7 - Getting it up and running
23 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
26 - PHP 5.4+ For newer versions, some functions that are used may be
27 disabled by default, such as the pcntl_* family. See the
28 section on 'Queues and daemons' for more information.
29 - MariaDB 5+ GNU Social uses, by default, a MariaDB server for data
30 storage. Versions 5.x and 10.x have both reportedly
31 worked well. It is also possible to run MySQL 5.5+.
32 - Web server Apache, lighttpd and nginx will all work. CGI mode is
33 recommended and also some variant of 'suexec' (or a
34 proper setup php-fpm pool)
35 NOTE: mod_rewrite or its equivalent is extremely useful.
37 Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions for a
38 functional setup of GNU Social:
40 - openssl (compiled in for Debian, enabled manually in Arch Linux)
41 - php5-curl Fetching files by HTTP.
42 - php5-gd Image manipulation (scaling).
43 - php5-gmp For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus).
44 - php5-intl Internationalization support (transliteration et al).
45 - php5-json For WebFinger lookups and more.
46 - php5-mysqlnd The native driver for PHP5 MariaDB connections. If you
47 use MySQL, 'mysql' or 'mysqli' may work.
49 The above package names are for Debian based systems. In the case of
50 Arch Linux, PHP is compiled with support for most extensions but they
51 require manual enabling in the relevant php.ini file (mostly php5-gmp).
56 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
58 - opcache Improves performance a _lot_. Included in PHP, must be
59 enabled manually in php.ini for most distributions. Find
60 and set at least: opcache.enable=1
61 - mailparse Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
62 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this.
63 - sphinx A client for the sphinx server, an alternative to MySQL
64 or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
65 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
66 - gettext For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
67 will be emulated if not present.
68 - exif For thumbnails to be properly oriented.
70 You may also experience better performance from your site if you configure
71 a PHP cache/accelerator. Most distributions come with "opcache" support.
72 Enable it in your php.ini, it is documented there together with its settings.
77 Getting it up and running
78 -------------------------
80 Installing the basic GNU Social web component is relatively easy,
81 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MariaDB packages.
83 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
84 command like this will work:
86 tar zxf gnusocial-*.tar.gz
88 ...which will make a gnusocial-x.y.z subdirectory in your current
89 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
90 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
93 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
94 directory. Usually something like this will work:
96 mv gnusocial-x.y.z /var/www/gnusocial
98 This will often make your GNU Social instance available in the gnusocial
99 path of your server, like "http://example.net/gnusocial". "social" or
100 "blog" might also be good path names. If you know how to configure
101 virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
102 "http://social.example.net/" or the like.
104 If you have "rewrite" support on your webserver, and you should,
105 then please enable this in order to make full use of your site. This
106 will enable "Fancy URL" support, which you can read more about if you
107 scroll down a bit in this document.
109 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
111 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/
113 On some systems, this will probably work:
115 chgrp www-data /var/www/gnusocial/
116 chmod g+w /var/www/gnusocial/
118 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
119 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
120 a new group like "gnusocial" and add the Web server's user to the group.
122 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
123 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
126 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/avatar
127 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/background
128 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/file
130 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
131 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
133 5. Create a database to hold your site data. Something like this
136 mysqladmin -u "root" --password="rootpassword" create gnusocial
138 Note that GNU Social should have its own database; you should not share
139 the database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
142 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
143 a tool like phpMyAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
144 service's documentation for how to create a new MariaDB database.)
146 6. Create a new database account that GNU Social will use to access the
147 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
150 GRANT ALL on gnusocial.*
151 TO 'gnusocial'@'localhost'
152 IDENTIFIED BY 'agoodpassword';
154 You should change the user identifier 'gnusocial' and 'agoodpassword'
155 to your preferred new database username and password. You may want to
156 test logging in to MariaDB as this new user.
158 7. In a browser, navigate to the GNU Social install script; something like:
160 http://social.example.net/install.php
162 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
163 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
164 almost-empty database.
166 8. You should now be able to navigate to your social site's main directory
167 and see the "Public Timeline", which will probably be empty. You can
168 now register new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc.
173 By default, GNU Social will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
174 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be found at:
176 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php/gnusocial/fred
178 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
181 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php?p=gnusocial/fred
183 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
185 http://example.net/gnusocial/fred
187 These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
188 fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
189 mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
190 your server (like lighttpd or nginx).
192 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
195 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
196 to your GNU Social installation on your server. Typically this will
197 be the path to your GNU Social directory relative to your Web root.
