README
------
-Laconica 0.6.0
-12 September 2008
+Laconica 0.7.2 ("Talk about the Passion")
+11 March 2009
This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
group to exchange short (140 character) messages over the Web. Users
can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or
colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites
-like Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce and Plurk.
+like Twitter, Jaiku and Plurk.
With a little work, status messages can be sent to mobile phones,
instant messenger programs (GTalk/Jabber), and specially-designed
desktop clients that support the Twitter API.
Laconica supports an open standard called OpenMicroBlogging
-(http://openmicroblogging.org/) that lets users on different Web sites
+<http://openmicroblogging.org/> that lets users on different Web sites
or in different companies subscribe to each others' notices. It
enables a distributed social network spread all across the Web.
Laconica was originally developed for the Open Software Service,
-Identi.ca (http://identi.ca/). It is shared with you in hope that you
+Identi.ca <http://identi.ca/>. It is shared with you in hope that you
too make an Open Software Service available to your users. To learn
-more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.0:
+more, please see the Open Software Service Definition 1.1:
- http://www.openknowledge.org/ossd
+ http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd
License
=======
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 bug-fix and feature release since version 0.7.1,
+released Feb 9 2009. Notable changes this version:
+
+- First version of a web-based installer
+- Use Net_URL_Mapper instead of mod_rewrite to map "fancy URLs",
+ for a much simpler installation and use of PATH_INFO on sites
+ that don't have mod_rewrite.
+- A plugin framework for system events, to make it easier to build
+ server-side plugins.
+- A plugin for Google Analytics
+- A plugin to use blogspam.net to check notices for spam
+- A plugin to send linkbacks for notices about blog posts
+- Configurable check for duplicate notices in a specific time
+ period
+- Better Atom feeds
+- First implementation of Twitter Search API
+- Add streamlined mobile device-friendly styles when enabled in config.
+- A queue server for sending notices to Twitter
+- A queue server for sending notices to Facebook
+- A queue server for sending notices to a ping server
+- Fixed a bug in nonces for OAuth in OpenMicroBlogging
+- Fixed bugs in transfer of avatars in OpenMicroBlogging
+- @-links go to permalinks for local users
+- Better handling of DB errors (instead of dreaded DB_DataObject blank
+ screen)
+- Initial version of an RPM spec file
+- More consistent display of notices in notice search
+- A stylesheet for printed output
+- "Social graph" methods for Twitter API
+- Documentation for the JavaScript badge
+- Debugged a ton of problems that happened with E_NOTICE on
+- Better caching in RSS feeds
+- Optionally send email when an @-message is received
+- Automatically add tags for every group message
+- Add framebusting JavaScript to help avoid clickjacking attacks.
+- Optionally ignore some notice sources for public page.
+- Add default SMS carriers and notice sources to distribution file.
+- Change titles to use mixed case instead of all uppercase.
+- Use exceptions for error handling.
+
+Changes in version 0.7.1:
+
+- Vast improvement in auto-linking to URLs.
+- Link to group search from user's group page
+- Improved interface in Facebook application
+- Fix bad redirects in delete notice
+- Updated PostgreSQL database creation script
+- Show filesize in avatar/logo upload
+- Vastly improved avatar/logo upload
+- Allow re-authentication with OpenID
+- Correctly link hashtabs inside parens and brackets
+- Group and avatar image transparency works
+- Better handling of commands through the Web and Ajax channels
+- Fix links for profile page feeds
+- Fixed destroy method in API
+- Fix endpoint of Connect menu when XMPP disabled
+- Show number of group members
+- Enable configuration files in /etc/laconica/
+
+Changes in version 0.7.0:
+
+- Support for groups. Users can join groups and send themed notices
+ to those groups. All other members of the group receive the notices.
+- Laconica-specific extensions to the Twitter API.
+- A Facebook application.
+- A massive UI redesign. The HTML generated by Laconica has changed
+ significantly, to make theming easier and to give a more open look
+ by default. Also, sidebar.
