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, IMAP or NNTP clients
if they want to import mail into their personal inboxes.
As of 2021, public-inbox is packaged by several OS distributions,
listed in alphabetical order: Debian, GNU Guix, NixOS, and Void Linux.
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. CentOS 7.x users will likely want newer git and
Xapian packages for better performance and v2 inbox support:
https://public-inbox.org/meta/20210421151308.yz5hzkgm75klunpe@nitro.local/
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 IMAP, 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 one non-standard Perl module required:
* URI::Escape deb: liburi-perl
pkg: p5-URI
rpm: perl-URI
(for HTML/Atom generation)
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, IMAP, NNTP, or gzipped mboxes)
- Search::Xapian or Xapian(.pm) deb: libsearch-xapian-perl
pkg: p5-Search-Xapian OR p5-Xapian
rpm: perl-Search-Xapian
(HTTP and IMAP search)
- Net::Server deb: libnet-server-perl
pkg: pkg-Net-Server
rpm: perl-Net-Server
(for HTTP/IMAP/NNTP background daemons,
not needed as systemd services or
foreground servers)
- Inline::C deb: libinline-c-perl
pkg: pkg-Inline-C
rpm: perl-Inline (or perl-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,
required for IMAP)
- Parse::RecDescent deb: libparse-recdescent-perl
pkg: p5-Parse-RecDescent
rpm: perl-ParseRecDescent
(optional, for public-inbox-imapd(1))
- BSD::Resource deb: libbsd-resource-perl
pkg: p5-BSD-Resource
rpm: perl-BSD-Resource
(optional, for PSGI limiters
see public-inbox-config(5))
- 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)
* 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))
- Linux::Inotify2 deb: liblinux-inotify2-perl
rpm: perl-Linux-Inotify2
(for public-inbox-watch and -imapd on Linux)
The following module is typically pulled in by dependencies listed
above, so there is no need to explicitly install them:
- DBI deb: libdbi-perl
pkg: p5-DBI
rpm: perl-DBI
(pulled in by DBD::SQLite)
Uncommonly needed modules (see HACKING for development-only 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))
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
symlink-install (public-inbox.git and 1.7.0+)
---------------------------------------------
For users who lack permissions and/or wish to minimize their
installation footprint, the "symlink-install" target is available in
public-inbox.git. The following installs symlinks to $HOME/bin
pointing to the source tree:
perl Makefile.PL
make symlink-install prefix=$HOME
Other installation notes
------------------------
Debian 8.x (jessie) users, use Debian 8.5 or later if using Xapian:
https://bugs.debian.org/808610
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.
The following required packages are part of the Perl standard
library. Debian-based distros put them in "libperl5.$MINOR" or
"perl-modules-5.$MINOR"; and FreeBSD puts them in "perl5".
RPM-based distros split them out into separate packages:
* Digest::SHA rpm: perl-Digest-SHA
* Data::Dumper rpm: perl-Data-Dumper
* Encode rpm: perl-Encode
* IO::Compress rpm: perl-IO-Compress
* Storable rpm: perl-Storable
* Text::ParseWords rpm: perl-Text-Parsewords
Copyright
---------
Copyright 2013-2021 all contributors
License: AGPL-3.0+