How to Install Lychee on OpenBSD

Lychee is an open-source, self-hosted photo-management tool. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install Lychee on OpenBSD.

Prerequisites

• OpenBSD installation
• Installed Apache server
• Installed PHP version 5.5 or higher with required PHP modules such as php-bcmath, php-mbstring, php-gd, and php-pdo_mysql
• A MySQL or MariaDB database installation
• Basic knowledge of the OpenBSD command line

Step 1: Downloading and Extracting Lychee

First, we need to download Lychee from the official website or GitHub repository.

$ su
$ cd /var/www/
$ ftp https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee/archive/master.zip
$ unzip master.zip
$ mv Lychee-master/ lychee/

Once the Lychee file has been extracted into the lychee/ directory, you can set the correct file permissions to ensure proper functionality.

$ chown -R www:www /var/www/lychee
$ chmod -R 755 /var/www/lychee

Step 2: Configuring Apache Host

Next, we need to create an Apache virtual host for Lychee. You can do this by creating a new file named lychee.conf in the /etc/httpd/conf/ directory.

$ vi /etc/httpd/conf/lychee.conf

Add the following code to the lychee.conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/lychee
    ServerName lychee.example.com
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/lychee.error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/lychee.access.log combined
    <Directory "/var/www/lychee">
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save and close the file.

Step 3: Configuring Lychee

Lychee uses PHP for its configuration, and to do this, we need to update the config.php file. You can do this by copying the provided config_default.php file to config.php.

$ cd /var/www/lychee
$ cp data/config_default.php data/config.php

Next, open the config.php file and update the following settings:

// Your MySQL/MariaDB username and password
$dbUserName = 'username';
$dbPassword = 'password';

// Your MySQL/MariaDB database name
$dbName = 'lychee';

// Your Lychee installation URL
$protocol = (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] !== 'off' || $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] == 443) ? "https://" : "http://";
define('LYCHEE_URL', $protocol . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/');

// Define your Lychee table prefix
$tablePrefix = '';

Save and close the file.

Step 4: Initializing the Database

Before we can initialize the Lychee database, we need to create the database and a user with the required privileges.

$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE lychee;
mysql> CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON lychee.* TO 'username'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> EXIT;

Next, we can navigate to http://lychee.example.com/setup/ and continue with the database initialization process.

Step 5: Final Steps

After completing the setup process, we should remove the setup directory to ensure proper security.

$ cd /var/www/lychee
$ rm -rf setup

Finally, we need to restart the Apache server to ensure that all configurations are applied.

$ rcctl restart httpd

Conclusion

We have successfully installed Lychee on OpenBSD using Apache and PHP. Now, you can upload your images and enjoy your new photo management tool.