+- Massive code hygiene changes to move towards compliance with the PEAR
+ coding standards and to support the new UI redesign.
+- Began the breakup of util.php -- moved about 30% of code to a views
+ hierarchy.
+- UI elements for statistical information (like top posters or most
+ popular groups) added in a sidebar.
+- include Javascript badge by Kent Brewster.
+- Updated online documentation.
+- Cropping of user avatars using Jcrop.
+- fix for Twitter bridge to not send "Expect:" headers.
+- add 'dm' as a synonym for 'd' in commands.
+- Upgrade upstream version of jQuery to 1.3.
+- Upgrade upstream version of PHP-OpenID to 2.1.2.
+- Move OpenMicroBlogging specification to its own repository.
+- Make tag-based RSS streams work.
+- Additional locales: Bulgarian, Catalan, Greek, Hebrew, simplified
+ Chinese, Telugu, Taiwanese Chinese, Vietnamese,
+- PostgreSQL updates.
+- Nasty bug in Twitter bridge that wouldn't verify with Twitter
+
Prerequisites
=============
*must* support the MyISAM storage engine -- the default for most
MySQL servers -- *and* the InnoDB storage engine.
- A Web server. Preferably, you should have Apache 2.2.x with the
- mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
+ mod_rewrite extension installed and enabled.
Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions:
- 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.
+- gettext. For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs.
For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
server to store the data in.
- Mailparse. Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this extension.
-
+- Sphinx Search. A client for the sphinx server, an alternative
+ to MySQL or Postgresql fulltext search. You will also need a
+ Sphinx server to serve the search queries.
+
You will almost definitely get 2-3 times better performance from your
site if you install a PHP bytecode cache/accelerator. Some well-known
examples are: eaccelerator, Turck mmcache, xcache, apc. Zend Optimizer
but won't work with OpenID.
http://pear.php.net/package/DB
- OAuth.php from http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
-- markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
+- markdown.php from http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
- PEAR Mail, for sending out mail notifications
http://pear.php.net/package/Mail
- PEAR Net_SMTP, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
http://pear.php.net/package/Net_SMTP
+- PEAR Net_Socket, if you use the SMTP factory for notifications
+ http://pear.php.net/package/Net_Socket
- XMPPHP, the follow-up to Class.Jabber.php. Probably the best XMPP
library available for PHP. http://xmpphp.googlecode.com/. Note that
as of this writing the version of this library that is available in
version (patches have been submitted). Upgrading to the upstream
version may render your Laconica site unable to send or receive XMPP
messages.
+- Facebook library. Used for the Facebook application.
+- PEAR Services_oEmbed. Used for some multimedia integration.
+- PEAR HTTP_Request is an oEmbed dependency.
+- PEAR Validat is an oEmbed dependency.e
+- PEAR Net_URL is an oEmbed dependency.2
A design goal of Laconica is that the basic Web functionality should
work on even the most restrictive commercial hosting services.
1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
command like this will work:
-
- tar zxf laconica-0.6.0.tar.gz
-
- ...which will make a laconica-0.6.0 subdirectory in your current
+
+ tar zxf laconica-0.7.1.tar.gz
+
+ ...which will make a laconica-0.7.1 subdirectory in your current
directory. (If you don't have shell access on your Web server, you
may have to unpack the tarball on your local computer and FTP the
files to the server.)
-
+
2. Move the tarball to a directory of your choosing in your Web root
directory. Usually something like this will work:
-
- mv laconica-0.6.0 /var/www/mublog
-
+
+ mv laconica-0.7.1 /var/www/mublog
+
This will make your Laconica instance available in the mublog path of
your server, like "http://example.net/mublog". "microblog" or
"laconica" might also be good path names. If you know how to
configure virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
"http://micro.example.net/" or the like.
-
-3. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
- writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
-
- chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
-
+
+3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server.