198 If you are installing it in the root directory, leave it as '/'.
200 3. Add, uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
202 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
204 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
207 http://example.net/gnusocial/main/register
209 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
212 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the GNU Social
213 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
214 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
215 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
216 .htaccess files for more details:
218 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
220 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
222 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
227 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
228 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
230 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
231 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
233 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
234 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
236 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
241 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
242 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
243 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
244 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
245 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
246 configuration is essentially email configuration.
248 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
249 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
250 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
251 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
253 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
254 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
256 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
259 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
261 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
262 that support email SMS gateways.
264 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
266 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
268 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
269 of a filter than a daemon.
271 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
273 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
275 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
276 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
280 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
283 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
285 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
292 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
293 XMPP messages and TwitterBridge operations, can be 'queued' and done by
294 off-line bots instead.
296 Two mechanisms are available to achieve offline operations:
298 * New embedded OpportunisticQM plugin, which is enabled by default
299 * Legacy queuedaemon script, which can be enabled via config file.
301 ### OpportunisticQM plugin
303 This plugin is enabled by default. It tries its best to do background
304 job during regular HTTP requests, like API or HTML pages calls.
306 Since queueing system is enabled by default, notices to be broadcasted
307 will be stored, by default, into DB (table queue_item).
309 Each time it can, OpportunisticQM will try to handle some of them.
311 This is a good solution whether you:
313 * have no access to command line (shared hosting)
314 * do not want to deal with long-running PHP processes
315 * run a low traffic GNU social instance
317 In other case, you really should consider enabling the queuedaemon for
318 performance reasons. Background daemons are necessary anyway if you wish
319 to use the Instant Messaging features such as communicating via XMPP.
323 If you want to use legacy queuedaemon, you must be able to run
324 long-running offline processes, either on your main Web server or on
325 another server you control. (Your other server will still need all the
326 above prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a
327 separate server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
329 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
330 installed on whatever server you use.
332 Modern PHP versions in some operating systems have disabled functions
333 related to forking, which is required for daemons to operate. To make
334 this work, make sure that your php-cli config (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)
335 does NOT have these functions listed under 'disable_functions':
337 * pcntl_fork, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wexitstatus,
338 pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wtermsig
340 Other recommended settings for optimal performance are:
341 * mysqli.allow_persistent = On
342 * mysqli.reconnect = On
344 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
345 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
346 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
347 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
349 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
350 server!), set the following variable:
352 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
353 $config['queue']['daemon'] = true;
355 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
356 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
357 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
358 They're not created automatically.
360 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
362 This will run the queue handlers:
364 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
365 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
366 * imdaemon.php - if an IM plugin is enabled (like XMPP)
367 * other daemons, like TwitterBridge ones, that you may have enabled
369 These daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
370 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
371 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
373 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
374 to check their status and keep them running.
376 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
377 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
378 daemons. If you are running multiple sites on the same machine, it will
379 be necessary to avoid collisions of these PID files by setting a site-
380 specific directory in config.php:
382 $config['daemon']['piddir'] = __DIR__ . '/../run/';
384 It is also possible to use a STOMP server instead of our kind of hacky
385 home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly recommended for
386 best response time, especially when using XMPP.
391 Older themes (version 0.9.x and below) no longer work with StatusNet
392 1.0.x, due to major changes in the site layout. We ship with three new
393 themes for this version, 'neo', 'neo-blue' and 'neo-light'.
395 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
396 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
397 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
398 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
400 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
401 the config.php file. See below for details.
403 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
404 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
407 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
408 logo.png: a logo image for the site.
409 default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
410 users who don't upload their own.
411 default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
412 default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
413 listing on profile pages.
415 You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
421 Translations in StatusNet use the gettext system <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>.
422 Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
423 subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
424 compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
426 Contributions of translation information to StatusNet are very easy:
427 you can use the Web interface at translatewiki.net to add one
428 or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
429 also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
431 For info on helping with translations, see http://status.net/wiki/Translations
436 There is no built-in system for doing backups in StatusNet. You can make
437 backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
438 the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump <http://ur1.ca/7xo>
439 and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
444 The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
445 not visible to non-logged-in users. (This is the default for new installs of version 1.0!)
447 This might be useful for workgroups who want to share a social
448 networking site for project management, but host it on a public
451 Total privacy is attempted but not guaranteed or ensured. Private sites
452 currently don't work well with OStatus federation.
454 Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only.
456 1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
457 stored. Usually a command like this will work:
459 mkdir /var/www/statusnet-files
461 2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
462 insecure way to do this is:
464 chmod a+x /var/www/statusnet-files
466 3. Tell StatusNet to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
467 like this to your config.php:
469 $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/statusnet-files';