FreshRSS is a self-hosted, web-based software for RSS feeds. It is a great alternative to Google Reader and Feedly, and you can easily install it on your Arch Linux server. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process step by step.
Before we proceed with the installation, make sure your Arch Linux server is up to date. Open the terminal and run the following command:
sudo pacman -Syu
The first step is to install PHP and the required PHP extensions. Run the following command to install PHP along with the necessary extensions:
sudo pacman -S php php-fpm php-cgi php-gd php-intl php-tidy php-xmlrpc php-curl php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-pdo php-sqlite
Next, we will install and set up Nginx as the web server for FreshRSS. Run the following command to install Nginx:
sudo pacman -S nginx
Once installed, start it using the following command:
sudo systemctl start nginx
Now, we need to create a new Nginx configuration file for FreshRSS. Open the text editor of your choice and create a new file at /etc/nginx/conf.d/freshrss.conf. Paste the following code into the file:
server {
listen 80;
server_name freshrss.example.com;
root /var/www/html/freshrss;
index index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include fastcgi.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
}
}
This configuration file will tell Nginx to listen on port 80 and to serve content from the /var/www/html/freshrss directory. It also tells Nginx to serve the index.php file as the default file when browsing the FreshRSS URL.
Replace freshrss.example.com with your own domain name or IP address.
Next, we will download and extract FreshRSS. Run the following command to create a new directory for FreshRSS:
sudo mkdir /var/www/html/freshrss
Then, download the latest version of FreshRSS:
sudo wget https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS/archive/master.zip -O /var/www/html/freshrss/freshrss.zip
And extract it using the following command:
sudo unzip /var/www/html/freshrss/freshrss.zip -d /var/www/html/freshrss/
Rename the extracted directory to freshrss:
sudo mv /var/www/html/freshrss/FreshRSS-master /var/www/html/freshrss/freshrss
Give the ownership of the directory to the Nginx user:
sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/html/freshrss
FreshRSS uses SQLite as the default database. Let's create a new SQLite database file for FreshRSS. Run the following command to create a new directory for the database:
sudo mkdir /var/www/html/freshrss/data
Then, create a new SQLite database file:
sudo touch /var/www/html/freshrss/data/freshrss.db
Give the ownership of the directory to the Nginx user:
sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/html/freshrss/data
Next, we need to configure FreshRSS. Open the text editor of your choice and create a new file at /var/www/html/freshrss/config.php. Paste the following code into the file:
<?php
define('SELF_URL_PATH', 'http://freshrss.example.com');
define('DB_TYPE', 'sqlite');
define('DB_PATH', '/var/www/html/freshrss/data/freshrss.db');
define('PLUGINS_DIR', '/var/www/html/freshrss/freshrss/plugins');
?>
Replace freshrss.example.com with your own domain name or IP address.
Finally, we need to restart Nginx and PHP-FPM to apply the changes. Run the following two commands:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart php-fpm
Open a web browser and go to http://freshrss.example.com/. You should see the FreshRSS login page. Create a new account and start using FreshRSS to read your RSS feeds!
In this tutorial, we have shown you how to install and configure FreshRSS on your Arch Linux server. FreshRSS is a great self-hosted alternative to Google Reader and Feedly, and we hope this tutorial was helpful to you.
If you want to self-host in an easy, hands free way, need an external IP address, or simply want your data in your own hands, give IPv6.rs a try!
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