Lychee 3.1 Photo Album is a simple and flexible, free and open source photo-management tool which runs on a VPS server. It installs in a matter of seconds, enabling you to upload, manage, and share photos quickly and securely. Lychee 3.1 features Dropbox import, (with a valid drop-ins app key). It can be expanded with new features via plug-ins which can, for instance, allow you to sync with any directory containing photos, upload photos via SSH, create RSS feeds out of your photos, add watermarks to your photos, plus many other advanced and useful features.
In this tutorial, we are going to install Lychee 3.1 Photo Album on a FreeBSD 11 FAMP VPS using Apache web server, PHP 7.1, and a MariaDB database.
Prerequisites
- A clean Vultr FreeBSD 11 server instance with SSH access
Step 1: Add a Sudo User
We will start by adding a new sudo
user.
First, log into your server as root
:
ssh root@YOUR_VULTR_IP_ADDRESS
The sudo
command isn't installed by default in the Vultr FreeBSD 11 server instance, so we will first install sudo
:
pkg install sudo
Now add a new user called user1
(or your preferred username):
adduser user1
The adduser
command will prompt you for lots of details for the user account, so simply select the defaults for most of them when it makes sense to do so. When you are asked whether to Invite user1 into any other groups?
, you should enter wheel
to add user1
to the wheel
group.
Now check the /etc/sudoers
file to make sure that the sudoers
group is enabled:
visudo
Look for a section like this:
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
This line tells us that users who are members of the wheel
group can use the sudo
command to gain root
privileges. It will be commented out by default so you will need to uncomment it and then save and exit the file.
We can verify the user1
group membership with the groups
command:
groups user1
If user1
is not a member of the wheel
group, you can use this command to update the user1
group membership:
pw group mod wheel -m user1
Now use the su
command to switch to the new sudo user user1
account:
su - user1
The command prompt will update to indicate that you are now logged into the user1
account. You can verify this with the whoami
command:
whoami
Now restart the sshd
service so that you can login via ssh
with the new non-root sudo user account you have just created:
sudo /etc/rc.d/sshd restart
Exit the user1
account:
exit
Exit the root
account (which will disconnect your ssh
session):
exit
You can now ssh
into the server instance from your local host using the new non-root sudo user user1
account:
ssh user1@YOUR_VULTR_IP_ADDRESS
If you want to execute sudo without having to type a password every time, then open the /etc/sudoers
file again, using visudo
:
sudo visudo
Edit the section for the wheel
group so that it looks like this:
%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
Please note: Disabling the password requirement for the sudo user is not a recommended practice, but it is included here as it can make server configuration much more convenient and less frustrating, especially during longer systems administration sessions. If you are concerned about the security implications, you can always revert the configuration change to the original after you finish your administration tasks.
Whenever you want to log into the root
user account from within the sudo
user account, you can use one of the following commands:
sudo -i
sudo su -
You can exit the root
account and return back to your sudo
user account any time by simply typing the following:
exit
Step 2: Update FreeBSD 11 System
Before installing any packages on the FreeBSD server instance, we will first update the system.
Make sure you are logged into the server using a non-root sudo user and run the following commands:
sudo freebsd-update fetch
sudo freebsd-update install
sudo pkg update
sudo pkg upgrade
Step 3: Install Apache Web Server
Install the Apache web server:
sudo pkg install apache24
Enter y
when prompted.
Now use the sysrc
command to enable the Apache service to execute automatically at boot time:
sudo sysrc apache24_enable=yes
The sysrc
command updates the /etc/rc.conf
configuration file, so if you want to verify the configuration update manually you can simply open the /etc/rc.conf
file with your favourite terminal editor:
vi /etc/rc.conf
Now start the Apache service:
sudo service apache24 start
You can quickly check that apache is running by visiting the IP address or domain of the server instance in your browser:
http://YOUR_VULTR_IP_ADDRESS/
You will see the default FreeBSD Apache page displaying the text:
It works!
Check your Apache default configuration file to ensure that the DocumentRoot
directive points to the correct directory:
sudo vi /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf
The DocumentRoot
configuration option will look like this:
DocumentRoot "/usr/local/www/apache24/data"
We now need to enable the mod_rewrite
Apache module. We can do this by searching the default Apache configuration file for the term mod_rewrite
.
By default, the mod_rewrite
Apache module will be commented out (which means it is disabled). The configuration line on a clean Vultr FreeBSD 11 instance will look like this:
#LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache24/mod_rewrite.so
Simply remove the hash symbol to uncomment the line and load the module. This, of course, applies to any other required Apache modules too:
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache24/mod_rewrite.so
We now need to edit The Directory
Apache directive in the same configuration file so that mod_rewrite
will work correctly with Lychee.
Find the section of the configuration file that starts with <Directory "/usr/local/www/apache24/data">
and change AllowOverride none
to AllowOverride All
. The end result (with all comments removed) will look something like this:
<Directory "/var/www/html">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
Now save and exit the Apache configuration file.
