LibrePhotos is a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos or Apple Photos. It allows you to store, organize, and share your photos securely on your server. In this tutorial, we will guide you on how to install LibrePhotos on Ubuntu Server latest version.
Before we proceed with the installation of LibrePhotos, you must have:
First, we need to install some required packages to set up the environment for LibrePhotos. Run the following command to update the package list:
sudo apt update
After that, we can install the required packages by running the following command:
sudo apt install python3-pip python3-dev libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev libpython3-dev build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev libpq-dev
LibrePhotos provides support for both MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. In this tutorial, we will use PostgreSQL because it is a robust and reliable database server. If you already have a PostgreSQL server up and running, you can skip this step.
To install PostgreSQL, run the following command:
sudo apt install postgresql
Then, create a new user and database for LibrePhotos by running the following commands:
sudo -u postgres createuser -P librephotos
sudo -u postgres createdb -O librephotos librephotos_db
It will prompt you to enter the password for the new user. Enter a strong password and remember it because we will use it later.
After that, we need to modify the PostgreSQL configuration file to allow the new user to connect to the database. Open the file /etc/postgresql/<version>/main/pg_hba.conf with your favorite text editor and add the following line at the end of the file:
host librephotos librephotos 127.0.0.1/32 md5
Where <version> is the version number of your PostgreSQL installation, for example, 12.
Save and close the file. Then, restart the PostgreSQL server to apply the changes:
sudo systemctl restart postgresql
Now we are ready to install and configure LibrePhotos. Follow these steps:
Install LibrePhotos using pip by running the following command:
sudo pip3 install librephotos
Create a new configuration file for LibrePhotos by running the command:
librephotos init
It will prompt you for the location to store the configuration file. Press Enter to accept the default value, which is /etc/librephotos/config.py.
Edit the configuration file with your favorite text editor, and modify the following parameters:
DATABASE_URL = 'postgresql://librephotos:<your_password>@localhost/librephotos_db'
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['your_server_ip_address', 'your_domain_name']
Replace <your_password> with the password you set for the postgresql user earlier. Replace your_server_ip_address and your_domain_name with the IP address or domain name of your server.
Create a new secret key for LibrePhotos by running the command:
librephotos generate-secret
Finally, run the following command to set up the database and start the web server:
librephotos setup
This will create the necessary tables in the database, and launch the web server on port 8000.
You can now access your LibrePhotos server by opening your web browser and entering the following address:
http://your_server_ip_address:8000
Or if you set up the ALLOWED_HOSTS with your domain name:
http://your_domain_name:8000
In this tutorial, we have shown you how to install and configure LibrePhotos on Ubuntu Server. You can now enjoy a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos, where you have full control over your data and privacy.
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