4 We've tried very hard to ensure that Friendica will run on commodity hosting
5 platforms - such as those used to host Wordpress blogs and Drupal websites.
6 But be aware that Friendica is more than a simple web application. It is a
7 complex communications system which more closely resembles an email server
8 than a web server. For reliability and performance, messages are delivered in
9 the background and are queued for later delivery when sites are down. This
10 kind of functionality requires a bit more of the host system than the typical
11 blog. Not every PHP/MySQL hosting provider will be able to support Friendica.
12 Many will. But please review the requirements and confirm these with your
13 hosting provider prior to installation.
15 Before you begin: Choose a domain name or subdomain name for your server.
16 Put some thought into this - because changing it is currently not-supported.
17 Things will break, and some of your friends may have difficulty communicating
18 with you. We plan to address this limitation in a future release. Also decide
19 if you wish to connect with members of the Diaspora network, as this will
20 impact the installation requirements.
22 Decide if you will use SSL and obtain an SSL cert. Communications with the
23 Diaspora network MAY require both SSL AND an SSL cert signed by a CA which is
24 recognised by the major browsers. Friendica will work with self-signed certs
25 but Diaspora communication may not. For best results, install your cert PRIOR
26 to installing Friendica and when visiting your site for the initial
27 installation in step 5, please use the https: link. (Use the http: or non-SSL
28 link if your cert is self-signed).
32 - Apache with mod-rewrite enabled and "Options All" so you can use a
35 - PHP 5.6+ (PHP 7 recommended for performance).
37 - PHP *command line* access with register_argc_argv set to true in the
38 php.ini file [or see 'poormancron' in section 8]
40 - curl, gd (with at least jpeg support), mysql, mbstring, xml, zip and openssl extensions
42 - some form of email server or email gateway such that PHP mail() works
44 - The POSIX module of PHP needs to be activated (e.g. RHEL, CentOS have disabled it)
46 - Mysql 5.5.3+ or an equivalant alternative for MySQL (MariaDB, Percona Server etc.)
48 - ability to schedule jobs with cron (Linux/Mac) or Scheduled Tasks
49 (Windows) [Note: other options are presented in Section 8 of this document]
51 - Installation into a top-level domain or sub-domain (without a
52 directory/path component in the URL) is preferred. This is REQUIRED if
53 you wish to communicate with the Diaspora network.
56 - For alternative server configurations (such as Nginx server and MariaDB
57 database engine), refer to the wiki at https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki
59 2. Unpack the Friendica files into the root of your web server document area.
61 - If you copy the directory tree to your webserver, make sure
62 that you also copy .htaccess - as "dot" files are often hidden
63 and aren't normally copied.
67 2b. Clone the friendica/friendica GitHub repository and import dependencies
69 git clone https://github.com/friendica/friendica [web server folder]
70 cd [web server folder]
71 php bin/composer.phar install
73 3. Create an empty database and note the access details (hostname, username,
74 password, database name).
76 - Friendica needs the permission to create and delete fields and tables in its own database.
77 - Please check the additional notes if running on MySQ 5.7.17 or newer
79 4. If you know in advance that it will be impossible for the web server to
80 write or create files in your web directory, create an empty file called
81 .htconfig.php and make it writable by the web server.
83 5. Visit your website with a web browser and follow the instructions. Please
84 note any error messages and correct these before continuing.
86 If you are using SSL with a known signature authority (recommended), use the
87 https: link to your website. If you are using a self-signed cert or no cert,
90 If you need to specify a port for the connection to the database, you can do
91 so in the host name setting for the database.
93 6. *If* the automated installation fails for any reason, check the following:
95 - ".htconfig.php" exists
96 If not, edit htconfig.php and change system settings. Rename
98 - Database is populated.
99 If not, import the contents of "database.sql" with phpmyadmin
100 or mysql command line
102 7. At this point visit your website again, and register your personal account.
103 Registration errors should all be recoverable automatically.
104 If you get any *critical* failure at this point, it generally indicates the
105 database was not installed correctly. You might wish to move/rename
106 .htconfig.php to another name and empty (called 'dropping') the database
107 tables, so that you can start fresh.
109 ****************************************************************************
110 ****************************************************************************
111 ******** THIS NEXT STEP IS IMPORTANT!!!! ***********
112 ****************************************************************************
113 ****************************************************************************
115 8. Set up a cron job or scheduled task to run the worker once every 5-10
116 minutes to pick up the recent "public" postings of your friends. Example:
118 cd /base/directory; /path/to/php bin/worker.php
120 Change "/base/directory", and "/path/to/php" as appropriate for your situation.
122 If you are using a Linux server, run "crontab -e" and add a line like the
123 one shown, substituting for your unique paths and settings:
125 */10 * * * * cd /home/myname/mywebsite; /usr/bin/php bin/worker.php
127 You can generally find the location of PHP by executing "which php". If you
128 have troubles with this section please contact your hosting provider for
129 assistance. Friendica will not work correctly if you cannot perform this step.
131 You should also be sure that $a->config['php_path'] is set correctly, it should
132 look like (changing it to the correct PHP location)
134 $a->config['php_path'] = '/usr/local/php56/bin/php'
136 Alternative: If you cannot use a cron job as described above, you can use
137 the frontend worker and an external cron service to trigger the execution
138 of the worker script. You can enable the frontend worker after the installation
139 from the admin panel of your node and call
141 https://example.com/worker
143 with the service of your choice.
