diff --git a/INSTALL.md b/INSTALL.md
index 16f3efc140..5b38cbd945 100644
--- a/INSTALL.md
+++ b/INSTALL.md
@@ -1,16 +1,48 @@
-## GNU social
+
+GNU social
+=====
GNU social is a federated social network.
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+=================
+* Installation with docker
+ + Prerequisites
+ + With TLS/SSL
+ + Without TLS/SSL
+ + Configuration
+ + Installing/running
+
+* Installation without docker
+ + Prerequisites
+ - PHP modules
+ - Better performance
+ + Installation
+ - Getting it up and running
+ - Fancy URLs
+ - Themes
+ - Private
+ + Extra features
+ - Sphinx
+ - SMS
+ - Translation
+ - Queues and daemons
+ + After installation
+ - Backups
+ - Upgrading
+ + Additional configuration
+
+Installation with docker
+================
+
Installation can be done in multiple ways, but the simplest is using
`docker` and `docker-compose`. The compose file currently includes all
the necessary services for running the app. Running the database and
webserver outside of `docker` containers is currently not supported,
unless the app is installed without `docker`.
-## With docker
-
-### Requirements
+Prerequisites
+-----
In order to host your GNU social instance, you'll need a domain, a
server with a constant IP and `docker` and `docker-compose` installed
@@ -23,7 +55,8 @@ Then clone https://notabug.org/someonewithpc/gnudip.git, inspect and
run the `./install.sh` script. This allows you to have a domain that
dynamically points to your IP address.
-### TLS/SSL
+With TLS/SSL
+----
Next, if you want to setup SSL (which you should in most cases,
exceptions being wanting to use the Thor network), you'll need a
@@ -48,19 +81,22 @@ manager, delete the `A` record you created in the previous step and
create a `CNAME` record pointing from the domain you want to use the
domain you registered with the GnuDIP host.
-### No TLS/SSL
+Without TLS/SSL
+----
Edit the `docker-compose.yaml` file and comment the `certbot` service
to disable it. In the future, this will be handled by the
`bin/configure` script.
-### Configuration
+Configuration
+----
Run the `bin/configure` script and enter the information as asked.
This will generate all the required `.env` files used by
`docker-compose` to configure the application.
-### Installation/Running
+Installation/Running
+-----
Simply run `docker-compose up` from the root of the project (the
folder where the `.git` folder is). In this form, the application can
@@ -70,6 +106,443 @@ you all logs, but in most cases, you won't want to see those all the
time. For that, run `docker-compose up -d` from the same directory;
The application can then be stopped with `docker-compose down`.
-## Without docker
-Coming soon (TM)
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+Installation without docker
+================
+
+Prerequisites
+-----------
+
+### PHP modules
+
+The following software packages are *required* for this software to
+run correctly.
+
+- PHP 7.3+
+- MariaDB 10.3+
+- Web server Apache, lighttpd and nginx will all work. CGI mode is
+ recommended and also some variant of 'suexec' (or a
+ proper setup php-fpm pool)
+ NOTE: mod_rewrite or its equivalent is extremely useful.
+
+Your PHP installation must include the following PHP extensions for a
+functional setup of GNU social:
+
+- openssl (compiled in for Debian, enabled manually in Arch Linux)
+- php-curl Fetching files by HTTP.
+- php-exif Exchangeable image information.
+- php-gd Image manipulation (scaling).
+- php-intl Internationalization support (transliteration et al).
+- php-json For WebFinger lookups and more.
+- php-mbstring String manipulation
+- php-mysql The native driver for MariaDB connections.
+- php-gmp For Salmon signatures (part of OStatus)
+- php-bcmath Arbitrary Precision Mathematics
+- php-opcache Improved PHP performance by precompilation
+- php-readline For interactive scripts
+- php-xml XML parser
+
+NOTE: Some distros require manual enabling in the relevant php.ini for some modules.
