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README
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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ README
------
Laconica 0.6.0
12 September 2008
22 September 2008
This is the README file for Laconica, the Open Source microblogging
platform. It includes installation instructions, descriptions of
@ -62,6 +62,25 @@ License along with this program, in the file "COPYING". If not, see
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
================
New features in version 0.6.0 include:
* Invitations by email.
* Users can mark messages as "favorites" (only Web, not API).
* A bridge to push messages on the Laconica instance to an account on
Twitter.
* Direct private messages between users on a server (only Web, not API
or IM or SMS).
* Restructured off-line daemons.
Prerequisites
=============
@ -84,6 +103,7 @@ 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.
For some functionality, you will also need the following extensions:
@ -477,12 +497,96 @@ to these resources.
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.
Upgrading
=========
If you've been using Laconica 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. 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.
Configuration options
=====================
@ -560,59 +664,139 @@ You can configure the software to queue time-consuming tasks, like
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
enabled: Whether to uses queues. Defaults to false.
'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
---
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
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
---
XMPP
----
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.
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
=====
@ -636,11 +820,60 @@ assumptions.
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.