+
+ chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/
+
On some systems, this will probably work:
-
- chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/avatar
- chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
+
+ chgrp www-data /var/www/mublog/
+ chmod g+w /var/www/mublog/
If your Web server runs as another user besides "www-data", try
that user's default group instead. As a last resort, you can create
- a new group like "avatar" and add the Web server's user to the group.
+ a new group like "mublog" and add the Web server's user to the group.
+
+4. You should also take this moment to make your avatar subdirectory
+ writeable by the Web server. An insecure way to do this is:
+
+ chmod a+w /var/www/mublog/avatar
+
+ You can also make the avatar directory writeable by the Web server
+ group, as noted above.
-4. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
+5. Create a database to hold your microblog data. Something like this
should work:
-
+
mysqladmin -u "username" --password="password" create laconica
-
+
Note that Laconica must have its own database; you can't share the
database with another program. You can name it whatever you want,
though.
-
+
(If you don't have shell access to your server, you may need to use
a tool like PHPAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
service's documentation for how to create a new MySQL database.)
-5. Run the laconica.sql SQL script in the db subdirectory to create
- the database tables in the database. A typical system would work
- like this:
-
- mysql -u "username" --password="password" laconica < /var/www/mublog/db/laconica.sql
-
- You may want to test by logging into the database and checking that
- the tables were created. Here's an example:
-
- SHOW TABLES;
-
6. Create a new database account that Laconica will use to access the
database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
MySQL shell:
-
- GRANT SELECT,INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE on laconica.*
+
+ GRANT ALL on laconica.*
TO 'lacuser'@'localhost'
IDENTIFIED BY 'lacpassword';
-
+
You should change 'lacuser' and 'lacpassword' to your preferred new
- username and password. You may want to test logging in as this new
- user and testing that you can SELECT from some of the tables in the
- DB (use SHOW TABLES to see which ones are there).
-
-7. Copy the config.php.sample in the Laconica directory to config.php.
-
-8. Edit config.php to set the basic configuration for your system.
- (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.
-
-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
- will be empty. If not, magic has happened! You can now register a
- new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc. However, you
- may want to wait to do that stuff if you think you can set up
- "fancy URLs" (see below), since some URLs are stored in the database.
-
+ username and password. You may want to test logging in to MySQL as
+ this new user.
+
+7. In a browser, navigate to the Laconica install script; something like:
+
+ http://yourserver.example.com/mublog/install.php
+
+ Enter the database connection information and your site name. The
+ install program will configure your site and install the initial,
+ almost-empty database.
+
+8. You should now be able to navigate to your microblog's main directory
+ and see the "Public Timeline", which will be empty. If not, magic
+ has happened! You can now register a new user, post some notices,
+ edit your profile, etc. However, you may want to wait to do that stuff
+ if you think you can set up "fancy URLs" (see below), since some
+ URLs are stored in the database.
+
Fancy URLs
----------
-By default, Laconica will have big long sloppy URLs that are hard for
-people to remember or use. For example, a user's home profile might be
+By default, Laconica will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
+name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be
found at:
- http://example.org/mublog/index.php?action=showstream&nickname=fred
+ http://example.org/mublog/index.php/mublog/fred
+
+On certain systems that don't support this kind of syntax, they'll
+look like this:
+
+ http://example.org/mublog/index.php?p=mublog/fred
It's possible to configure the software so it looks like this instead:
http://example.org/mublog/fred
These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
-fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.2.x with .htaccess enabled
-and mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection"
-in your server.
+fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
+mod_redirect enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
+your server.
1. Copy the htaccess.sample file to .htaccess in your Laconica
directory. Note: if you have control of your server's httpd.conf or
import the .htaccess file into your conf file instead. If you're
not sure how to do it, you may save yourself a lot of headache by
just leaving the .htaccess file.
-
+
2. Change the "RewriteBase" in the new .htaccess file to be the URL path
to your Laconica installation on your server. Typically this will
be the path to your Laconica directory relative to your Web root.