+
+### Better performance
+
+For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
+
+- opcache Improves performance a _lot_. Included in PHP, must be
+ enabled manually in php.ini for most distributions. Find
+ and set at least: opcache.enable=1
+- mailparse Efficient parsing of email requires this extension.
+ Submission by email or SMS-over-email uses this.
+- sphinx 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.
+- gettext For multiple languages. Default on many PHP installs;
+ will be emulated if not present.
+- exif For thumbnails to be properly oriented.
+
+You may also experience better performance from your site if you configure
+a PHP cache/accelerator. Most distributions come with "opcache" support.
+Enable it in your php.ini where it is documented together with its settings.
+
+Installation
+--------------
+
+### Getting it up and running
+
+Installing the basic GNU Social web component is relatively easy,
+especially if you've previously installed PHP/MariaDB packages.
+
+1. Unpack the tarball you downloaded on your Web server. Usually a
+ command like this will work:
+
+ tar zxf gnusocial-*.tar.gz
+
+ ...which will make a gnusocial-x.y.z 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 gnusocial-x.y.z /var/www/gnusocial
+
+ This will often make your GNU Social instance available in the gnusocial
+ path of your server, like "http://example.net/gnusocial". "social" or
+ "blog" might also be good path names. If you know how to configure
+ virtual hosts on your web server, you can try setting up
+ "http://social.example.net/" or the like.
+
+ If you have "rewrite" support on your webserver, and you should,
+ then please enable this in order to make full use of your site. This
+ will enable "Fancy URL" support, which you can read more about if you
+ scroll down a bit in this document.
+
+3. Make your target directory writeable by the Web server, please note
+ however that 'a+w' will give _all_ users write access and securing the
+ webserver is not within the scope of this document.
+
+ chmod a+w /var/www/gnusocial/
+
+ On some systems, this will work as a more secure alternative:
+
+ chgrp www-data /var/www/gnusocial/
+ chmod g+w /var/www/gnusocial/
+
+ 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 "gnusocial" and add the Web server's user to the group.
+
+4. Create a database to hold your site data. Something like this
+ should work (you will be prompted for your database password):
+
+ mysqladmin -u "root" -p create social
+
+ Note that GNU Social should have its own database; you should not 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 phpMyAdmin to create a database. Check your hosting
+ service's documentation for how to create a new MariaDB database.)
+
+5. Create a new database account that GNU Social will use to access the
+ database. If you have shell access, this will probably work from the
+ MariaDB shell:
+
+ GRANT ALL on social.*
+ TO 'social'@'localhost'
+ IDENTIFIED BY 'agoodpassword';
+
+ You should change the user identifier 'social' and 'agoodpassword'
+ to your preferred new database username and password. You may want to
+ test logging in to MariaDB as this new user.
+
+6. In a browser, navigate to the GNU Social install script; something like:
+
+ https://social.example.net/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.
+
+7. You should now be able to navigate to your social site's main directory
+ and see the "Public Timeline", which will probably be empty. You can
+ now register new user, post some notices, edit your profile, etc.
+
+### Fancy URLs
+
+By default, GNU Social will use URLs that include the main PHP program's
+name in them. For example, a user's home profile might be found at either
+of these URLS depending on the webserver's configuration and capabilities:
+
+ https://social.example.net/index.php/fred
+ https://social.example.net/index.php?p=fred
+
+It's possible to configure the software to use fancy URLs so it looks like
+this instead:
+
+ https://social.example.net/fred
+
+These "fancy URLs" are more readable and memorable for users. To use
+fancy URLs, you must either have Apache 2.x with .htaccess enabled and
+mod_rewrite enabled, -OR- know how to configure "url redirection" in
+your server (like lighttpd or nginx).
+
+1. See the instructions for each respective webserver software:
+ * For Apache, inspect the "htaccess.sample" file and save it as
+ ".htaccess" after making any necessary modifications. Our sample
+ file is well commented.
