4 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
7 - PHP 5.3.2+ 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 MariaDB connections. If you
24 use MySQL, 'mysql' or 'mysqli' may work.
25 - GD Image manipulation (scaling).
26 - mbstring For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
27 - bcmath or gmp For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus)
32 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
34 - memcache A client for the memcached server, which caches database
35 information in volatile memory. This is important for
36 adequate performance on high-traffic sites. You will
37 also need a memcached server to store the data in.
38 - mailparse Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
39 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this.
40 - sphinx A client for the sphinx server, an alternative to MySQL
41 or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
42 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
43 - gettext For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
44 will be emulated if not present.
46 You may also experience better performance from your site if you install
47 a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Currently the recommended cache module
48 is 'xcache', which after installation (php5-xcache) can be enabled in
49 your site's config.php with:
56 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
57 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
58 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
59 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
60 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
61 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
63 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
64 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
65 - OpenID by Janrain, http://janrain.com/openid-enabled/
66 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
67 packages should use PDO), the OpenID libraries depend on PEAR DB
69 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
70 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
71 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
72 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
73 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
74 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
75 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
76 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
77 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
78 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
79 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
80 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
81 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
82 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
84 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
85 - PEAR Validate is used for URL and email validation.
86 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
87 predecessor to OStatus.
88 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
89 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an HTTP_Request2 dependency.
91 A design goal of GNU Social is that the basic Web functionality should
92 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
93 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by XMPP,
94 require that you be able to run long-running processes on your account.
95 In addition, posting by email require that you be able to install a mail
96 filter in your mail server.
101 Installing the basic GNU Social web component is relatively easy,
102 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MariaDB packages.
104 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
105 command like this will work:
107 tar zxf gnusocial-*.tar.gz
109 ...which will make a gnusocial-x.y.z subdirectory in your current
110 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
111 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
112 files to the server.)
114 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
115 directory. Usually something like this will work:
117 mv gnusocial-x.y.z /var/www/gnusocial
119 This will often make your GNU Social instance available in the gnusocial
120 path of your server, like "http://example.net/gnusocial". "social" or
121 "blog" might also be good path names. If you know how to configure
122 virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
123 "http://social.example.net/" or the like.
125 If you have "rewrite" support on your webserver, and you should,
126 then please enable this in order to make full use of your site. This
127 will enable "Fancy URL" support, which you can read more about if you
128 scroll down a bit in this document.
130 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
132 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/
134 On some systems, this will probably work:
136 chgrp www-data /var/www/gnusocial/
137 chmod g+w /var/www/gnusocial/
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 "gnusocial" 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/gnusocial/avatar
148 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/background
149 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/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 site data. Something like this
157 mysqladmin -u "root" --password="rootpassword" create gnusocial
159 Note that GNU Social should have its own database; you should not share
160 the 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 phpMyAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
165 service's documentation for how to create a new MariaDB database.)
167 6. Create a new database account that GNU Social will use to access the
168 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
171 GRANT ALL on gnusocial.*
172 TO 'gnusocial'@'localhost'
173 IDENTIFIED BY 'agoodpassword';
175 You should change the user identifier 'gnusocial' and 'agoodpassword'
176 to your preferred new database username and password. You may want to
177 test logging in to MariaDB as this new user.
179 7. In a browser, navigate to the GNU Social install script; something like:
181 http://social.example.net/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 social site's main directory
188 and see the "Public Timeline", which will probably be empty. You can
189 now register new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc.
194 By default, GNU Social will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
195 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be found at:
197 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php/gnusocial/fred
199 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
202 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php?p=gnusocial/fred
204 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
206 http://example.net/gnusocial/fred
208 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
209 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
210 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
211 your server (like lighttpd or nginx).
213 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
216 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
217 to your GNU Social installation on your server. Typically this will
218 be the path to your GNU Social directory relative to your Web root.
219 If you are installing it in the root directory, leave it as '/'.
221 3. Add, uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
223 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
225 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
228 http://example.net/gnusocial/main/register
230 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
233 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the GNU Social
234 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
235 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
236 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
237 .htaccess files for more details:
239 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
241 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
243 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
248 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
249 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
251 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
252 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
254 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
255 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
257 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
262 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
263 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
264 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
265 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
266 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
267 configuration is essentially email configuration.
