4 The following software packages are *required* for this software to
7 - PHP 5.4+ 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+ 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 - php5-curl Fetching files by HTTP.
22 - php5-gd Image manipulation (scaling).
23 - php5-gmp For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus).
24 - php5-json For WebFinger lookups and more.
25 - php5-mysqlnd The native driver for PHP5 MariaDB connections. If you
26 use MySQL, 'mysql' or 'mysqli' may work.
28 The above package names are for Debian based systems. In the case of
29 Arch Linux, PHP is compiled with support for most extensions but they
30 require manual enabling in the relevant php.ini file (mostly php5-gmp).
35 For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
37 - memcache A client for the memcached server, which caches database
38 information in volatile memory. This is important for
39 adequate performance on high-traffic sites. You will
40 also need a memcached server to store the data in.
41 - mailparse Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
42 Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this.
43 - sphinx A client for the sphinx server, an alternative to MySQL
44 or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
45 Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
46 - gettext For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
47 will be emulated if not present.
48 - exif For thumbnails to be properly oriented.
50 You may also experience better performance from your site if you install
51 a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Currently the recommended cache module
52 is 'xcache', which after installation (php5-xcache) can be enabled in
53 your site's config.php with:
60 A number of external PHP libraries are used to provide basic
61 functionality and optional functionality for your system. For your
62 convenience, they are available in the "extlib" directory of this
63 package, and you do not have to download and install them. However,
64 you may want to keep them up-to-date with the latest upstream version,
65 and the URLs are listed here for your convenience.
67 - DB_DataObject http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject
68 - Validate http://pear.php.net/package/Validate
69 - OpenID by Janrain, http://janrain.com/openid-enabled/
70 - PEAR DB. Although this is an older data access system (new
71 packages should use PDO), the OpenID libraries depend on PEAR DB
73 - OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
74 - markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
75 - PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
76 http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
77 - PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
78 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
79 - PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
80 http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
81 - XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
82 library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
83 as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
84 the extlib directory is *significantly different* from the upstream
85 version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
86 version may render your StatusNet site unable to send or receive XMPP
88 - Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
89 - PEAR Validate is used for URL and email validation.
90 - Console_GetOpt for parsing command-line options.
91 predecessor to OStatus.
92 - HTTP_Request2, a library for making HTTP requests.
93 - PEAR Net_URL2 is an HTTP_Request2 dependency.
95 A design goal of GNU Social is that the basic Web functionality should
96 work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
97 However, additional functionality, such as receiving messages by XMPP,
98 require that you be able to run long-running processes on your account.
99 In addition, posting by email require that you be able to install a mail
100 filter in your mail server.
105 Installing the basic GNU Social web component is relatively easy,
106 especially if you've previously installed PHP/MariaDB packages.
108 1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
109 command like this will work:
111 tar zxf gnusocial-*.tar.gz
113 ...which will make a gnusocial-x.y.z subdirectory in your current
114 directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
115 may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
116 files to the server.)
118 2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
119 directory. Usually something like this will work:
121 mv gnusocial-x.y.z /var/www/gnusocial
123 This will often make your GNU Social instance available in the gnusocial
124 path of your server, like "http://example.net/gnusocial". "social" or
125 "blog" might also be good path names. If you know how to configure
126 virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
127 "http://social.example.net/" or the like.
129 If you have "rewrite" support on your webserver, and you should,
130 then please enable this in order to make full use of your site. This
131 will enable "Fancy URL" support, which you can read more about if you
132 scroll down a bit in this document.
134 3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
136 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/
138 On some systems, this will probably work:
140 chgrp www-data /var/www/gnusocial/
141 chmod g+w /var/www/gnusocial/
143 If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
144 that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
145 a new group like "gnusocial" and add the Web server's user to the group.
147 4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar, background, and
148 file subdirectories writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do
151 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/avatar
152 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/background
153 chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/file
155 You can also make the avatar, background, and file directories
156 writeable by the Web server group, as noted above.
158 5. Create a database to hold your site data. Something like this
161 mysqladmin -u "root" --password="rootpassword" create gnusocial
163 Note that GNU Social should have its own database; you should not share
164 the database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
167 (If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
168 a tool like phpMyAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
169 service's documentation for how to create a new MariaDB database.)
171 6. Create a new database account that GNU Social will use to access the
172 database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
175 GRANT ALL on gnusocial.*
176 TO 'gnusocial'@'localhost'
177 IDENTIFIED BY 'agoodpassword';
179 You should change the user identifier 'gnusocial' and 'agoodpassword'
180 to your preferred new database username and password. You may want to
181 test logging in to MariaDB as this new user.
183 7. In a browser, navigate to the GNU Social install script; something like:
185 http://social.example.net/install.php
187 Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
188 install program will configure your site and install the initial,
189 almost-empty database.
