README
------
-Laconica 0.6.0
-12 September 2008
+Laconica 0.6.1
+6 October 2008
This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
of using the software, and if you do not wish to share your
modifications, *YOU MAY NOT INSTALL LACONICA*.
+Additional library software has been made available in the 'extlib'
+directory. All of it is Free Software and can be distributed under
+liberal terms, but those terms may differ in detail from the AGPL's
+particulars. See each package's license file in the extlib directory
+for additional terms.
+
+New this version
+================
+
+This is a minor feature improvement version from version 0.6.0
+(release 22 Sep 2008). Notable features of version 0.6.1 include:
+
+- Direct messages (DMs) and Favorites (faves) are now available
+ through the Twitter-like API.
+- All of the Twitter commands (see http://ur1.ca/7ru) are available
+ through SMS, IM, Web and API, although some are not functional (for
+ features Laconica does not yet support)
+- 20 additional languages supported at various levels (some pretty
+ basic).
+- Significant additional caching using memcached for most database
+ queries. Using memcached can significantly speed up a Laconica
+ instance with this version.
+- All required external libraries are now available in extlib/
+ subdirectory.
+- Many bug fixes.
+- Continued but poorly-documented experimental support for Postgresql.
+
+NOTE: the database definition file, stoica.ini, has been renamed to
+laconica.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
+have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
+to update it.
+
Prerequisites
=============
- Curl. This is for fetching files by HTTP.
- XMLWriter. This is for formatting XML and HTML output.
- MySQL. For accessing the database.
+- GD. For scaling down avatar images.
+- mbstring. For handling Unicode (UTF-8) encoded strings.
For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
(See descriptions below for basic config options.) Note that there
are lots of options and if you try to do them all at once, you will
have a hard time making sure what's working and what's not. So,
- stick with the basics at first.
+ stick with the basics at first. In particular, customizing the
+ 'site' and 'db' settings will almost definitely be needed.
9. At this point, you should be able to navigate in a browser to your
microblog's main directory and see the "Public Timeline", which
a lot of SMS, OMB, and XMPP messages whenever someone posts a message
can really slow down your site; it may cause posting to timeout.
+NOTE: stream_select(), a crucial function for network programming, is
+broken on PHP 5.2.x less than 5.2.6 on amd64-based servers. We don't
+work around this bug in Laconica; current recommendation is to move
+off of amd64 to another server.
+
Public feed
-----------
server!), set the following variable:
$config['queue']['enabled'] = true;
+
+ You may also want to look at the 'daemon' section of this file for
+ more daemon options. Note that if you set the 'user' and/or 'group'
+ options, you'll need to create that user and/or group by hand.
+ They're not created automatically.
4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh. It
needs as a parameter the install path; if you run it from the
Themes
------
+There are two themes shipped with this version of Laconica: "stoica",
+which is what the Identi.ca site uses, and "default", which is a good
+basis for other sites.
+
+As of right now, your ability to change the theme is site-wide; users
+can't choose their own theme. Additionally, the only thing you can
+change in the theme is CSS stylesheets and some image files; you can't
+change the HTML output, like adding or removing menu items.
+
+You can choose a theme using the $config['site']['theme'] element in
+the config.php file. See below for details.
+
+You can add your own theme by making a sub-directory of the 'theme'
+subdirectory with the name of your theme. Each theme can have the
+following files:
+
+display.css: a CSS2 file for "default" styling for all browsers.
+ie6.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
+ Explorer 6.
+ie7.css: a CSS2 file for override styling for fixing up Internet
+ Explorer 7.
+logo.png: a logo image for the site.
+default-avatar-profile.png: a 96x96 pixel image to use as the avatar for
+ users who don't upload their own.
+default-avatar-stream.png: Ditto, but 48x48. For streams of notices.
+default-avatar-mini.png: Ditto ditto, but 24x24. For subscriptions
+ listing on profile pages.
+
+You may want to start by copying the files from the default theme to
+your own directory.
+
Translation
-----------
+Translations in Laconica use the gettext system (http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/).
+Theoretically, you can add your own sub-directory to the locale/
+subdirectory to add a new language to your system. You'll need to
+compile the ".po" files into ".mo" files, however.
