Installing Friendica on Clear Linux

Friendica is a free and open-source social networking platform that allows you to create and join social networks. It is designed to be decentralized, and it supports all major social network protocols such as Diaspora, OStatus, and even more.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Friendica on Clear Linux which is an open source, rolling release Linux distribution.

Prerequisites

Before starting with the installation of Friendica, please make sure that you have the following prerequisites installed and configured on your Clear Linux machine:

A valid and updated Clear Linux installation
A web server with PHP 7.1 or later installed
MySQL/MariaDB server
A command-line interface (CLI)

Step 1: Install Apache Web Server and PHP

From the terminal, update Clear Linux
```
sudo swupd update
```
Install Apache web server and PHP (7.2 or latest)
```
sudo swupd bundle-add httpd php-basic
```

Start the Apache web server and enable it to start on boot

sudo systemctl start httpd.service
sudo systemctl enable httpd.service

Verify that Apache is running by visiting the following URL in your web browser
```
http://localhost
```
You should see a message stating "It works!".

Step 2: Install MariaDB

Install MariaDB server
```
sudo swupd bundle-add mariadb
```

Start the MariaDB server and enable it to start on boot

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Secure the MariaDB installation, set the root password, and remove the anonymous users
```
sudo mysql_secure_installation
```

Create a new MariaDB database and user for Friendica

sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE friendica;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON friendica.* TO 'friendicauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'NewPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Replace 'NewPassword' with a strong password of your choice.

Step 3: Download and Configure Friendica

From the terminal, switch to the root user and navigate to the document root directory of the Apache web server
```
sudo su
cd /var/www/html/
```
Download the latest stable release of Friendica from the official website
```
sudo wget -O friendica.zip https://github.com/friendica/friendica/archive/2022.01.zip
sudo unzip friendica.zip
```
Please note that in the above command, we are downloading the 2022.01 branch. You may replace this with the latest stable version.
Rename the extracted folder to "friendica" and adjust the permissions
```
mv friendica-* friendica
chown -R apache:apache friendica
```

Copy the sample configuration files to the correct locations

cd friendica
cp .htconfig.php.sample .htconfig.php
cp config/addon.config.php.sample config/addon.config.php

Configure the .htconfig.php file

nano .htconfig.php

Enter the database credentials that you created in Step 2:

$db_host = 'localhost';
$db_user = 'friendicauser';
$db_pass = 'NewPassword';
$db_data = 'friendica';

Set your site URL

$a->config['system']['url'] = 'http://localhost/friendica';

Save and close the .htconfig.php file.

Restart the Apache web server
```
sudo systemctl restart httpd.service
```

Step 4: Complete the Installation

Open a web browser and enter the URL of your Friendica installation
```
http://localhost/friendica
```
The installation wizard should start. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
Once the installation is complete, log in to your Friendica admin panel by adding /admin to the end of the URL
```
http://localhost/friendica/admin
```
Use the admin account details entered during the installation to log in.
To add new users to your Friendica instance, use the registration link shown in the admin panel.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Friendica on Clear Linux.