How to Install OSSN on Linux Mint

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to easily install OSSN on Linux Mint.

Step 1: Install LAMP stack

Before installing OSSN, you need to have the LAMP stack installed on your Linux Mint machine. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. You can install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

Note the ^ symbol at the end of the command, it's not a typo but an essential part of the command.

During the installation, you'll be prompted to set the MySQL root password. Make sure to remember this password as you'll need it in the later steps.

Step 2: Download OSSN

You can download the latest version of OSSN from their official website. Once the download is complete, extract the downloaded ZIP file to your preferred location.

Step 3: Move OSSN files to Apache root directory

The next step is to copy the extracted OSSN files to the Apache root directory, which is /var/www/html/ by default on Linux Mint.

To accomplish this, open a terminal and navigate to the OSSN extracted directory, then use the following command:

sudo cp -r * /var/www/html/

The -r is used to copy the directory recursively.

Step 4: Set permissions

Now that the files have been copied to the Apache root directory, the next step is to set the correct permissions.

Also, make sure that Apache has ownership of the files, to accomplish that, use:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

Then, set the permissions of the files:

sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/

Step 5: Create a database and user for OSSN

Now we need to create a MySQL database and user for OSSN.

To do that, follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal and login to MySQL server as root: sudo mysql -u root -p
2. Enter the MySQL root password when prompted
3. Create a new database for OSSN: CREATE DATABASE ossndb;
4. Create a new MySQL user for OSSN: CREATE USER 'ossnuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
5. Grant all privileges to the new user for the newly created database: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ossndb.* TO 'ossnuser'@'localhost';
6. Exit MySQL server: exit

Step 6: Configure OSSN

Now we need to configure OSSN to use the newly created database.

To do that, navigate to /var/www/html/ossn/config/, make a copy of ossn.config.sample.php, rename it to ossn.config.php, and then open it with your preferred text editor.

Then, replace the following variables with the appropriate values:

$Ossn->dblogin = 'ossnuser';
$Ossn->dbpass = 'password';
$Ossn->dbname = 'ossndb';

Save and close the file.

Step 7: Restart Apache

The last step is to restart Apache to apply the changes.

Use the following command to restart the Apache server:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Conclusion

That's it! You've successfully installed OSSN on your Linux Mint machine. You can now access OSSN by entering http://localhost in your web browser.

Happy social networking!

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