How to Install and Use FreshRSS on Your Raspberry Pi
Keeping up to date with the news and your favorite creators is essential in the modern world, but you don’t need to create a FaceBook, Google, or Apple account for that.
With FreshRSS, you can pull the latest news, blogs, and other feeds straight from the ether to your Raspberry Pi and view it all in one place through your browser or a dedicated app on your mobile device.
Sounds too good to be true? Read on below as we’ll guide you through the steps to set up, but before that, we’ll briefly discuss why you should use FreshRSS.
Why You Should Use FreshRSS on Your Raspberry Pi to Read RSS Feeds
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an almost omnipresent feature of the internet. Almost every site you visit today will have an RSS feed hidden away somewhere.
An RSS feed is an XML file that can be fetched and read by a specialized piece of software to give you the latest headlines from a given site. The URL of the whole story, and ancillary information, such as author, publication date, and a snippet of text. The MakeUseOf RSS feed is available here if you want to look at the raw XML.
Usually, you will have a separate RSS reader for different devices or even subscribe to a service that provides your own curated RSS feed.
FreshRSS is different, however. It’s a self-hosted piece of software that runs perfectly on a Raspberry Pi. And you access it through a browser or a dedicated client on another device. It also fetches full articles from websites, meaning you never need to visit those sites.
The main advantage of using FreshRSS is that you can easily slice past soft paywalls and avoid advertising and tracking code. This makes it much harder for predatory tech giants to build a profile on you.
How to Install FreshRSS on a Raspberry Pi
You will first need to prepare your Raspberry Pi as a home-based server. Then visit your domain registrar’s Advanced DNS section and create a new record. For the type, select A, then set @ for the host, and in the value field, type your public IP address.
Now, log into your Raspberry Pi using Secure Shell (SSH):
Update and upgrade any packages using the following commands:
sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade
Now change the directory and download the FreshRSS installation archive by entering the following:
cd /var/www/sudo wget https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS/archive/master.zip
Unzip the archive with:
sudo unzip master.zip
You will see that a new directory called “FreshRSS-master” has been created. Give ownership of it to the Apache user:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data FreshRSS-master
FreshRSS is in the correct location and can be accessed and written to by Apache, but Apache does not know where it is. So, change the directory:
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
And create a new Apache conf file:
sudo nano freshrss.conf
In the new file, paste the following:
<VirtualHost *:80>ServerName your-domain.tldDocumentRoot /var/www/FreshRSS-master/p/</VirtualHost>
Save the file and exit nano with Ctrl + O followed by Ctrl + X.
Enable the conf file by typing the following:
sudo a2ensite freshrss.conf
Now, restart Apache using the command below:
sudo service apache2 restart
FreshRSS requires a database; you should already have MariaBD installed on your system. Open MariaDB with:
sudo MariaDB
Enter the following commands to create a new user and a database for it to use:
CREATE DATABASE fresh;CREATE USER fresh IDENTIFIED BY 'password';GRANT USAGE ON . TO fresh@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';GRANT ALL privileges ON fresh.* TO fresh@localhost;FLUSH PRIVILEGES;quit;
Now, launch a web browser and visit your domain. You will be asked to choose a language, and the installer will carry out checks to ensure your server is up to scratch.
Click next, and you will be asked to fill in the details of the database FreshRSS will use. The type of database is MySQL, the host is localhost, and the user and database are both fresh.
The username of the default user
When you’re done, click Next. You’ll be asked for the username of the default user (maximum 16 alphanumeric characters), the authentication method, and to set the password.
Once you click Complete Installation, you have to log in to your FreshRSS instance using the name and password you just set.
Read More: How to Install and Use FreshRSS on Your Raspberry Pi – MakeUseOf
