GNU social is a free software social networking platform that allows users to create their own social networks and connect with others.
In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps of installing GNU social on MXLinux Latest.
Before proceeding with the installation, make sure that you have the following prerequisites:
GNU social requires a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack to be installed on your system. MXLinux Latest comes with Apache2, MySQL, and PHP installed by default, so you just need to install the MySQL server if it's not already installed.
To install the MySQL server, run the following command in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
During the installation process, you will be prompted to set a root password for the MySQL server.
GNU social requires several PHP extensions to be installed on your system. To install these extensions, run the following command in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring php-mysql php-xml php-zip
You can download the latest version of GNU social from the official website at https://gnu.io/social/.
After downloading, extract the files to a directory on your system.
Before installing GNU social, you need to create a MySQL database and a user for the platform.
To create a database, run the following command in your terminal:
mysql -u root -p
Enter your MySQL root password when prompted.
Once you are logged into MySQL, run the following commands to create a new database and user for GNU social:
CREATE DATABASE social;
CREATE USER 'socialuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON social.* TO 'socialuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Remember to replace "password" with a strong password of your choice.
To install GNU social, navigate to the directory where you extracted the files and run the following command in your terminal:
sudo php install.php
Follow the prompts to configure the installation.
When prompted for the MySQL database details, enter the following information:
To configure Apache2 to serve your GNU social installation, create a new virtual host file by running the following command in your terminal:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/social.conf
Paste the following configuration into the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName social.example.com
ServerAlias www.social.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/social
<Directory /var/www/html/social>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/social_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/social_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Remember to replace "social.example.com" with your own domain name or server IP address.
Save and close the file.
Next, enable the virtual host by running the following command in your terminal:
sudo a2ensite social.conf
Finally, restart Apache2 by running the following command:
sudo service apache2 restart
You can now access your GNU social installation by navigating to your domain name or server IP address in your web browser.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed GNU social on MXLinux Latest.
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