Polr is an open-source URL shortener that allows you to create and manage short URLs for your website or application. It has a user-friendly interface and a powerful set of features, including the ability to customize the URL slugs, track clicks and referrers, and set expiration dates for the links. In this article, we will show you how to install Polr on Rocky Linux 8.

• Before you can install Polr, you need to make sure that your Rocky Linux 8 system is up to date. Run the following command to update the package index:

sudo dnf update

• Next, you need to install the required dependencies for Polr. This includes the Apache web server, the PHP programming language, and the MariaDB database server. To install these dependencies, run the following command:

sudo dnf install httpd mariadb-server php php-common php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mysqlnd

• After installing the dependencies, start the Apache web server and the MariaDB server, and enable them to start at boot time by running the following commands:

sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

• With the web server and database server running, you can download the latest version of Polr from the official website. To do this, open a web browser and navigate to https://polrproject.org/download. This will bring up a page where you can download the Polr installation package.
• Once the download is complete, extract the downloaded file to the /var/www/html directory. This directory is the default document root for the Apache web server, and it is where Polr will be installed. To extract the file, run the following commands:

cd /var/www/html
tar xvf polr-*.tar.gz

This will extract the contents of the downloaded file to the /var/www/html directory.

• After extracting the files, you need to create a database for Polr. To do this, log in to the MariaDB server as the root user by running the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for the password for the root user. Enter the password, and press Enter to log in to the MariaDB server.

• Once you are logged in, run the following SQL commands to create a database named polr and a user named polr with the password polr:

CREATE DATABASE polr;
CREATE USER 'polr'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'polr';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON polr.* TO 'polr'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

These commands will create the polr database and the polr user, and grant the user the necessary permissions to access the database.

• After creating the database and user, exit the MariaDB server by running the exit command.
• With the database and user set up, you can start the installation process for Polr. To do this, open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost/polr. This will bring up the Polr installation wizard,

where you can enter the details for the database that you created earlier.

• On the first page of the wizard, enter the URL of your Polr installation, and click the “Next” button.
• On the next page, enter the details for the database that you created earlier. These include the database hostname, database name, database username, and database password. You can use the default values provided by Polr, or you can enter the values that you specified when creating the database and user. Once you have entered the details, click the “Next” button to continue.
• On the next page, enter the details for the administrator account. This includes the username, password, and email address for the administrator user. Once you have entered the details, click the “Next” button to continue.
• On the next page, review the details that you entered, and click the “Install” button to start the installation process. This will install Polr on your Rocky Linux 8 system, and create the necessary tables and records in the database.
• Once the installation is complete, click the “Finish” button to complete the setup process. This will bring up the Polr login page, where you can log in to your Polr account using the administrator username and password that you specified earlier.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Polr on Rocky Linux 8 and set up your Polr administrator account. You can now start using Polr to create and manage short URLs for your website or application.