Friendica Social Network

Setup Friendica Development Workspce

Hi @Friendica Developers,
I tried to setup a dev workspace for friendica on my local machine. I fail at the point of the installation where I can create a first user.

The Error in the UI says

SERIOUS ERROR: Generation of security keys failed.

Is there anything to fix or can I somehow skip this step and create the user with the console?

@Friendica Developers

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

matthias moritz

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her • •

oh wow. I just realized that there is a vagrant machine that works much better than a local webserver configuration!

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

Roland Häder

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her • •

@matthias moritz Okay, if that works for you.

I managed here to have #Friendica running on https://friendica.local (you cannot access it) with an entry in /etc/hosts, a self-signed SSL certificate and a /etc/apache2/sites-available/friencida.conf with separate error.log and access.log. It works really nice.

#Friendica @matthias moritz

Als Antwort auf Roland Häder

Roland Häder

Als Antwort auf Roland Häder • 2 Jahre her • •

@matthias moritz For me, I generated the SSL certificate with a shell script:

#!/bin/sh

cd /etc/ssl/daedalus
export OPENSSL_CONF=/etc/ssl/daedalus/openssl-friendica.cnf

echo "$0: Generating temporary key ..."
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout private/tempkey.pem -keyform PEM -out friendica.csr -outform PEM -extensions server || exit 255

echo "$0: Generating server key ..."
openssl rsa < private/tempkey.pem > private/friendica-key.pem || exit 255

echo "$0: CA ..."
openssl ca -verbose -in friendica.csr -out certs/friendica.crt -extensions server || exit 255

rm -f private/tempkey.pem || exit 255

cat private/friendica-key.pem certs/friendica.crt > certs/friendica.pem || exit 255
openssl dhparam 2048 >> certs/friendica.pem || exit 255

exit 0

And the matching configuration file:

# grep -v "#" /etc/ssl/daedalus/openssl-friendica.cnf 
[ CA_default ]
default_md =

@matthias moritz For me, I generated the SSL certificate with a shell script:

#!/bin/sh

cd /etc/ssl/daedalus
export OPENSSL_CONF=/etc/ssl/daedalus/openssl-friendica.cnf

echo "$0: Generating temporary key ..."
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout private/tempkey.pem -keyform PEM -out friendica.csr -outform PEM -extensions server || exit 255

echo "$0: Generating server key ..."
openssl rsa < private/tempkey.pem > private/friendica-key.pem || exit 255

echo "$0: CA ..."
openssl ca -verbose -in friendica.csr -out certs/friendica.crt -extensions server || exit 255

rm -f private/tempkey.pem || exit 255

cat private/friendica-key.pem certs/friendica.crt > certs/friendica.pem || exit 255
openssl dhparam 2048 >> certs/friendica.pem || exit 255

exit 0

And the matching configuration file:

# grep -v "#" /etc/ssl/daedalus/openssl-friendica.cnf 
[ CA_default ]
default_md = default
policy = policy_match

[ req ]
default_bits = 8192
default_keyfile = social-key.pem
distinguished_name = req_distinguished_name

[ ca ]
default_ca = CA_default

[ req_distinguished_name ]
countryName = DE
countryName_default = DE

stateOrProvinceName = Northrhine-Westphalia
stateOrProvinceName_default = Northrhine-Westphalia

localityName_default = Krefeld

0.organizationName = Roland Haeder
0.organizationName_default = Roland Haeder

organizationalUnitName = private
organizationalUnitName_default = private

commonName = friendica
commonName_default = friendica

emailAddress = quix0r@daedalus
emailAddress_default = quix0r@daedalus


[ server ]
basicConstraints=CA:FALSE
nsCertType = server
nsComment = "OpenSSL Generated Server Certificate"
subjectKeyIdentifier=hash
authorityKeyIdentifier=keyid,issuer:always

[ client ]
basicConstraints=CA:FALSE
nsCertType = client
nsComment = "OpenSSL Generated Client Certificate"
subjectKeyIdentifier=hash
authorityKeyIdentifier=keyid,issuer:always
keyUsage = nonRepudiation, digitalSignature, keyEncipherment

[ policy_match ]
countryName     = match
stateOrProvinceName = optional
organizationName    = optional
organizationalUnitName  = optional
commonName      = supplied
emailAddress        = optional

Plus I had to add a bypass for regex-check on the email address as quix0r@daedalus.local isn't a valid one. I have made my changes available on both #GITHub and my on server.