+
+Contributions of translation information to Laconica are very easy:
+you can use the Web interface at http://laconi.ca/entrans/ to add one
+or a few or lots of new translations -- or even new languages. You can
+also download more up-to-date .po files there, if you so desire.
+
+Backups
+-------
+
+There is no builtin system for doing backups in Laconica. You can make
+backups of a working Laconica system by backing up the database and
+the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump (http://ur1.ca/7xo)
+and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
+
Upgrading
=========
+If you've been using Laconica 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've been
+tracking the "darcs" version of the software, you will probably want
+to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated upgrade
+procedure in Laconica 0.6.1. Try these step-by-step instructions; read
+to the end first before trying them.
+
+0. Download Laconica and set up all the prerequisites as if you were
+ doing a new install.
+1. Make backups of both your database and your Web directory. UNDER NO
+ CIRCUMSTANCES should you try to do an upgrade without a known-good
+ backup. You have been warned.
+2. Shut down Web access to your site, either by turning off your Web
+ server or by redirecting all pages to a "sorry, under maintenance"
+ page.
+3. Shut down XMPP access to your site, typically by shutting down the
+ xmppdaemon.php process and all other daemons that you're running.
+ If you've got "monit" or "cron" automatically restarting your
+ daemons, make sure to turn that off, too.
+4. Shut down SMS and email access to your site. The easy way to do
+ this is to comment out the line piping incoming email to your
+ maildaemon.php file, and running something like "newaliases".
+5. Once all writing processes to your site are turned off, make a
+ final backup of the Web directory and database.
+6. Move your Laconica directory to a backup spot, like "mublog.bak".
+7. Unpack your Laconica 0.6 tarball and move it to "mublog" or
+ wherever your code used to be.
+8. Copy the config.php file and avatar directory from your old
+ directory to your new directory.
+9. Copy htaccess.sample to .htaccess in the new directory. Change the
+ RewriteBase to use the correct path.
+10. Rebuild the database. Go to your Laconica directory and run the
+ rebuilddb.sh script like this:
+
+ ./scripts/rebuilddb.sh rootuser rootpassword database db/laconica.sql
+
+ Here, rootuser and rootpassword are the username and password for a
+ user who can drop and create databases as well as tables; typically
+ that's _not_ the user Laconica runs as.
+11. Use mysql client to log into your database and make sure that the
+ notice, user, profile, subscription etc. tables are non-empty.
+12. Turn back on the Web server, and check that things still work.
+13. Turn back on XMPP bots and email maildaemon. Note that the XMPP
+ bots have changed since version 0.5; see above for details.
+
+If you're upgrading from very old versions, you may want to look at
+the fixup_* scripts in the scripts directories. These will store some
+precooked data in the DB.
+
+NOTE: the database definition file, stoica.ini, has been renamed to
+laconica.ini (since this is the recommended database name). If you
+have a line in your config.php pointing to the old name, you'll need
+to update it.
+
Configuration options
=====================
individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
+db
+--
+
+This section is a reference to the configuration options for
+DB_DataObject (see http://ur1.ca/7xp). The ones that you may want to
+set are listed below for clarity.
+
+database: a DSN (Data Source Name) for your Laconica database. This is
+ in the format 'protocol://username:password@hostname/databasename',
+ where 'protocol' is 'mysql' (or possibly 'postgresql', if you
+ really know what you're doing), 'username' is the username,
+ 'password' is the password, and etc.
+ini_yourdbname: if your database is not named 'laconica', you'll need
+ to set this to point to the location of the
+ laconica.ini file. Note that the real name of your database
+ should go in there, not literally 'yourdbname'.
+db_driver: You can try changing this to 'MDB2' to use the other driver
+ type for DB_DataObject, but note that it breaks the OpenID
+ libraries, which only support PEAR::DB.
+debug: On a database error, you may get a message saying to set this
+ value to 5 to see debug messages in the browser. This breaks
+ just about all pages, and will also expose the username and
+ password
+quote_identifiers: Set this to true if you're using postgresql.
+type: either 'mysql' or 'postgresql' (used for some bits of
+ database-type-specific SQL in the code). Defaults to mysql.
+mirror: you can set this to an array of DSNs, like the above
+ 'database' value. If it's set, certain read-only actions will
+ use a random value out of this array for the database, rather
+ than the one in 'database' (actually, 'database' is overwritten).
