Start a self-hosted news aggregator

Start a Self-Hosted News Aggregator

This tutorial will guide you through setting up your own self-hosted news aggregator. This can be particularly useful for homelab enthusiasts or developers looking to have full control over their data and services.

Hardware or Software Requirements

A server with at least 1GB of RAM (2GB recommended)

At least 500MB of storage space (more if you plan on storing images)

An internet connection

LAMP stack installed (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) or a similar web server environment

A domain name for your aggregator (optional but recommended for better user experience)

Step-by-Step Instructions

Choose a news aggregator software. For this tutorial, we will use Newsboat, an open-source RSS/Atom feed reader.

Install the necessary dependencies on your server. If you are using Ubuntu or Debian, run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install newsboat

Create a MySQL database and user for Newsboat to store its data.

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE newsboat;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON newsboat.* TO 'newsboat_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Create a configuration file for Newsboat. You can do this by running:

```
newsboat --init
```

Edit the generated .newsboat/config file to add your RSS feed URLs and other preferences.

Start Newsboat by running:

```
newsboat
```

To make Newsboat run automatically on boot, you can use a systemd service file. Create a new file at /etc/systemd/system/newsboat.service:

[Unit]
Description=Newsboat RSS/Atom feed reader
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/newsboat
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload the systemd daemon and enable Newsboat to start on boot:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable newsboat.service

Start the service:

```
sudo systemctl start newsboat
```

Commands Where Useful

Here are some commands that might be useful during setup:

Create MySQL database and user: mysql -u root -p; CREATE DATABASE newsboat; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON newsboat.* TO 'newsboat_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;

Edit configuration file: nano ~/.newsboat/config

Start Newsboat: newsboat

Create systemd service file: nano /etc/systemd/system/newsboat.service

Reload and enable service: sudo systemctl daemon-reload; sudo systemctl enable newsboat.service

Start the service: sudo systemctl start newsboat

Troubleshooting Section

If Newsboat fails to start, check the logs for any errors using journalctl -xeu newsboat.service.

If you encounter issues with database permissions, ensure that the user has the correct privileges by running GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON newsboat.* TO 'newsboat_user'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

To check if your server can access the internet and fetch RSS feeds, try running curl -I https://example.com/rss.

Conclusion

You have now successfully set up a self-hosted news aggregator using Newsboat. This setup allows you to curate your own news sources and keep them updated without relying on third-party services.