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.
45 - exif For thumbnails to be properly oriented.
47 You may also experience better performance from your site if you install
48 a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Currently the recommended cache module
49 is 'xcache', which after installation (php5-xcache) can be enabled in
50 your site's config.php with:
57 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
58 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
59 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
60 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
61 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
62 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
64 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
65 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
66 - OpenID by Janrain, http://janrain.com/openid-enabled/
67 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
68 packages should use PDO), the OpenID libraries depend on PEAR DB
70 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
71 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
72 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
73 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
74 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
75 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
76 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
77 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
78 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
79 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
80 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
81 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
82 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
83 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
85 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
86 - PEAR Validate is used for URL and email validation.
87 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
88 predecessor to OStatus.
89 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
90 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an HTTP_Request2 dependency.
92 A design goal of GNU Social is that the basic Web functionality should
93 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
94 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by XMPP,
95 require that you be able to run long-running processes on your account.
96 In addition, posting by email require that you be able to install a mail
97 filter in your mail server.
102 Installing the basic GNU Social web component is relatively easy,
103 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MariaDB packages.
105 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
106 command like this will work:
108 tar zxf gnusocial-*.tar.gz
110 ...which will make a gnusocial-x.y.z subdirectory in your current
111 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
112 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
113 files to the server.)
115 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
116 directory. Usually something like this will work:
118 mv gnusocial-x.y.z /var/www/gnusocial
120 This will often make your GNU Social instance available in the gnusocial
121 path of your server, like "http://example.net/gnusocial". "social" or
122 "blog" might also be good path names. If you know how to configure
123 virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
124 "http://social.example.net/" or the like.
126 If you have "rewrite" support on your webserver, and you should,
127 then please enable this in order to make full use of your site. This
128 will enable "Fancy URL" support, which you can read more about if you
129 scroll down a bit in this document.
131 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
133 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/
135 On some systems, this will probably work:
137 chgrp www-data /var/www/gnusocial/
138 chmod g+w /var/www/gnusocial/
140 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
141 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
142 a new group like "gnusocial" and add the Web server's user to the group.
144 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
145 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
148 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/avatar
149 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/background
150 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/file
152 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
153 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
155 5. Create a database to hold your site data. Something like this
158 mysqladmin -u "root" --password="rootpassword" create gnusocial
160 Note that GNU Social should have its own database; you should not share
161 the database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
164 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
165 a tool like phpMyAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
166 service's documentation for how to create a new MariaDB database.)
168 6. Create a new database account that GNU Social will use to access the
169 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
172 GRANT ALL on gnusocial.*
173 TO 'gnusocial'@'localhost'
174 IDENTIFIED BY 'agoodpassword';
176 You should change the user identifier 'gnusocial' and 'agoodpassword'
177 to your preferred new database username and password. You may want to
178 test logging in to MariaDB as this new user.
180 7. In a browser, navigate to the GNU Social install script; something like:
182 http://social.example.net/install.php
184 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
185 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
186 almost-empty database.
188 8. You should now be able to navigate to your social site's main directory
189 and see the "Public Timeline", which will probably be empty. You can
190 now register new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc.
195 By default, GNU Social will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
196 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be found at:
198 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php/gnusocial/fred
200 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
203 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php?p=gnusocial/fred
205 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
207 http://example.net/gnusocial/fred
209 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
210 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
211 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
212 your server (like lighttpd or nginx).
214 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
217 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
218 to your GNU Social installation on your server. Typically this will
219 be the path to your GNU Social directory relative to your Web root.
220 If you are installing it in the root directory, leave it as '/'.
222 3. Add, uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
224 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
226 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
229 http://example.net/gnusocial/main/register
231 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
234 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the GNU Social
235 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
236 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
237 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
238 .htaccess files for more details:
240 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
242 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
244 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
249 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
250 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
252 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
253 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
255 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
256 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
258 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
263 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
264 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
265 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
266 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
267 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
268 configuration is essentially email configuration.