3. Add or uncomment or change a line in your config.php file so it says:
$config['site']['fancy'] = true;
-
+
You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
like:
If you changed your HTTP server configuration, you may need to restart
the server first.
-If you have problems with the .htaccess file on versions of Apache
-earlier than 2.2.x, try changing the regular expressions in the
-htaccess.sample file that use "\w" to just use ".".
+Sphinx
+------
+
+To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you also need
+to install, compile and enable the sphinx pecl extension for php on the
+client side, which itself depends on the sphinx development files.
+"pecl install sphinx" should take care of that. Add "extension=sphinx.so"
+to your php.ini and reload apache to enable it.
+
+You can update your MySQL or Postgresql databases to drop their fulltext
+search indexes, since they're now provided by sphinx.
+
+On the sphinx server side, a script reads the main database and build
+the keyword index. A cron job reads the database and keeps the sphinx
+indexes up to date. scripts/sphinx-cron.sh should be called by cron
+every 5 minutes, for example. scripts/sphinx.sh is an init.d script
+to start and stop the sphinx search daemon.
SMS
---
Each user sends to a made-up email address, which they keep a secret.
Incoming email that is "From" the user's SMS email address, and "To"
the users' secret email address on the site's domain, will be
-converted to a message and stored in the DB.
+converted to a notice and stored in the DB.
For this to work, there *must* be a domain or sub-domain for which all
(or most) incoming email can pass through the incoming mail filter.
2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
- chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
-
+ chmod +x scripts/maildaemon.php
+
Note that "daemon" is kind of a misnomer here; the script is more
of a filter than a daemon.
-
+
2. Edit /etc/aliases on your mail server and add the following line:
*: /path/to/laconica/scripts/maildaemon.php
3. Run whatever code you need to to update your aliases database. For
many mail servers (Postfix, Exim, Sendmail), this should work:
-
+
newaliases
-
+
You may need to restart your mail server for the new database to
take effect.
4. Set the following in your config.php file:
$config['mail']['domain'] = 'yourdomain.example.net';
-
+
At this point, post-by-email and post-by-SMS-gateway should work. Note
that if your mail server is on a different computer from your email
server, you'll need to have a full installation of Laconica, a working
XMPP
----
-XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, http://xmpp.org/) is the
+XMPP (eXtended Message and Presence Protocol, <http://xmpp.org/>) is the
instant-messenger protocol that drives Jabber and GTalk IM. You can
distribute messages via XMPP using the system below; however, you
need to run the XMPP incoming daemon to allow incoming messages as
1. You may want to strongly consider setting up your own XMPP server.
Ejabberd, OpenFire, and JabberD are all Open Source servers.
Jabber, Inc. provides a high-performance commercial server.
-
+
2. You must register a Jabber ID (JID) with your new server. It helps
to choose a name like "update@example.com" or "notice" or something
similar. Alternately, your "update JID" can be registered on a
publicly-available XMPP service, like jabber.org or GTalk.
-
+
Laconica will not register the JID with your chosen XMPP server;
you need to do this manually, with an XMPP client like Gajim,
Telepathy, or Pidgin.im.
-
+
3. Configure your site's XMPP variables, as described below in the
configuration section.
-
+
On a default installation, your site can broadcast messages using
XMPP. Users won't be able to post messages using XMPP unless you've
got the XMPP daemon running. See 'Queues and daemons' below for how
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
-----------
their "JID" (Jabber ID) to your config.php as follows:
$config['xmpp']['public'][] = 'downstream@example.net';
-
+
(Don't miss those square brackets at the end.) Note that your XMPP
broadcasting must be configured as mentioned above. Although you can
send out messages at "Web time", high-volume sites should strongly
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
Laconica dir, "." should suffice.
-
-This will run six (for now) queue handlers:
+
+This will run eight (for now) queue handlers:
* xmppdaemon.php - listens for new XMPP messages from users and stores
them as notices in the database.
of registered users.