191 8. You should now be able to navigate to your social site's main directory
192 and see the "Public Timeline", which will probably be empty. You can
193 now register new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc.
198 By default, GNU Social will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
199 name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be found at:
201 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php/gnusocial/fred
203 On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
206 http://example.net/gnusocial/index.php?p=gnusocial/fred
208 It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
210 http://example.net/gnusocial/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
215 your server (like lighttpd or nginx).
217 1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your StatusNet
220 2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
221 to your GNU Social installation on your server. Typically this will
222 be the path to your GNU Social directory relative to your Web root.
223 If you are installing it in the root directory, leave it as '/'.
225 3. Add, uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
227 $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
229 You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
232 http://example.net/gnusocial/main/register
234 If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
237 If it doesn't work, double-check that AllowOverride for the GNU Social
238 directory is 'All' in your Apache configuration file. This is usually
239 /etc/httpd.conf, /etc/apache/httpd.conf, or (on Debian and Ubuntu)
240 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. See the Apache documentation for
241 .htaccess files for more details:
243 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
245 Also, check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled:
247 http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html
252 To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
253 enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
255 addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
256 $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
258 You also need to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for
259 php on the client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
261 See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
266 StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
267 to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
268 sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
269 buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
270 gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
271 configuration is essentially email configuration.
273 Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
274 Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
275 the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
276 converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
278 For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
279 (or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
281 1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
284 mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
286 This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
287 that support email SMS gateways.
289 2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
291 chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
293 Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
294 of a filter than a daemon.
296 2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
298 *: /path/to/statusnet/scripts/maildaemon.php
300 3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
301 many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
305 You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
308 4. Set the following in your config.php file:
310 $config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
312 At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
313 that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
314 server, you'll need to have a full installation of StatusNet, a working
315 config.php, and access to the StatusNet database from the mail server.
321 Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
322 XMPP messages and TwitterBridge operations, can be 'queued' and done by
323 off-line bots instead.
325 Two mechanisms are available to achieve offline operations:
327 * New embedded OpportunisticQM plugin, which is enabled by default
328 * Legacy queuedaemon script, which can be enabled via config file.
330 ### OpportunisticQM plugin
332 This plugin is enabled by default. It tries its best to do background
333 job during regular HTTP requests, like API or HTML pages calls.
335 Since queueing system is enabled by default, notices to be broadcasted
336 will be stored, by default, into DB (table queue_item).
338 Each time it can, OpportunisticQM will try to handle some of them.
340 This is a good solution whether you:
342 * have no access to command line (shared hosting)
343 * do not want to deal with long-running PHP processes
344 * run a low traffic GNU social instance
346 In other case, you really should consider enabling the queuedaemon for
347 performance reasons. Background daemons are necessary anyway if you wish
348 to use the Instant Messaging features such as communicating via XMPP.
352 If you want to use legacy queuedaemon, you must be able to run
353 long-running offline processes, either on your main Web server or on
354 another server you control. (Your other server will still need all the
355 above prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a
356 separate server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
358 1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
359 installed on whatever server you use.
361 Modern PHP versions in some operating systems have disabled functions
362 related to forking, which is required for daemons to operate. To make
363 this work, make sure that your php-cli config (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)
364 does NOT have these functions listed under 'disable_functions':
366 * pcntl_fork, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wexitstatus,
367 pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wtermsig
369 Other recommended settings for optimal performance are:
370 * mysqli.allow_persistent = On
371 * mysqli.reconnect = On
373 2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
374 somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
375 .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
376 to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
378 3. In your config.php files (both the Web server and the queues
379 server!), set the following variable:
381 $config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
382 $config['queue']['daemon'] = true;
384 You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
385 more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
386 options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
387 They're not created automatically.
389 4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
391 This will run the queue handlers:
393 * queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
394 pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
395 * imdaemon.php - if an IM plugin is enabled (like XMPP)
396 * other daemons, like TwitterBridge ones, that you may have enabled
398 These daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
399 including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
400 or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
402 It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
403 to check their status and keep them running.
405 All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
406 default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
407 daemons. If you are running multiple sites on the same machine, it will
408 be necessary to avoid collisions of these PID files by setting a site-
409 specific directory in config.php:
411 $config['daemon']['piddir'] = __DIR__ . '/../run/';
413 It is also possible to use a STOMP server instead of our kind of hacky
414 home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly recommended for
415 best response time, especially when using XMPP.
420 Older themes (version 0.9.x and below) no longer work with StatusNet
421 1.0.x, due to major changes in the site layout. We ship with three new
422 themes for this version, 'neo', 'neo-blue' and 'neo-light'.
424 As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
425 can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
426 change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
427 change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
429 You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
430 the config.php file. See below for details.
432 You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
433 subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
436 display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
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';