270 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
271 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
272 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
273 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
275 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
276 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
278 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
281 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
283 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
284 that support email SMS gateways.
286 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
288 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
290 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
291 of a filter than a daemon.
293 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
295 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
297 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
298 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
302 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
305 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
307 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
309 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
310 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
311 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
312 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
318 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
319 XMPP messages and TwitterBridge operations, can be 'queued' and done by
320 off-line bots instead.
322 Two mechanisms are available to achieve offline operations:
324 * New embedded OpportunisticQM plugin, which is enabled by default
325 * Legacy queuedaemon script, which can be enabled via config file.
327 ### OpportunisticQM plugin
329 This plugin is enabled by default. It tries its best to do background
330 job during regular HTTP requests, like API or HTML pages calls.
332 Since queueing system is enabled by default, notices to be broadcasted
333 will be stored, by default, into DB (table queue_item).
335 Each time it can, OpportunisticQM will try to handle some of them.
337 This is a good solution whether you:
339 * have no access to command line (shared hosting)
340 * do not want to deal with long-running PHP processes
341 * run a low traffic GNU social instance
343 In other case, you really should consider enabling the queuedaemon for
344 performance reasons. Background daemons are necessary anyway if you wish
345 to use the Instant Messaging features such as communicating via XMPP.
349 If you want to use legacy queuedaemon, you must be able to run
350 long-running offline processes, either on your main Web server or on
351 another server you control. (Your other server will still need all the
352 above prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a
353 separate server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
355 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
356 installed on whatever server you use.
358 Modern PHP versions in some operating systems have disabled functions
359 related to forking, which is required for daemons to operate. To make
360 this work, make sure that your php-cli config (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)
361 does NOT have these functions listed under 'disable_functions':
363 * pcntl_fork, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wexitstatus,
364 pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wtermsig
366 Other recommended settings for optimal performance are:
367 * mysqli.allow_persistent = On
368 * mysqli.reconnect = On
370 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
371 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
372 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
373 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
375 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
376 server!), set the following variable:
378 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
379 $config['queue']['daemon'] = true;
381 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
382 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
383 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
384 They're not created automatically.
386 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
388 This will run the queue handlers:
390 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
391 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
392 * imdaemon.php - if an IM plugin is enabled (like XMPP)
393 * other daemons, like TwitterBridge ones, that you may have enabled
395 These daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
396 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
397 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
399 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
400 to check their status and keep them running.
402 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
403 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
404 daemons. If you are running multiple sites on the same machine, it will
405 be necessary to avoid collisions of these PID files by setting a site-
406 specific directory in config.php:
408 $config['daemon']['piddir'] = __DIR__ . '/../run/';
410 It is also possible to use a STOMP server instead of our kind of hacky
411 home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly recommended for
412 best response time, especially when using XMPP.
417 Older themes (version 0.9.x and below) no longer work with StatusNet
418 1.0.x, due to major changes in the site layout. We ship with three new
419 themes for this version, 'neo', 'neo-blue' and 'neo-light'.
421 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
422 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
423 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
424 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
426 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
427 the config.php file. See below for details.
429 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
430 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
433 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
434 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
435 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
436 users who don't upload their own.
437 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
438 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
439 listing on profile pages.
441 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
447 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
448 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
449 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
450 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
452 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
453 you can use the Web interface at translatewiki.net to add one
454 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
455 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
457 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
462 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
463 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
464 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
465 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
470 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
471 not visible to non-logged-in users. (This is the default for new installs of version 1.0!)
473 This might be useful for workgroups who want to share a social
474 networking site for project management, but host it on a public
477 Total privacy is attempted but not guaranteed or ensured. Private sites
478 currently don't work well with OStatus federation.
480 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
482 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
483 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
485 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
487 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
488 insecure way to do this is:
490 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
492 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
493 like this to your config.php:
495 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';