+ * For lighttpd, inspect the lighttpd.conf.example file and apply the
+ appropriate changes in your virtualhost configuration for lighttpd.
+ * For nginx, inspect the nginx.conf.sample file and apply the appropriate
+ changes.
+ * For other webservers, we gladly accept contributions of
+ server configuration examples.
+
+2. Assuming your webserver is properly configured and have its settings
+ applied (remember to reload/restart it), you can add this to your
+ GNU social's config.php file:
+ $config['site']['fancy'] = true;
+
+You should now be able to navigate to a "fancy" URL on your server,
+like:
+
+ https://social.example.net/main/register
+
+### Themes
+
+As of right now, your ability change the theme is limited to CSS
+stylesheets and some image files; you can't change the HTML output,
+like adding or removing menu items, without the help of a plugin.
+
+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.
+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.
+
+### Private
+
+A GNU social node can be configured as "private", which means it will not
+federate with other nodes in the network. It is not a recommended method
+of using GNU social and we cannot at the current state of development
+guarantee that there are no leaks (what a public network sees as features,
+private sites will likely see as bugs).
+
+Private nodes are however an easy way to easily setup collaboration and
+image sharing within a workgroup or a smaller community where federation
+is not a desired feature. Also, it is possible to change this setting and
+instantly gain full federation features.
+
+Access to file attachments can also be restricted to logged-in users only:
+
+1. Add a directory outside the web root where your file uploads will be
+ stored. Use this command as an initial guideline to create it:
+
+ mkdir /var/www/gnusocial-files
+
+2. Make the file uploads directory writeable by the web server. An
+ insecure way to do this is (to do it properly, read up on UNIX file
+ permissions and configure your webserver accordingly):
+
+ chmod a+x /var/www/gnusocial-files
+
+3. Tell GNU social to use this directory for file uploads. Add a line
+ like this to your config.php:
+
+ $config['attachments']['dir'] = '/var/www/gnusocial-files';
+
+Extra features
+---------
+
+### Sphinx
+
+To use a Sphinx server to search users and notices, you'll need to
+enable the SphinxSearch plugin. Add to your config.php:
+
+ addPlugin('SphinxSearch');
+ $config['sphinx']['server'] = 'searchhost.local';
+
+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.
+
+See plugins/SphinxSearch/README for more details and server setup.
+
+### SMS
+
+StatusNet supports a cheap-and-dirty system for sending update messages
+to mobile phones and for receiving updates from the mobile. Instead of
+sending through the SMS network itself, which is costly and requires
+buy-in from the wireless carriers, it simply piggybacks on the email
+gateways that many carriers provide to their customers. So, SMS
+configuration is essentially email configuration.
+
+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 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.
+
+1. Run the SQL script carrier.sql in your StatusNet database. This will
+ usually work:
+
+ mysql -u "statusnetuser" --password="statusnetpassword" statusnet < db/carrier.sql
+
+ This will populate your database with a list of wireless carriers
+ that support email SMS gateways.
+
+2. Make sure the maildaemon.php file is executable:
+
+ 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/statusnet/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';
+
+### Translations
+
+For info on helping with translations, see the platform currently in use
+for translations: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/gnu-social/
+
+Translations use the gettext system .
+If you for some reason do not wish to sign up to the Transifex service,
+you can review the files in the "locale/" sub-directory of GNU social.
+Each plugin also has its own translation files.
+
+To get your own site to use all the translated languages, and you are
+tracking the git repo, you will need to install at least 'gettext' on
+your system and then run:
+ $ make translations
+
+### Queues and daemons
+
+Some activities that StatusNet needs to do, like broadcast OStatus, SMS,
+XMPP messages and TwitterBridge operations, can be 'queued' and done by
+off-line bots instead.
+
+Two mechanisms are available to achieve offline operations:
+
+* New embedded OpportunisticQM plugin, which is enabled by default
+* Legacy queuedaemon script, which can be enabled via config file.