+ You can offload a busy DB server by setting up MySQL replication
+ and adding the slaves to this array. Note that if you want some
+ requests to go to the 'database' (master) server, you'll need
+ to include it in this array, too.
+
syslog
------
sending out SMS email or XMPP messages, for off-line processing. See
'Queues and daemons' above for how to set this up.
-enabled: Whether to
-
- 'queue' =>
- array('enabled' => false),
- 'license' =>
- array('url' => 'http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/',
- 'title' => 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0',
- 'image' => 'http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/88x31.png'),
- 'mail' =>
- array('backend' => 'mail',
- 'params' => NULL),
- 'nickname' =>
- array('blacklist' => array()),
- 'avatar' =>
- array('server' => NULL),
- 'public' =>
- array('localonly' => true),
- 'theme' =>
- array('server' => NULL),
- 'xmpp' =>
- array('enabled' => false,
- 'server' => 'INVALID SERVER',
- 'port' => 5222,
- 'user' => 'update',
- 'encryption' => true,
- 'resource' => 'uniquename',
- 'password' => 'blahblahblah',
- 'host' => NULL, # only set if != server
- 'debug' => false, # print extra debug info
- 'public' => array()), # JIDs of users who want to receive the public stream
- 'tag' =>
- array('dropoff' => 864000.0),
- 'daemon' =>
- array('piddir' => '/var/run',
- 'user' => false,
- 'group' => false)
- );
-Web
----
+enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
+
+license
+-------
-Mail
+The default license to use for your users notices. The default is the
+Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which is probably the right
+choice for any public site. Note that some other servers will not
+accept notices if you apply a stricter license than this.
+
+url: URL of the license, used for links.
+title: Title for the license, like 'Creative Commons Attribution 3.0'.
+image: A button shown on each page for the license.
+
+mail
----
-SMS
----
+This is for configuring out-going email. We use PEAR's Mail module,
+see: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php
-XMPP
+backend: the backend to use for mail, one of 'mail', 'sendmail', and
+ 'smtp'. Defaults to PEAR's default, 'mail'.
+params: if the mail backend requires any parameters, you can provide
+ them in an associative array.
+
+nickname
+--------
+
+This is for configuring nicknames in the service.
+
+blacklist: an array of strings for usernames that may not be
+ registered. A default array exists for strings that are
+ used by Laconica (e.g. 'doc', 'main', 'avatar', 'theme')
+ but you may want to add others if you have other software
+ installed in a subdirectory of Laconica or if you just
+ don't want certain words used as usernames.
+
+avatar
+------
+
+For configuring avatar access.
+
+server: If set, defines another server where avatars are stored in the
+ root directory. Note that the 'avatar' subdir still has to be
+ writeable. You'd typically use this to split HTTP requests on
+ the client to speed up page loading, either with another
+ virtual server or with an NFS or SAMBA share. Clients
+ typically only make 2 connections to a single server at a
+ time (http://ur1.ca/6ih), so this can parallelize the job.
+ Defaults to null.
+
+public
+------
+
+For configuring the public stream.
+
+localonly: If set to true, only messages posted by users of this
+ service (rather than other services, filtered through OMB)
+ are shown in the public stream. Default true.
+
+theme
+-----
+
+server: Like avatars, you can speed up page loading by pointing the
+ theme file lookup to another server (virtual or real). The
+ theme server's root path should map to the Laconica "theme"
+ subdirectory. Defaults to NULL.
+
+xmpp
----
+For configuring the XMPP sub-system.
+
+enabled: Whether to accept and send messages by XMPP. Default false.
+server: server part of XMPP ID for update user.
+port: connection port for clients. Default 5222, which you probably
+ shouldn't need to change.
+user: username for the client connection. Users will receive messages
+ from 'user'@'server'.
+resource: a unique identifier for the connection to the server. This
+ is actually used as a prefix for each XMPP component in the system.
+password: password for the user account.
+host: some XMPP domains are served by machines with a different
+ hostname. (For example, @gmail.com GTalk users connect to
+ talk.google.com). Set this to the correct hostname if that's the
+ case with your server.
