with Magento 1 extensions.
Current OpenMage Version: 20.2.x (2025)
This guide installs OpenMage LTS (or Magento 1 for legacy/development use only) on a self-hosted Linux server.
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| PHP | 7.4+ (8.0+ recommended) |
| Database | MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+ |
| Web Server | Apache 2.4+ or Nginx 1.x |
| PHP Extensions | PDO, MySQLi, OpenSSL, mbstring, curl, gd, intl, soap, xml, xsl, iconv |
| Memory | 2GB RAM minimum (4GB+ recommended) |
| Storage | 2GB+ for application, plus database and media storage |
Install the web server, PHP runtime, and database server.
Ubuntu/Debian:
apt update
apt install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring php-xml php-soap php-xsl composer git
RHEL/Rocky Linux:
dnf install httpd mariadb-server php php-mysqlnd php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring php-xml php-soap php-composer2 git
Download from the official GitHub repository (recommended):
cd /var/www/html
git clone https://github.com/OpenMage/magento-lts.git shop
cd shop
# Checkout latest stable version
git checkout v20.2.0 # Check GitHub for latest tag
Alternatively, download the archived Magento 1 (not recommended for production):
# Magento 1.9.4.5 was the final official release (archived)
wget https://github.com/OpenMage/magento-lts/releases/download/v1.9.4.5/magento-1.9.4.5.tar.gz
tar -xzf magento-1.9.4.5.tar.gz
Create a database and user for the platform.
mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE DATABASE magento CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"
mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE USER 'magento'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong-password-here';"
mysql -u root -p -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON magento.* TO 'magento'@'localhost';"
mysql -u root -p -e "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/shop
find /var/www/html/shop -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www/html/shop -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
chmod +x /var/www/html/shop/cron.sh
Open http://YOUR-SERVER/shop in your browser and follow the installation wizard.
Provide the database credentials created in Step 3.
Magento/OpenMage requires cron jobs for indexing, sessions, and newsletters:
crontab -e -u www-data
Add:
* * * * * /bin/bash /var/www/html/shop/cron.sh
After installation, disable developer mode:
# Edit app/etc/local.xml
# Set <default> <frontend> <dev> <mode> to production
Prefer automation? See Magento Ansible Setup for an example playbook.
Prefer containers? See Magento Docker Setup.
Any questions?
Feel free to contact us. Find all contact information on our contact page.