public-inbox (server-side) installation
---------------------------------------
This is for folks who want to setup their own public-inbox instance.
Clients should use normal git-clone/git-fetch, or NNTP clients
if they want to import mail into their personal inboxes.
public-inbox is developed on Debian GNU/Linux systems and will
never depend on packages outside of the "main" component of
the "stable" distribution, currently Debian 10.x ("buster"),
but older versions of Debian remain supported.
Most packages are available in other GNU/Linux distributions
and FreeBSD.
TODO: this still needs to be documented better,
also see the scripts/ and sa_config/ directories in the source tree
Requirements
------------
public-inbox requires a number of other packages to access its full
functionality. The core tools are, of course:
* Git (1.8.0+, 2.6+ for writing v2 inboxes)
* Perl 5.10.1+
* DBD::SQLite (needed for NNTP, message threading, and v2 inboxes)
To accept incoming mail into a public inbox, you'll likely want:
* MTA - postfix is recommended (for public-inbox-mda)
* SpamAssassin (spamc/spamd) (for public-inbox-watch/public-inbox-mda)
Beyond that, there is a long list of Perl modules required, starting with:
* Digest::SHA typically installed with Perl
rpm: perl-Digest-SHA
* URI::Escape deb: liburi-perl
pkg: p5-URI
rpm: perl-URI
(for HTML/Atom generation)
Email::MIME will be optional as of public-inbox v1.5.0,
it may still be used in maintainer comparison tests:
* Email::MIME deb: libemail-mime-perl
pkg: p5-Email-MIME
rpm: perl-Email-MIME
Plack and Date::Parse are optional as of public-inbox v1.3.0,
but required for older releases:
* Plack deb: libplack-perl
pkg: p5-Plack
rpm: perl-Plack, perl-Plack-Test,
(for HTML/Atom generation)
- Date::Parse deb: libtimedate-perl
pkg: p5-TimeDate
rpm: perl-TimeDate
(for broken, mostly historical emails)
Where "deb" indicates package names for Debian-derived distributions,
"pkg" is for the FreeBSD package (maybe other common BSDs, too), and
"rpm" is for RPM-based distributions (only known to work on Fedora).
Numerous optional modules are likely to be useful as well:
- DBD::SQLite deb: libdbd-sqlite3-perl
pkg: p5-DBD-SQLite
rpm: perl-DBD-SQLite
(for v2, NNTP, or gzipped mboxes)
- Search::Xapian deb: libsearch-xapian-perl
pkg: p5-Search-Xapian
rpm: perl-Search-Xapian
(HTTP search)
- Net::Server deb: libnet-server-perl
pkg: pkg-Net-Server
rpm: perl-Net-Server
(for HTTP/NNTP background daemons,
not needed as systemd services or
foreground servers)
- Inline::C deb: libinline-c-perl
pkg: pkg-Inline-C
(speeds up process spawning on Linux,
see public-inbox-daemon(8))
- Email::Address::XS deb: libemail-address-xs-perl
pkg: pkg-Email-Address-XS
(correct parsing of tricky email
addresses, phrases and comments)
- Plack::Middleware::ReverseProxy deb: libplack-middleware-reverseproxy-perl
pkg: p5-Plack-Middleware-ReverseProxy
rpm: perl-Plack-Middleware-ReverseProxy
(ensures redirects are correct when running
behind nginx or Varnish)
- Plack::Middleware::Deflater deb: libplack-middleware-deflater-perl
pkg: p5 -Plack-Middleware-Deflater
rpm: perl-Plack-Middleware-Deflater
(saves bandwidth on responses)
* highlight deb: libhighlight-perl
(for syntax highlighting with coderepo)
* xapian-compact (tool) deb: xapian-tools
pkg: xapian-core
rpm: xapian-core
(optional, for public-inbox-compact(1))
The following modules are typically pulled in by dependencies listed
above, so there is no need to explicitly install them:
* Encode deb: libperl5.$MINOR (or libencode-perl)
pkg: perl5
rpm: perl-Encode
(likely installed with Perl)
- DBI deb: libdbi-perl
pkg: p5-DBI
rpm: perl-DBI
(pulled in by DBD::SQLite)
* Devel::Peek deb: libperl5.$MINOR (e.g. libperl5.24)
pkg: perl5
rpm: perl-Devel-Peek
(optional for stale FD cleanup in daemons,
typically installed alongside Perl5)
- Filesys::Notify::Simple deb: libfilesys-notify-simple-perl
pkg: p5-Filesys-Notify-Simple
rpm: perl-Filesys-Notify-Simple
(for public-inbox-watch, pulled in by Plack)
- Linux::Inotify2 deb: liblinux-inotify2-perl
rpm: perl-Linux-Inotify2
(for public-inbox-watch on Linux)
- Filesys::Notify::KQueue pkg: p5-Filesys-Notify-KQueue
(for public-inbox-watch on FreeBSD)
- IO::Compress (::Gzip) deb: perl-modules (or libio-compress-perl)
pkg: perl5
rpm: perl-IO-Compress
(for gzipped mbox over HTTP, v2 format)
Uncommonly needed modules:
- Socket6 deb: libsocket6-perl
pkg: p5-Socket6
rpm: perl-Socket6
(pulled in by SpamAssassin and Net::Server,
only necessary if using IPv6 with
Plack::Middleware::AccessLog or similar
on Perl <= 5.12)
- Crypt::CBC deb: libcrypt-cbc-perl
pkg: p5-Crypt-CBC
(for PublicInbox::Unsubscribe (rarely used))
Optional packages testing and development:
- Plack::Test deb: libplack-test-perl
pkg: p5-Plack
rpm: perl-Plack-Test
- Test::Simple deb: perl-modules-5.$MINOR
pkg: perl5
rpm: perl-Test-Simple
- XML::TreePP deb: libxml-treepp-perl
pkg: p5-XML-TreePP
rpm: perl-XML-TreePP
standard MakeMaker installation (Perl)
--------------------------------------
To use MakeMaker, you need to ensure ExtUtils::MakeMaker is available.
This is typically installed with Perl, but RPM-based systems will likely
need to install the `perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker' package.
Once the dependencies are installed, you should be able to build and
install the system (into /usr/local) with:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test # see HACKING for faster tests for hackers
make install # root permissions may be needed
When installing Search::Xapian, make sure the underlying Xapian
installation is not affected by an index corruption bug:
https://bugs.debian.org/808610
For Debian 8.x (jessie), this means using Debian 8.5 or later.
public-inbox will never store unregeneratable data in Xapian
or any other search database we might use; Xapian corruption
will not destroy critical data.
See the public-inbox-overview(7) man page for the next steps once
the installation is complete.
Copyright
---------
Copyright 2013-2020 all contributors
License: AGPL-3.0+