I've been working on installing Laconica on Dreamhost. Since Laconica
is the Wordpress of microblogging, it will help for customers of the
more consumer-oriented managed/shared server providers to have an easy
path for adopting Laconica.
The basic install went without a hitch. There's some glitch with fancy
URLs but it's minor and I haven't given it any thought.
There are three basic obstacles I've encountered:
• In the mod_php config (which cannot be changed by the customer)
allow_url_fopen is set to OFF. This prevents subscribing to remote
users via OMP because the user avatar doesn't get retrieved.
• When running PHP as CGI http basic authentication doesn't work
• XMPP/Jabber integration doesn't work for standard DH installs
because daemons are disallowed.
The first two are an either/or proposition. DH allows PHP to be run as
CGI or mod_php.
First: is there any reason for me not to try to work around the
allow_url_fopen issue by downloading the avatar file(s) to a temp
directory via curl, then doing an fopen on the local file?
Alternate first, would it be worthwhile to make the failure of
retrieving the avatar a recoverable error? Maybe create a blank avatar
to distinguish remote users whose avatars could not be retrieved?
Possibly linking to the avatar on the remote server? That last seems
the clumsiest—just tossing ideas out.
Second: I've attempted a fix found at http://ur1.ca/4rx5 but so far
had no success. I'll keep working on it but would appreciate any
suggestions.
The third issue can only be avoided by switching from Dreamhost's
standard shared servers to the Dreamhost PS, which is more expensive,
and the memory overhead required for the XMPP daemons out of the box
makes it even more expensive under Dreamhost. Processes on the regular
servers are limited to thirty seconds.
The only solution I can think of for this problem—and I think it's a
solution with many unrelated upsides—is to work with Dreamhost to
create a one-click install like they have for Wordpress and Jabber,
and to consolidate all potential Laconica daemons into one (or rather
one of each kind) per server rather than one per user.
That may be a big order, but if Dreamhost will work with us on such a
thing, it could be a huge coup.
Any suggestions to help me in the right directions would be very much
appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve/Splicer
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