* xmppconfirmhandler.php - sends confirmation messages to registered
users.
+* twitterqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Twitter for user
+ who have opted to set up Twitter bridging.
+* facebookqueuehandler.php - sends queued notices to Facebook for users
+ of the built-in Facebook application.
Note that these queue daemons are pretty raw, and need your care. In
particular, they leak memory, and you may want to restart them on a
default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
daemons.
+Twitter Friends Syncing
+-----------------------
+
+As of Laconica 0.6.3, users may set a flag in their settings ("Subscribe
+to my Twitter friends here" under the Twitter tab) to have Laconica
+attempt to locate and subscribe to "friends" (people they "follow") on
+Twitter who also have accounts on your Laconica system, and who have
+previously set up a link for automatically posting notices to Twitter.
+
+Optionally, there is a script (./scripts/synctwitterfriends.php), meant
+to be run periodically from a job scheduler (e.g.: cron under Unix), to
+look for new additions to users' friends lists. Note that the friends
+syncing only subscribes users to each other, it does not unsubscribe
+users when they stop following each other on Twitter.
+
+Sample cron job:
+
+# Update Twitter friends subscriptions every half hour
+0,30 * * * * /path/to/php /path/to/laconica/scripts/synctwitterfriends.php>&/dev/null
+
+Built-in Facebook Application
+-----------------------------
+
+Laconica's Facebook application allows your users to automatically
+update their Facebook statuses with their latest notices, invite
+their friends to use the app (and thus your site), view their notice
+timelines, and post notices -- all from within Facebook. The application
+is built into Laconica and runs on your host. For automatic Facebook
+status updating to work you will need to enable queuing and run the
+facebookqueuehandler.php daemon (see the "Queues and daemons" section
+above).
+
+Quick setup instructions*:
+
+Install the Facebook Developer application on Facebook:
+
+ http://www.facebook.com/developers/
+
+Use it to create a new application and generate an API key and secret.
+Uncomment the Facebook app section of your config.php and copy in the
+key and secret, e.g.:
+
+ # Config section for the built-in Facebook application
+ $config['facebook']['apikey'] = 'APIKEY';
+ $config['facebook']['secret'] = 'SECRET';
+
+In Facebook's application editor, specify the following URLs for your app:
+
+- Callback URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/
+- Post-Remove URL: http://example.net/mublog/facebook/remove
+- Post-Add Redirect URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
+- Canvas URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yourapp/
+
+(Replace 'example.net' with your host's URL, 'mublog' with the path
+to your Laconica installation, and 'yourapp' with the name of the
+Facebook application you created.)
+
+Additionally, Choose "Web" for Application type in the Advanced tab.
+In the "Canvas setting" section, choose the "FBML" for Render Method,
+"Smart Size" for IFrame size, and "Full width (760px)" for Canvas Width.
+Everything else can be left with default values.
+
+*For more detailed instructions please see the installation guide on the
+Laconica wiki:
+
+ http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/FacebookApplication
+
Sitemaps
--------
-Sitemap files (http://sitemaps.org/) are a very nice way of telling
+Sitemap files <http://sitemaps.org/> are a very nice way of telling
search engines and other interested bots what's available on your site
and what's changed recently. You can generate sitemap files for your
Laconica instance.
bots where to find all the sitemap files; it *must* be in the main
installation directory or higher. Both types of file must be
available through HTTP.
-
+
2. To generate your sitemaps, run the following command on your server:
php scripts/sitemap.php -f index-file-path -d sitemap-directory -u URL-prefix-for-sitemaps
like './sitemapindex.xml'. sitemap-directory is the directory where
you want the sitemaps stored, like './sitemaps/' (make sure the dir
exists). URL-prefix-for-sitemaps is the full URL for the sitemap dir,
- typically something like 'http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/'.
-
+ typically something like <http://example.net/mublog/sitemaps/>.
