You have a number of options when installing Diaspora on Ubuntu - these include doing so manually or installing through Cloud 66 EasyDeploy.

Depending on your configuration, a manual installation of Diaspora can take up to a few days. Deploying through Cloud 66 on the other hand takes up to an hour for the initial deploy, and up to five minutes for subsequent deployments.

This post will take you through each option.

Option 1: Deploying with Cloud 66

Deploying with Cloud 66 consists of four simple steps:

1. Create an account on Cloud 66.

2. Click here to auto-fill your new stack page. 

3. Next, choose where you’d like to deploy Diaspora, the region and server size. You can also choose if you’d like to deploy to separate web and database servers.

4. Once you’re happy with your configuration, simply click ‘deploy’, and sit back and relax while we deploy Diaspora for you.

Option 2: Manual Installation

1. Requirements

Hardware

For running an average-sized pod, your server should have at the very least 512MB of RAM (+1GB swap space) and a decent multi-core CPU. The amount of hard disk space required largely depends on how many images you expect your users to upload. If you plan to run the database server on the same host you should allow for at least double the amount of RAM and disk space.

Software

  • Build tools - for compiling source packages
  • Ruby - the Ruby programming language
  • RubyGems - package manager for Ruby code libraries (like CPAN for Perl or PEAR for PHP)
  • Bundler - gem management tool for Ruby projects
  • MySQL - backend storage engine
  • OpenSSL - encryption library.
  • libcurl - multiprotocol file transfer library
  • ImageMagick - image processing library
  • Git - version control system
  • Redis - persistent key-value store
  • one of the JavaScript runtimes on execjs’ supported list.

2. Prepare the System

Install packages

Run:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential git imagemagick libmagickwand-dev nodejs redis-server libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libmysqlclient-dev

There is a bug in curl below version 7.32 which is shipped in Ubuntu versions below Saucy. You can use a PPA to update curl to a newer version as follows;

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:jaywink/curldebian
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Install the database

Skip this step if you already have one.

See the Ubuntu server guide.

Creating a user for Diaspora

sudo adduser diaspora
sudo -i -u diaspora

The rest of the guide should happen under this user!

Removing packaged version of RVM

If you installed RVM via the package manager, we recommend to remove it. See this StackOverflow answer for some tips on how to do that and then continue with the installation instructions below.

RVM

We recommend using Ruby Version Manager it will ensure you’re always on the currently recommended Ruby version and cleanly separate your Diaspora installation from all other Ruby applications on your machine. If you opt for not using it ensure your Ruby version is at least 1.9.2-p320, prior versions are incompatible. Be aware that his version is not maintained with security updates from the Ruby core team anymore. We do not support Ruby 2.0 yet. We currently recommend using 1.9.3-p448.

Install RVM

As the user you want to run Diaspora under, that is not as root run:

curl -L dspr.tk/1t | bash

and follow the instructions.

Set up RVM

Ensure the following line is in your ~/.bashrc:

[[ -s “~/.rvm/scripts/rvm” ]] && source “~/.rvm/scripts/rvm”

Now close all open terminals and open a new one!

If you don’t have sudo installed or your current user doesn’t have the privileges to execute it, run:

rvm autolibs read-only

Then closely watch the output of the next step for something like “Missing required packages:”. If it appears, hit Ctrl+C and install all the packages listed there.

Ensure the currently recommend version of Ruby is installed:

rvm install 1.9.3-p448

3. Get the source

It’s time to download Diaspora! As your diaspora user run:

cd ~
git clone -b master git://github.com/diaspora/diaspora.git
cd diaspora

Don’t miss the cd diaspora, all coming commands expect to be run from that directory!

4. Configuration

Copy files

cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
cp config/diaspora.yml.example config/diaspora.yml

Now open config/database.yml and config/diaspora.yml in your favorite text editor and carefully review them, they are extensively commented.

Important values in config/diaspora.yml

  • environment.url: Set the public facing URL to your pod here, for example for https://pod.geraspora.de this would be https://pod.geraspora.de
  • environment.certificate_authorities: You have to set this, one of the examples should fit. If the file in the example doesn’t exist you’re missing a package, in most cases it’s named ca-certificates.
  • server.rails_environment: You must set this to production. The server section is read by ./script/server and most alternative startup methods to setup the correct environment.
  • environment.require_ssl: If for some reason you can’t run your pod on HTTPS (we highly encourage you to do it!), set this to false to prevent a redirect from http:// to https://

Reverse proxy

You most likely have already a webserver running on port 80 (http) and 443 (https). It also should serve Diasporas static content and forward all other requests to Diaspora. Here are some example configurations to achieve that:

Apache: https://gist.github.com/MrZYX/719014

Nginx: https://gist.github.com/MrZYX/1355430

5. Bundle

It’s time to install the Ruby libraries required by Diaspora:

RAILS_ENV=production  bundle install —without test development

This takes quite a while. You should get a green success message when it’s finished, if that’s no the case you should seek for help on the mailing list or the IRC channel.

Running the manual gem install command shown in the error message can sometimes show a clearer error message if the bundle command fails.

6. Database setup

Double check your config/database.yml looks right and run:

RAILS_ENV=production  bundle exec rake db:create db:schema:load

7. Precompile assets

bundle exec rake assets:precompile

8. Start Diaspora

It’s time to start Diaspora:

./script/server

In the most simple case you want to do this inside a screen or tmux session from which you can safely detach.