+encryption: Whether to encrypt the connection between Laconica and the
+ XMPP server. Defaults to true, but you can get
+ considerably better performance turning it off if you're
+ connecting to a server on the same machine or on a
+ protected network.
+debug: if turned on, this will make the XMPP library blurt out all of
+ the incoming and outgoing messages as XML stanzas. Use as a
+ last resort, and never turn it on if you don't have queues
+ enabled, since it will spit out sensitive data to the browser.
+public: an array of JIDs to send _all_ notices to. This is useful for
+ participating in third-party search and archiving services.
+
+tag
+---
+
+Miscellaneous tagging stuff.
+
+dropoff: Decay factor for tag listing, in seconds.
+ Defaults to exponential decay over ten days; you can twiddle
+ with it to try and get better results for your site.
+
+daemon
+------
+
+For daemon processes.
+
+piddir: directory that daemon processes should write their PID file
+ (process ID) to. Defaults to /var/run/, which is where this
+ stuff should usually go on Unix-ish systems.
+user: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective user ID
+ to this user before running. Probably a good idea, especially if
+ you start the daemons as root. Note: user name, like 'daemon',
+ not 1001.
+group: If set, the daemons will try to change their effective group ID
+ to this named group. Again, a name, not a numerical ID.
+
+memcached
+---------
+
+You can get a significant boost in performance by caching some
+database data in memcached (http://www.danga.com/memcached/).
+
+enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
+server: a string with the hostname of the memcached server. Can also
+ be an array of hostnames, if you've got more than one server.
+
+integration
+-----------
+
+A catch-all for integration with other systems.
+
+source: The name to use for the source of posts to Twitter. Defaults
+ to 'laconica', but if you request your own source name from
+ Twitter (http://twitter.com/help/request_source), you can use
+ that here instead. Status updates on Twitter will then have
+ links to your site.
+
Troubleshooting
===============
-The primary output for
+The primary output for Laconica is syslog, unless you configured a
+separate logfile. This is probably the first place to look if you're
+getting weird behaviour from Laconica.
+
+If you're tracking the unstable version of Laconica in the darcs
+repository (see below), and you get a compilation error ("unexpected
+T_STRING") in the browser, check to see that you don't have any
+conflicts in your code.
Myths
=====
and password into the file on a production Web server; unscrupulous
persons may try to read it to get your passwords.
-Further information and Feedback
-================================
+Unstable version
+================
-There are several ways to get more information and
+If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
+development version of Laconica. To get it, use the darcs version
+control tool (http://darcs.net/) like so:
+ darcs get http://laconi.ca/darcs/ mublog
+
+To keep it up-to-date, use 'darcs pull'. Watch for conflicts!
+
+Further information
+===================
+
+There are several ways to get more information about Laconica.
+
+* There is a mailing list for Laconica developers and admins at
+ http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
+* The #laconica IRC channel on freenode.net (http://www.freenode.net/).
+* The Laconica wiki, http://laconi.ca/trac/
+
+Feedback
+========
+
+* Microblogging messages to http://identi.ca/evan are very welcome.
+* Laconica's Trac server has a bug tracker for any defects you may find,
+ or ideas for making things better. http://laconi.ca/trac/
+* e-mail to evan@identi.ca will usually be read and responded to very
+ quickly, unless the question is really hard.
Credits
=======
+
+The following is an incomplete list of developers who've worked on
+Laconi.ca. Apologies for any oversight; please let evan@identi.ca know
+if anyone's been overlooked in error.
+
+* Evan Prodromou, founder and lead developer, Control Yourself, Inc.
+* Zach Copley, Control Yourself, Inc.
+* Earle Martin, Control Yourself, Inc.
+* Marie-Claude Doyon, designer, Control Yourself, Inc.
+* Ciaran Gultnieks
+* Michael Landers
+* Ori Avtalion
+* Garret Buell
+* Mike Cochrane
+* Matthew Gregg
+* Florian Biree
+* Erik Stambaugh
+* 'drry'
+* Gina Haeussge
+* Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
+* Tiago 'gouki' Faria (entrans)
+
+Thanks also to the thousands of people who have tried out Identi.ca,
+installed Laconi.ca, told their friends, and built the Open
+Microblogging network to what it is today.
projects / quix0rs-gnu-social.git / blobdiff