This tutorial will guide you through the steps of installing Mahara, an open-source e-portfolio and social networking system on POP! OS latest version.
Open the terminal application and update the system packages and repositories by running the following command:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
Enter your sudo password and wait for the system to complete the update process.
Mahara requires an Apache web server to function. To install Apache on your POP! OS latest, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install apache2 -y
The command above installs the latest stable version of the Apache web server.
Mahara also requires an SQL database to store its content. In this tutorial, we will use MariaDB as our database server. To install MariaDB, type the following command in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y
The above command will install the latest stable version of MariaDB in your system.
After installing the MariaDB database server, the next step is to create a database and a user for Mahara. Run the following commands in the terminal:
sudo mysql -u root
CREATE DATABASE mahara_db;
CREATE USER 'mahara_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mahara_db.* TO 'mahara_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
The above commands will create a database called mahara_db, a user called mahara_user with the password password, and grant all privileges to the user on the mahara_db.
Mahara is built using PHP language. To install PHP and other required libraries, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-gd php-xml php-ldap php-curl php-zip -y
The above command installs PHP, Apache PHP module, and other PHP modules required by Mahara.
Visit the official Mahara website at https://mahara.org/ and download the latest version of Mahara. Alternatively, you can use the following command to download it in your system:
wget https://launchpad.net/mahara/21.04/21.04.1/+download/mahara-21.04.1.tgz
The above command downloads the Mahara package named mahara-21.04.1.tgz in your current directory.
Next, extract the downloaded Mahara package using the command below:
tar -xvzf mahara-21.04.1.tgz
Next, move the extracted content into the Apache default path /var/www/html/mahara/ directory as follows:
sudo mv mahara-21.04.1 /var/www/html/mahara
Lastly, set the correct permissions for the Apache webserver to run Mahara using the following command:
sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/html/mahara/
Open a web browser of your choice and navigate to the following url:
http://your-server-ip/mahara/
If your system is running on local host, you can use the url below:
http://localhost/mahara/
The above url will open the Mahara web installer page. Select English as the installation language and click Continue.
On the next page, you will be prompted to provide the database credentials that you created earlier. Enter your database details and click Continue.
On the next page, you need to provide some basic configurations. Set up your site title, timezone, and administrator user credentials.
Click Install Mahara button to finalize the installation process.
After successful installation, you will be redirected to the Mahara dashboard. Log in with the administrator credentials that you created on the previous step.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Mahara on your POP! OS latest.
This tutorial has guided you through the installation process of Mahara on POP! OS Latest. You can now start exploring the features and capabilities offered by Mahara. Have fun!
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