#github @matthias moritz

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her •

Hi, is there any doc / best practice available for setting up a dev environment?
I would prefer to have some kind of dev instance like friendica-dev.mbbit.de (not existing) but it needs to be accessed remotely by me since I have only shell access on the server.
Tried remote development feature of #PhpStorm but it keeps crashing, seems my resource on my vm server are too low for that purpose.
@Hypolite Petovan pointed something out regarding local code which is synced to its test instance, but I do not know the suited tools for that?

#PhpStorm @Hypolite Petovan

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann

Hypolite Petovan

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann • 2 Jahre her • •

@Marek Bachmann :friendica: Before using phpStorm for this purpose, I was using WinSCP which has a built-in "Keep remote folder up-to-date" feature. On Linux, you can either set up an rsync daemon or mount the remote filesystem locally. Not sure about MacOS.

@Marek Bachmann

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Hypolite Petovan

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf Hypolite Petovan • 2 Jahre her •

Thank You @Hypolite Petovan , so you managed to use PhpStorm's remote dev feature? I think this is the way I'd like to do it too, once I have upgraded to a more performant server.

I know this feature with WinSCP will try it out now by myself, I guess it just needs to be connected and monitor the local dev folder, so it would upload changes files by my local IDE?

@Hypolite Petovan

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann

Hypolite Petovan

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann • 2 Jahre her • •

@Marek Bachmann :friendica: Yes, but phpStorm can take care of this through the "Deployment" tool. You have to configure a remote connection (in my case, SFTP), then add folder mappings (which local folder maps to which remote folder) and you should be set.

There's a caveat: any file changed outside of phpStorm will not be updated on the remote side. This includes any file-changing scripts, git commands executed outside of phpStorm, etc...

@Marek Bachmann

Marek Bachmann mag das.

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag

Marek Bachmann

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • 2 Jahre her •

Thank you, my concern with local dev is, that it might be hard to test federation functions, i.e. receiving Activity Pub message from remote. E.g. I wanted to have a look at implementing the poll function for Friendica. This might be hard when I can't receive a poll e.g. from a mastodon test account?
How would you address this with a local dev setup?

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann • 2 Jahre her •

Any way, there are a lot of other issues with can surely be 100% addressed and tested on local dev. So I'll start with that :)

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (2 Jahre her)

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her •

Yeah, already though about some kind of vm, providing different #fediverse applications (Mastodon, friendica, Pixelfed,...) with predefined (automated?) test users.
Such a vm could then used locally to simulate a well defined mini fediverse to test new devolpemnts and bug fixes.
From my computer science experience it is always beneficial to have the ability to emulate a complex system like the fediverse with well known strucutre and behavior. In this way you can filter out all the addional random disturbances which make it very hard in the field to identify the root problems.

#fediverse

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann

matthias moritz

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann • 2 Jahre her • •

I don’t think the dev Team here can make the afford to keep such a virtualization of the fediverse up to date. This Sounds like a fulltime Job to me.

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her •

I can't estimate the work load at all, most likely you are right. It was more about sharing the idea of a network emulation, which I like to keep in mind when I will eventually start / dig deeper into fediverse development. :)

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her •

So when I encounter the situation that I need some testing with other applications my intention is to set up e.g., a Ubuntu image with a mastodon instance for the start an setup some test users. This image could then be shared for other devs and may be even extended. But again, at this point, only sharing the idea / vision

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (2 Jahre her)

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann

Hypolite Petovan

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann • 2 Jahre her • •

@Marek Bachmann :friendica: Simpler is to set up test accounts on existing servers, I have a bunch, @Michael Vogel has a bunch, and then interact directly with your dev node.

@Marek Bachmann @Michael Vogel

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Hypolite Petovan

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf Hypolite Petovan • 2 Jahre her •

@Hypolite Petovan Thank you, appreciate your input. So this brings us back to the basic discussion if local or "online" development should be used and when.
But I think I start to theorize a bit to much for my current experience in fediverse.
So I start local dev for non network functions / improvement.

@Hypolite Petovan

Hypolite Petovan mag das.

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf Marek Bachmann • 2 Jahre her •

Especially for that I now have the confidence that there is not one gold standard I should follow regarding this question. :)

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz

Marek Bachmann

Als Antwort auf matthias moritz • 2 Jahre her •

One more thought / option: Perhaps it might also be possible to expose a friendica server on you local machine with dyndns...
I think I already did it even with ssl support, but it is year ago.

Friendica Developers hat dies geteilt.

⇧

matthias moritz 2 Jahre her • •

matthias moritz
2 Jahre her • •