145 9. (Recommended) Set up a backup plan
147 Bad things will happen. Let there be a hardware failure, a corrupted
148 database or whatever you can think of. So once the installation of your
149 Friendica node is done, you should make yoursef a backup plan.
151 The most important file is the `.htconfig.php` file in the base directory.
152 As it stores all your data, you should also have a recent dump of your
153 Friendica database at hand, should you have to recover your node.
155 10. (Optional) Reverse-proxying and HTTPS
157 Friendica looks for some well-known HTTP headers indicating a reverse-proxy
158 terminating an HTTPS connection. While the standard from RFC 7239 specifies
159 the use of the `Forwaded` header.
161 Forwarded: for=192.0.2.1; proto=https; by=192.0.2.2
163 Friendica also supports a number on non-standard headers in common use.
166 X-Forwarded-Proto: https
172 It is however preferable to use the standard approach if configuring a new server.
174 #####################################################################
176 If things don't work...
178 #####################################################################
181 #####################################################################
182 - If you get the message
183 "System is currently unavailable. Please try again later"
184 #####################################################################
186 Check your database settings. It usually means your database could not
187 be opened or accessed. If the database resides on the same machine, check that
188 the database server name is "localhost".
190 #####################################################################
192 #####################################################################
194 This could be the result of one of our Apache directives not being
195 supported by your version of Apache. Examine your apache server logs.
196 You might remove the line "Options -Indexes" from the .htaccess file if
197 you are using a Windows server as this has been known to cause problems.
198 Also check your file permissions. Your website and all contents must generally
201 It is likely that your web server reported the source of the problem in
202 its error log files. Please review these system error logs to determine what
203 caused the problem. Often this will need to be resolved with your hosting
204 provider or (if self-hosted) your web server configuration.
206 #####################################################################
207 - 400 and 4xx "File not found" errors
208 #####################################################################
210 First check your file permissions. Your website and all contents must
211 generally be world-readable.
213 Ensure that mod-rewite is installed and working, and that your
214 .htaccess file is being used. To verify the latter, create a file test.out
215 containing the word "test" in the top directory of Friendica, make it world
216 readable and point your web browser to
218 http://yoursitenamehere.com/test.out
220 This file should be blocked. You should get a permission denied message.
222 If you see the word "test" your Apache configuration is not allowing
223 your .htaccess file to be used (there are rules in this file to block access
224 to any file with .out at the end, as these are typically used for system logs).
226 Make certain the .htaccess file exists and is readable by everybody, then
227 look for the existence of "AllowOverride None" in the Apache server
228 configuration for your site. This will need to be changed to
231 If you do not see the word "test", your .htaccess is working, but it is
232 likely that mod-rewrite is not installed in your web server or is not working.
234 On most flavour of Linux,
237 % /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
239 Consult your hosting provider, experts on your particular Linux
240 distribution or (if Windows) the provider of your Apache server software if
241 you need to change either of these and can not figure out how. There is
242 a lot of help available on the web. Google "mod-rewrite" along with the
243 name of your operating system distribution or Apache package (if using
247 #####################################################################
248 - If you are unable to write the file .htconfig.php during installation
249 due to permissions issues:
250 #####################################################################
252 create an empty file with that name and give it world-write permission.
255 % touch .htconfig.php
256 % chmod 777 .htconfig.php
258 Retry the installation. As soon as the database has been created,
260 ******* this is important *********
262 % chmod 755 .htconfig.php
264 #####################################################################
265 - Some configurations with "suhosin" security are configured without
266 an ability to run external processes. Friendica requires this ability.
267 Following are some notes provided by one of our members.
268 #####################################################################
270 On my server I use the php protection system Suhosin
271 [http://www.hardened-php.net/suhosin/]. One of the things it does is to block
272 certain functions like proc_open, as configured in /etc/php5/conf.d/suhosin.ini:
274 suhosin.executor.func.blacklist = proc_open, ...
276 For those sites like Friendica that really need these functions they can be
277 enabled, e.g. in /etc/apache2/sites-available/friendica:
279 <Directory /var/www/friendica/>
280 php_admin_value suhosin.executor.func.blacklist none
281 php_admin_value suhosin.executor.eval.blacklist none
284 This enables every function for Friendica if accessed via browser, but not for
285 the cronjob that is called via php command line. I attempted to enable it for
286 cron by using something like
288 */10 * * * * cd /var/www/friendica/friendica/ && sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php
289 -d suhosin.executor.func.blacklist=none -d suhosin.executor.eval.blacklist=none
292 This worked well for simple test cases, but the friendica-cron still failed with
294 suhosin[22962]: ALERT - function within blacklist called: proc_open() (attacker
295 'REMOTE_ADDR not set', file '/var/www/friendica/friendica/boot.php', line 1341)
297 After a while I noticed, that bin/worker.php calls further php script via
298 proc_open. These scripts themselves also use proc_open and fail, because they
299 are NOT called with -d suhosin.executor.func.blacklist=none.
301 So the simple solution is to put the correct parameters into .htconfig.php:
302 // Location of PHP command line processor
303 $a->config['php_path'] = '/usr/bin/php -d suhosin.executor.func.blacklist=none
304 -d suhosin.executor.eval.blacklist=none';
307 This is obvious as soon as you notice that the friendica-cron uses proc_open to
308 execute php-scripts that also use proc_open, but it took me quite some time to
309 find that out. I hope this saves some time for other people using suhosin with
312 ########################################################################
313 Unable to create all mysql tables on MySQL 5.7.17 or newer
314 #######################################################################
316 If the setup fails to create all the database tables and/or manual
317 creation from the command line fails, with this error:
319 ERROR 1067 (42000) at line XX: Invalid default value for 'created'
321 You need to adjust your my.cnf and add the following setting under
322 the [mysqld] section :
326 After that, restart mysql and try again.