We will restart Apache at the end of this tutorial, but restarting Apache regularly during installation and configuration is certainly a good habit, so let's do it now:
sudo service apache24 restart
We can now install PHP 7.1 along with all of the necessary PHP modules required by Lychee:
sudo pkg install php71 mod_php71 php71-gd php71-mbstring php71-mysqli php71-xml php71-curl php71-ctype php71-tokenizer php71-simplexml php71-dom php71-session php71-iconv php71-hash php71-json php71-fileinfo php71-pdo php71-pdo_mysql php71-zlib php71-openssl php71-zip php71-phar
FreeBSD 11 gives us the option to use a development php.ini
or a production php.ini
. Since we are going to install Lychee on a public web server, we'll use the production version. First, back up php.ini-production
:
sudo cp /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production.backup
Then soft-link php.ini-production
to php.ini
:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini
We need to configure Apache to actually use PHP, so let's create a new file called php.conf
in the Apache Includes
directory:
sudo vi /usr/local/etc/apache24/Includes/php.conf
Enter the following text into the newly created file:
<IfModule dir_module>
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
<FilesMatch "\.php$">
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>
<FilesMatch "\.phps$">
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-source
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
Save and exit the file.
Since we may need to use Lychee to upload and process large files, we will need to change some of the default PHP settings.
Open the php.ini
configuration file:
sudo vi /usr/local/etc/php.ini
Change the following PHP options to these values:
max_execution_time = 300
post_max_size = 100M
upload_max_size = 100M
upload_max_filesize = 50M
memory_limit = 256M
When you have finished, save and exit the file.
If you ever run into problems with not being able to upload or process large files with Lychee then simply try increasing the above values further, as that can solve your problems.
Now let's restart Apache so that it can reload the configuration changes:
sudo service apache24 restart
Step 5: Install MariaDB (MySQL) Server
FreeBSD 11 defaults to using MariaDB database server, which is an enhanced, fully open source, community developed, drop-in replacement for MySQL server.
Install the latest version of MariaDB database server:
sudo pkg install mariadb102-server mariadb102-client
Start and enable MariaDB server to execute automatically at boot time:
sudo sysrc mysql_enable="yes"
sudo service mysql-server start
Secure your MariaDB server installation:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
When prompted to create a MariaDB/MySQL root
user, select "Y" (for yes) and then enter a secure root
password. Simply answer "Y" to all of the other yes/no questions as the default suggestions are the most secure options.
Step 6: Create Database for Lychee
Log into the MariaDB shell as the MariaDB root
user by running the following command:
sudo mysql -u root -p
To access the MariaDB command prompt, simply enter the MariaDB root
password when prompted.
Run the following queries to create a MariaDB database and database user for Lychee:
CREATE DATABASE lychee_db CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
CREATE USER 'lychee_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'UltraSecurePassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON lychee_db.* TO 'lychee_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
You can replace the database name lychee_db
and username lychee_user
with something more to your liking, if you prefer. Also, make sure that you replace "UltraSecurePassword" with an actually secure password.
Step 7: Install Lychee Files
Change your current working directory to the default web directory:
cd /usr/local/www/apache24/data
Your current working directory will now be: /usr/local/www/apache24/data
. You can check this with the pwd
(print working directory) command:
pwd
Now use wget
to download the Lychee installation package:
sudo wget --content-disposition https://github.com/electerious/Lychee/archive/v3.1.6.zip
Please note: You should definitely check for the most recent version by visiting the Lychee download page.
List the current directory to check that you have successfully downloaded the file:
ls -la
Remove index.html
:
sudo rm index.html
Now uncompress the zip archive:
sudo unzip Lychee-3.1.6.zip
Move all of the installation files to the web root directory:
sudo mv -v Lychee-3.1.6/* Lychee-3.1.6/.* /usr/local/www/apache24/data 2>/dev/null
Change ownership of the web files to avoid any permissions problems:
sudo chown -R www:www * ./
Set world readable permissions on the upload
and data
directories:
sudo chmod -R 777 data/ upload/
Restart Apache again:
sudo service apache24 restart
Now we're ready to move onto the final step.
Step 8: Complete Lychee Installation
It's now time to visit the IP address of your server instance in your browser, or if you've already configured your Vultr DNS settings (and given it enough time to propagate) you can simply visit your domain instead.
To access the Lychee installation page, enter your Vultr instance IP address into your browser address bar:
http://YOUR_VULTR_IP_ADDRESS/
-
On the Database Connection Details
page, enter the following database values:
Database Host: localhost
Database Username: lychee_user
Password: UltraSecurePassword
Database Name: lychee_db
Click Connect
to continue.
-
Enter a Username
and Password
for your installation:
Username: <your username>
Password: <a secure password>
Click Create Login
to continue.
You will be automatically redirected to your album upload page and logged into the admin section. If you want to change the settings you can click on the gear icon in the top left corner of the page.
To change the more advanced settings, you will need to return to the terminal and edit the Lychee configuration file:
sudo vi data/config.php
If you haven't yet configured your Vultr DNS settings, you can do so using the Vultr DNS control panel.
It's also advisable to configure your site to use SSL as most modern browsers will give warnings when sites do not have SSL enabled and SSL certificates are now available for free.
In any case, you are now ready to start uploading and sharing your photos. Make sure you check out the Lychee docs for more information about how to configure and use your photo manager.