4 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
7 - PHP 5.3+ For newer versions, some functions that are used may be
8 disabled by default, such as the pcntl_* family. See the
9 section on 'Queues and daemons' for more information.
10 - MariaDB 5.x GNU Social uses, by default, a MariaDB server for data
11 storage. Versions 5.x and 10.x have both reportedly
12 worked well. It is also possible to run MySQL 5.x.
13 - Web server Apache, lighttpd and nginx will all work. CGI mode is
14 recommended and also some variant of 'suexec' (or a
15 proper setup php-fpm pool)
16 NOTE: mod_rewrite or its equivalent is extremely useful.
18 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions for a
19 functional setup of GNU Social:
21 - Curl Fetching files by HTTP.
22 - XMLWriter For formatting XML and HTML output.
23 - mysqlnd The native driver for PHP5 MySQL/MariaDB connections.
24 - GD Image manipulation (scaling).
25 - mbstring For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
26 - bcmath or gmp For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus)
31 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
33 - memcache A client for the memcached server, which caches database
34 information in volatile memory. This is important for
35 adequate performance on high-traffic sites. You will
36 also need a memcached server to store the data in.
37 - mailparse Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
38 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this.
39 - sphinx A client for the sphinx server, an alternative to MySQL
40 or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
41 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
42 - gettext For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
43 will be emulated if not present.
45 You may also experience better performance from your site if you install
46 a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Currently the recommended cache module
47 is 'xcache', which after installation (php5-xcache) can be enabled in
48 your site's config.php with:
55 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
56 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
57 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
58 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
59 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
60 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
62 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
63 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
64 - OpenID from OpenIDEnabled (not the PEAR version!). We decided
65 to use the openidenabled.com version since it's more widely
66 implemented, and seems to be better supported.
67 http://openidenabled.com/php-openid/
68 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
69 packages should probably use PHP DBO), the OpenID libraries
70 depend on PEAR DB so we use it here, too. DB_DataObject can
71 also use PEAR MDB2, which may give you better performance
72 but won't work with OpenID.
73 http://pear.php.net/package/DB
74 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
75 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
76 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
77 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
78 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
79 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
80 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
81 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
82 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
83 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
84 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
85 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
86 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
87 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
89 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
90 - PEAR Validate is used for URL and email validation.
91 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
92 predecessor to OStatus.
93 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
94 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an HTTP_Request2 dependency.
96 A design goal of StatusNet is that the basic Web functionality should
97 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
98 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by
99 Jabber/GTalk, require that you be able to run long-running processes
100 on your account. In addition, posting by email or from SMS require
101 that you be able to install a mail filter in your mail server.
106 Installing the basic StatusNet Web component is relatively easy,
107 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MySQL packages.
109 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
110 command like this will work:
112 tar zxf statusnet-1.1.1.tar.gz
114 ...which will make a statusnet-1.1.1 subdirectory in your current
115 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
116 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
117 files to the server.)
119 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
120 directory. Usually something like this will work:
122 mv statusnet-1.1.1 /var/www/statusnet
124 This will make your StatusNet instance available in the statusnet path of
125 your server, like "http://example.net/statusnet". "microblog" or
126 "statusnet" might also be good path names. If you know how to
127 configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
128 "http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
130 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
132 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/
134 On some systems, this will probably work:
136 chgrp www-data /var/www/statusnet/
137 chmod g+w /var/www/statusnet/
139 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
140 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
141 a new group like "statusnet" and add the Web server's user to the group.
143 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
144 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
147 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/avatar
148 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/background
149 chmod a+w /var/www/statusnet/file
151 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
152 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
154 5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
157 mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create statusnet
159 Note that StatusNet must have its own database; you can't share the
160 database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
163 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
164 a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
165 service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
167 6. Create a new database account that StatusNet will use to access the
168 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
171 GRANT ALL on statusnet.*
172 TO 'statusnetuser'@'localhost'
173 IDENTIFIED BY 'statusnetpassword';
175 You should change 'statusnetuser' and 'statusnetpassword' to your preferred new
176 username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
179 7. In a browser, navigate to the StatusNet install script; something like:
181 http://yourserver.example.com/statusnet/install.php
183 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
184 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
185 almost-empty database.