+
You can use several methods for submitting your sitemap index to
search engines to get your site indexed. One is to add a line like the
following to your robots.txt file:
Themes
------
+There are two themes shipped with this version of Laconica: "identica",
+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.
+
+NOTE: the HTML generated by Laconica changed *radically* between
+version 0.6.x and 0.7.x. Older themes will need signification
+modification to use the new output format.
+
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/pootle/ 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 built-in 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.
+
+Private
+-------
+
+The administrator can set the "private" flag for a site so that it's
+not visible to non-logged-in users. This might be useful for
+workgroups who want to share a microblogging site for project
+management, but host it on a public server.
+
+Note that this is an experimental feature; total privacy is not
+guaranteed or ensured. Also, privacy is all-or-nothing for a site; you
+can't have some accounts or notices private, and others public.
+Finally, the interaction of private sites with OpenMicroBlogging is
+undefined. Remote users won't be able to subscribe to users on a
+private site, but users of the private site may be able to subscribe
+to users on a remote site. (Or not... it's not well tested.) The
+"proper behaviour" hasn't been defined here, so handle with care.
+
Upgrading
=========
+If you've been using Laconica 0.6, 0.5 or lower, or if you've been
+tracking the "git" version of the software, you will probably want
+to upgrade and keep your existing data. There is no automated upgrade
+procedure in Laconica 0.7.1. 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. For MySQL, 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.
+ For PostgreSQL databases there is an equivalent, rebuilddb_psql.sh,
+ which operates slightly differently. Read the documentation in that
+ script before running it.
+11. Use mysql or psql 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. All upgraders should check out the inboxes
+options below.
+
+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.
+
+Notice inboxes
+--------------
+
+Before version 0.6.2, the page showing all notices from people the
+user is subscribed to ("so-and-so with friends") was calculated at run
+time. Starting with 0.6.2, we have a new data structure for holding a
+user's "notice inbox". (Note: distinct from the "message inbox", which
+is the "inbox" tab in the UI. The notice inbox appears under the
+"Personal" tab.)
+
+Notices are added to the inbox when they're created. This speeds up
+the query considerably, and also allows us the opportunity, in the
+future, to add different kind of notices to an inbox -- like @-replies
+or subscriptions to search terms or hashtags.
+
+Notice inboxes are enabled by default for new installations. If you
+are upgrading an existing site, this means that your users will see
+empty "Personal" pages. The following steps will help you fix the
+problem.
+
+0. $config['inboxes']['enabled'] can be set to one of three values. If
+ you set it to 'false', the site will work as before. Support for this
+ will probably be dropped in future versions.
+1. Setting the flag to 'transitional' means that you're in transition.
+ In this mode, the code will run the "new query" or the "old query"
+ based on whether the user's inbox has been updated.
+2. After setting the flag to "transitional", you can run the
+ fixup_inboxes.php script to create the inboxes. You may want to set
+ the memory limit high. You can re-run it without ill effect.
+3. When fixup_inboxes is finished, you can set the enabled flag to
+ 'true'.
+
Configuration options
=====================
of the defaults are defined), you will lose your configuration options
in any upgrade, and you will wish that you had been more careful.
+Starting with version 0.7.1, you can put config files in the
+/etc/laconica/ directory on your server, if it exists. Config files
+will be included in this order:
+
+* /etc/laconica/laconica.php - server-wide config
+* /etc/laconica/<servername>.php - for a virtual host
+* /etc/laconica/<servername>_<pathname>.php - for a path
+* INSTALLDIR/config.php - for a particular implementation
+
Almost all configuration options are made through a two-dimensional
associative array, cleverly named $config. A typical configuration
line will be:
(installed in root).
fancy: whether or not your site uses fancy URLs (see Fancy URLs
section above). Default is false.
-logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
+logfile: full path to a file for Laconica to save logging
information to. You may want to use this if you don't have
access to syslog.
locale_path: full path to the directory for locale data. Unless you
This is a cheap way to restrict accounts to only one
individual or group; just register the accounts you want on
the service, *then* set this variable to 'true'.