+
+#### OpportunisticQM plugin
+
+This plugin is enabled by default. It tries its best to do background
+jobs during regular HTTP requests, like API or HTML pages calls.
+
+Since queueing system is enabled by default, notices to be broadcasted
+will be stored, by default, into DB (table queue_item).
+
+Whenever it has time, OpportunisticQM will try to handle some of them.
+
+This is a good solution whether you:
+
+* have no access to command line (shared hosting)
+* do not want to deal with long-running PHP processes
+* run a low traffic GNU social instance
+
+In other case, you really should consider enabling the queuedaemon for
+performance reasons. Background daemons are necessary anyway if you wish
+to use the Instant Messaging features such as communicating via XMPP.
+
+#### queuedaemon
+
+If you want to use legacy queuedaemon, you must be able to run
+long-running offline processes, either on your main Web server or on
+another server you control. (Your other server will still need all the
+above prerequisites, with the exception of Apache.) Installing on a
+separate server is probably a good idea for high-volume sites.
+
+1. You'll need the "CLI" (command-line interface) version of PHP
+ installed on whatever server you use.
+
+ Modern PHP versions in some operating systems have disabled functions
+ related to forking, which is required for daemons to operate. To make
+ this work, make sure that your php-cli config (/etc/php5/cli/php.ini)
+ does NOT have these functions listed under 'disable_functions':
+
+ * pcntl_fork, pcntl_wait, pcntl_wifexited, pcntl_wexitstatus,
+ pcntl_wifsignaled, pcntl_wtermsig
+
+ Other recommended settings for optimal performance are:
+ * mysqli.allow_persistent = On
+ * mysqli.reconnect = On
+
+2. If you're using a separate server for queues, install StatusNet
+ somewhere on the server. You don't need to worry about the
+ .htaccess file, but make sure that your config.php file is close
+ to, or identical to, your Web server's version.
+
+3. In your config.php files (on the server where you run the queue
+ daemon), set the following variable:
+
+ $config['queue']['daemon'] = true;
+
+ You may also want to look at the 'Queues and Daemons' section in
+ this file for more background processing options.
+
+4. On the queues server, run the command scripts/startdaemons.sh.
+
+This will run the queue handlers:
+
+* queuedaemon.php - polls for queued items for inbox processing and
+ pushing out to OStatus, SMS, XMPP, etc.
+* imdaemon.php - if an IM plugin is enabled (like XMPP)
+* other daemons, like TwitterBridge ones, that you may have enabled
+
+These daemons will automatically restart in most cases of failure
+including memory leaks (if a memory_limit is set), but may still die
+or behave oddly if they lose connections to the XMPP or queue servers.
+
+It may be a good idea to use a daemon-monitoring service, like 'monit',
+to check their status and keep them running.
+
+All the daemons write their process IDs (pids) to /var/run/ by
+default. This can be useful for starting, stopping, and monitoring the
+daemons. If you are running multiple sites on the same machine, it will
+be necessary to avoid collisions of these PID files by setting a site-
+specific directory in config.php:
+
+ $config['daemon']['piddir'] = __DIR__ . '/../run/';
+
+It is also possible to use a STOMP server instead of our kind of hacky
+home-grown DB-based queue solution. This is strongly recommended for
+best response time, especially when using XMPP.
+
+After installation
+----------
+
+### Backups
+
+There is no built-in system for doing backups in GNU social. You can make
+backups of a working StatusNet system by backing up the database and
+the Web directory. To backup the database use mysqldump
+and to backup the Web directory, try tar.
+
+### Upgrading
+
+Upgrading is strongly recommended to stay up to date with security fixes
+and new features. For instructions on how to upgrade GNU social code,
+please see the UPGRADE file.
+
+### Additional configuration
+
+Please refer to DOCUMENTATION/SYSTEM_ADMINISTRATORS/CONFIGURE for information.
+----