rocksolid-light/INSTALL.md

Installing Rocksolid Light (rslight) - a web based Usenet news client

IMPORTANT 0.9.6 UPGRADE INFORMATION:
There has been a new config option added to rslight.inc.php:
    'server_path' => '@example.com',
You need to add this to the file. It's best to add it just above email_tail.
This is the domain that is added to the Message-ID.

If you have custom SECTION.inc.php files, you will need to manually add it to
those files as well:
    'server_path' => $CONFIG['server_path'],

IMPORTANT 0.9.0 UPGRADE INFORMATION:
The articles-overview.db3 database has changed in this version. It is required to update it before running the site. SEE INFORMATION BELOW.

Requirements:

You will need a web server: rslight has been tested with apache2, lighttpd, nginx
and synchronet web servers

php is required, and your web server must be configured to serve .php.

php 8.2 or greater is required. Development and testing on Debian.

php-mbstring (to support other character sets)
sharutils (for uudecode)
openssl
php-gnupg
php8.x-sqlite3 (or later version).
phpmailer is required if email confirmation is to be used.
php-xml to work with RSS feeds
compface, php-gd and libgd3 for X-Face support
memcached, php-memcached for memcached support
These are the names for Debian packages. Other distributions should 
also provide these in some way.

If you wish to display UNIX fortunes in the header, install:
fortunes, fortune-mod and fortunes-min

If you get errors, check your log files to see what packages I've failed to mention.

Installation: 

IMPORTANT 0.9.0 UPGRADE INFORMATION:
The articles-overview.db3 database has changed in this version. It is required to update it before running the site:

1. Disable the cron job (cron.php). and kill all instances of nntp.
2. Fully back up your site.
3. Perform upgrade using provided script (or do it manually if you wish)
4. cd to your $webdir/spoolnews directory.
5. Run 'php $config_dir/scripts/0.9.0-upgrade.php' and wait..........
   This will create a new overview database, and it will take a while
   based on how many articles on your site.
6. When that is complete, rename or delete 'articles-overview.db3'.
7. Rename '0.9.0-articles-overview.db3' to 'articles-overview.db3'.
8. Restart cron job and wait for things to start running.

NORMAL UPGRADE:
1. Set up your webserver to handle php files

2. Extract rslight into a temporary location

3. Run the provided install script (debian-install.sh or freebsd-install.sh) as root
and answer the prompts. This will configure locations, create directories and move files
into place.

4. Load common/setup.php in your browser to configure your site. The admin password
was displayed during install but can also be found in your config directory in
admin.inc.php

5. Add a cron job for the root user. Change the directories in this line to match your setup
as shown in the installation script. Set the minutes as you wish. The paths must match your
installation:

*/5 * * * * cd /usr/local/www/html/spoolnews ; bash -lc "php /etc/rslight/scripts/cron.php"
This will start the nntp server, then drop privileges to your web user and begin pulling
articles from the remote server to create your spool. You won't see articles immediately
in rslight, please wait 15-30 minutes to begin to see articles appear.

Upgrading:

1. Disable cron job and kill any running nntp servers (ps aux | grep nntp)

2. BACKUP spool dir. Default example: 'cd /var/spool' then 'tar zcvf rslight.tgz rslight/*'

3. Run upgrade script and answer prompts

4. Compare upgrade config files in config dir /upgrade and change your exsiting config as necessary

5. If your current version is pre-0.6.8, you must pull articles again from your upstream server to set up.
Please post in a rocksolid.* group (rocksolid.nodes.help) and we can walk you through this. It's pretty
simple.

6. Enable cron job and check that everything works after it runs the first time

If you have trouble, post to rocksolid.nodes.help and we'll try to help.

Retro Guy
retroguy@novabbs.com