+inviteonly: If set to 'true', will only allow registration if the user
+ was invited by an existing user.
+private: If set to 'true', anonymous users will be redirected to the
+ 'login' page. Also, API methods that normally require no
+ authentication will require it. Note that this does not turn
+ off registration; use 'closed' or 'inviteonly' for the
+ behaviour you want.
+notice: A plain string that will appear on every page. A good place
+ to put introductory information about your service, or info about
+ upgrades and outages, or other community info. Any HTML will
+ be escaped.
+dupelimit: Time in which it's not OK for the same person to post the
+ same notice; default = 60 seconds.
+logo: URL of an image file to use as the logo for the site. Overrides
+ the logo in the theme, if any.
+
+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 'mysqli' (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.
+featured: an array of nicknames of 'featured' users of the site.
+ Can be useful to draw attention to well-known users, or
+ interesting people, or whatever.
+
+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.
+blacklist: An array of IDs of users to hide from the public stream.
+ Useful if you have someone making excessive Twitterfeed posts
+ to the site, other kinds of automated posts, testing bots, etc.
+
+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.
+
+sphinx
+------
+
+You can get a significant boost in performance using Sphinx Search
+instead of your database server to search for users and notices.
+<http://sphinxsearch.com/>.
+
+enabled: Set to true to enable. Default false.
+server: a string with the hostname of the sphinx server.
+port: an integer with the port number of the sphinx 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.
+
+inboxes
+-------
+
+For notice inboxes.
+
+enabled: A three-valued flag for whether to use notice inboxes (see
+ upgrading info above for notes about this change). Can be
+ 'false', 'true', or '"transitional"'.
+
+throttle
+--------
+
+For notice-posting throttles.
+
+enabled: Whether to throttle posting. Defaults to false.
+count: Each user can make this many posts in 'timespan' seconds. So, if count
+ is 100 and timespan is 3600, then there can be only 100 posts
+ from a user every hour.
+timespan: see 'count'.
+
+profile
+-------
+
+Profile management.
+
+banned: an array of usernames and/or profile IDs of 'banned' profiles.
+ The site will reject any notices by these users -- they will
+ not be accepted at all. (Compare with blacklisted users above,
+ whose posts just won't show up in the public stream.)
+
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 git
+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.
+
+If you upgraded to Laconica 0.7.1 without reading the "Notice inboxes"
+section above, and all your users' 'Personal' tabs are empty, read the
+"Notice inboxes" section above.
Myths
=====
emit oodles of print lines directly to the browser of your users.
Among these lines will be your database username and password. Do
not enable this option on a production Web site for any reason.
-
+
- "Edit dataobject.ini with the following settings..." dataobject.ini
is a development file for the DB_DataObject framework and is not
used by the running software. It was removed from the Laconica
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
+================
+
+If you're adventurous or impatient, you may want to install the
+development version of Laconica. To get it, use the git version
+control tool <http://git-scm.com/> like so:
+
+ git clone http://laconi.ca/software/laconica.git
+
+To keep it up-to-date, use 'git pull'. Watch for conflicts!
-There are several ways to get more information and
+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.
+* Sarven Capadisli, Control Yourself, Inc.
+* Robin Millette, Control Yourself, Inc.
+* Ciaran Gultnieks
+* Michael Landers
+* Ori Avtalion
+* Garret Buell
+* Mike Cochrane
+* Matthew Gregg
+* Florian Biree
+* Erik Stambaugh
+* 'drry'
+* Gina Haeussge
+* Tryggvi Björgvinsson
+* Adrian Lang
+* Ori Avtalion
+* Meitar Moscovitz
+* Ken Sheppardson (Trac server, man-about-town)
+* Tiago 'gouki' Faria (i18n managerx)
+* Sean Murphy
+* Leslie Michael Orchard
+* Eric Helgeson
+* Ken Sedgwick
+
+Thanks also to the developers of our upstream library code and 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