187 8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
188 and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
189 has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
190 edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
191 if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
192 URLs are stored in the database.
197 By default, StatusNet will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
198 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
201 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php/statusnet/fred
203 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
206 http://example.org/statusnet/index.php?p=statusnet/fred
208 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
210 http://example.org/statusnet/fred
212 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
213 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
214 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
217 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
218 directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
219 similar configuration files, it can greatly improve performance to
220 import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
221 not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
222 just leaving the .htaccess file.
224 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
225 to your StatusNet installation on your server. Typically this will
226 be the path to your StatusNet directory relative to your Web root.
228 3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
230 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
232 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
235 http://example.net/statusnet/main/register
237 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
240 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the StatusNet
241 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
242 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
243 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
244 .htaccess files for more details:
246 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
248 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
250 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
255 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
256 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
258 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
259 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
261 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
262 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
264 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
269 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
270 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
271 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
272 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
273 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
274 configuration is essentially email configuration.
276 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
277 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
278 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
279 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
281 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
282 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
284 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
287 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
289 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
290 that support email SMS gateways.
292 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
294 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
296 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
297 of a filter than a daemon.
299 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
301 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
303 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
304 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
308 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
311 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
313 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
315 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
316 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
317 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
318 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
323 XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
324 instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
325 distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
326 need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
329 1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
330 Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
331 Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
333 2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
334 to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
335 similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
336 publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
338 StatusNet will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
339 you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
340 Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
342 3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
343 configuration section.
345 On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
346 XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
347 got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
348 to set that up. Also, once you have a sizable number of users, sending
349 a lot of SMS, OStatus, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
350 can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
352 NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
353 broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
354 work around this bug in StatusNet; current recommendation is to move
355 off of amd64 to another server.
360 You can send *all* messages from your social networking site to a
361 third-party service using XMPP. This can be useful for providing
362 search, indexing, bridging, or other cool services.
364 To configure a downstream site to receive your public stream, add
365 their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
367 $config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
369 (Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
370 broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
371 send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
372 consider setting up queues and daemons.
377 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
378 and XMPP messages, can be 'queued' and done by off-line bots instead.
379 For this to work, you must be able to run long-running offline
380 processes, either on your main Web server or on another server you
381 control. (Your other server will still need all the above
382 prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a separate
383 server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
385 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
386 installed on whatever server you use.
388 Modern PHP versions in some operating systems have disabled functions
389 related to forking, which is required for daemons to operate. To make
390 this work, make sure that your php-cli config (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)
391 does NOT have these functions listed under 'disable_functions':
393 * pcntl_fork, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wexitstatus,
394 pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wtermsig
396 Other recommended settings for optimal performance are:
397 * mysqli.allow_persistent = On
398 * mysqli.reconnect = On
400 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
401 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
402 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
403 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
405 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
406 server!), set the following variable:
408 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
410 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
411 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
412 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
413 They're not created automatically.
415 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
417 This will run the queue handlers:
419 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
420 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
421 * imdaemon.php - if an IM plugin is enabled (like XMPP)
422 * other daemons that you may have enabled
424 These daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
425 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
426 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
428 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
429 to check their status and keep them running.
431 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
432 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
433 daemons. If you are running multiple sites on the same machine, it will
434 be necessary to avoid collisions of these PID files by setting a site-
435 specific directory in config.php:
437 $config['daemon']['piddir'] = __DIR__ . '/../run/';
439 It is also possible to use a STOMP server instead of our kind of hacky
440 home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly recommended for
441 best response time, especially when using XMPP.
446 Older themes (version 0.9.x and below) no longer work with StatusNet
447 1.0.x, due to major changes in the site layout. We ship with three new
448 themes for this version, 'neo', 'neo-blue' and 'neo-light'.
450 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
451 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
452 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
453 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
455 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
456 the config.php file. See below for details.
458 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
459 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
462 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
463 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
465 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
467 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
468 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
469 users who don't upload their own.
470 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
471 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
472 listing on profile pages.
474 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
480 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
481 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
482 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
483 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
485 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
486 you can use the Web interface at translatewiki.net to add one
487 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
488 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
490 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
495 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
496 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
497 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
498 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
503 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
504 not visible to non-logged-in users. (This is the default for new installs of version 1.0!)
506 This might be useful for workgroups who want to share a social
507 networking site for project management, but host it on a public
510 Total privacy is attempted but not guaranteed or ensured. Private sites
511 currently don't work well with OStatus federation.
513 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
515 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
516 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
518 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
520 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
521 insecure way to do this is:
523 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
525 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
526 like this to your config.php:
528 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';