269 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
270 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
271 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
272 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
274 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
275 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
277 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
280 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
282 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
283 that support email SMS gateways.
285 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
287 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
289 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
290 of a filter than a daemon.
292 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
294 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
296 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
297 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
301 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
304 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
306 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
308 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
309 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
310 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
311 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
317 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
318 XMPP messages and TwitterBridge operations, can be 'queued' and done by
319 off-line bots instead.
321 Two mechanisms are available to achieve offline operations:
323 * New embedded OpportunisticQM plugin, which is enabled by default
324 * Legacy queuedaemon script, which can be enabled via config file.
326 ### OpportunisticQM plugin
328 This plugin is enabled by default. It tries its best to do background
329 job during regular HTTP requests, like API or HTML pages calls.
331 Since queueing system is enabled by default, notices to be broadcasted
332 will be stored, by default, into DB (table queue_item).
334 Each time it can, OpportunisticQM will try to handle some of them.
336 This is a good solution whether you:
338 * have no access to command line (shared hosting)
339 * do not want to deal with long-running PHP processes
340 * run a low traffic GNU social instance
342 In other case, you really should consider enabling the queuedaemon for
343 performance reasons. Background daemons are necessary anyway if you wish
344 to use the Instant Messaging features such as communicating via XMPP.
348 If you want to use legacy queuedaemon, you must be able to run
349 long-running offline processes, either on your main Web server or on
350 another server you control. (Your other server will still need all the
351 above prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a
352 separate server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
354 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
355 installed on whatever server you use.
357 Modern PHP versions in some operating systems have disabled functions
358 related to forking, which is required for daemons to operate. To make
359 this work, make sure that your php-cli config (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)
360 does NOT have these functions listed under 'disable_functions':
362 * pcntl_fork, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wexitstatus,
363 pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wtermsig
365 Other recommended settings for optimal performance are:
366 * mysqli.allow_persistent = On
367 * mysqli.reconnect = On
369 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
370 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
371 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
372 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
374 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
375 server!), set the following variable:
377 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
378 $config['queue']['daemon'] = true;
380 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
381 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
382 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
383 They're not created automatically.
385 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
387 This will run the queue handlers:
389 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
390 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
391 * imdaemon.php - if an IM plugin is enabled (like XMPP)
392 * other daemons, like TwitterBridge ones, that you may have enabled
394 These daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
395 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
396 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
398 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
399 to check their status and keep them running.
401 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
402 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
403 daemons. If you are running multiple sites on the same machine, it will
404 be necessary to avoid collisions of these PID files by setting a site-
405 specific directory in config.php:
407 $config['daemon']['piddir'] = __DIR__ . '/../run/';
409 It is also possible to use a STOMP server instead of our kind of hacky
410 home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly recommended for
411 best response time, especially when using XMPP.
416 Older themes (version 0.9.x and below) no longer work with StatusNet
417 1.0.x, due to major changes in the site layout. We ship with three new
418 themes for this version, 'neo', 'neo-blue' and 'neo-light'.
420 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
421 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
422 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
423 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
425 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
426 the config.php file. See below for details.
428 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
429 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
432 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
433 ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
435 ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
437 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
438 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
439 users who don't upload their own.
440 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
441 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
442 listing on profile pages.
444 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
450 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
451 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
452 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
453 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
455 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
456 you can use the Web interface at translatewiki.net to add one
457 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
458 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
460 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
465 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
466 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
467 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
468 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
473 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
474 not visible to non-logged-in users. (This is the default for new installs of version 1.0!)
476 This might be useful for workgroups who want to share a social
477 networking site for project management, but host it on a public
480 Total privacy is attempted but not guaranteed or ensured. Private sites
481 currently don't work well with OStatus federation.
483 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
485 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
486 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
488 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
490 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
491 insecure way to do this is:
493 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
495 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
496 like this to your config.php:
498 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';