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How to Use Pagekite to Link Your Own Domain Name to a Local Network Diaspora Pod
Diaspora is an open-source, decentralized social network. A Diaspora server is called a pod. Each user account within a pod is called a seed. The various pods communicate with one another, collectively creating the Diaspora network. There are a variety of pod sizes: some have thousands of seeds, some only a single seed. This how-to covers setting up your own pod on a linux box (Fedora 16, specifically), and making it visible on the internet (not just your local network).
You can find instructions for installing Diaspora on your computer here. Once you've correctly installed Diaspora and started it up, you should have a thin app server listening at localhost:3000. If you put that address in your web browser's navigation bar, you should see a log-in screen. (Don't create an account yet, or it'll have an improper address, e.g., you@localhost:3000.)
What will you call your pod? This how-to assumes you're going to call it diaspora.[yourdomain].net. Later, we'll show you how to actually create the domain [yourdomain].net (of which diaspora.[yourdomain].net will be a subdomain). But for now, just choose a name that will be the internet address for your pod.
Although you can run Diaspora without a web server (and I'll describe how to do so below), this isn't recommended. You won't have SSL, so other pods that require SSL connections won't be able to connect with your pod.
The preferred web server is nginx. You can get it with yum, rpm or apt, but try to download the latest version, which is 1.0.10-1, because this how-to is based on it. Once you've installed nginx, you should be able to start it right away by typing, as root or sudo, in a teminal:
service nginx start
This should return "[ok]". And if you type localhost:80 in your web browser's navigation bar, you should get an nginx html page.
Now you have to edit the nginx configuration files for your particular setup. Once you've installed nginx, find its configuration files by typing, in a terminal, as root or sudo:
whereis nginx
On Fedora 16, you'll find the nginx configuration files at /etc/nginx and /etc/nginx/conf.d.
Let's start by editing the default configuration file, /etc/nginx/nginx.conf so that it understands that the thin app server is listening at localhost:3000. Use your text editor of choice. As a guide, here's my working, edited /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file (comment lines removed):
user nginx;
worker_processes 3;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
sendfile on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
gzip on;
upstream thin_server {
server 127.0.0.1:3000;
}
upstream resque_web {
server 127.0.0.1:5678;
}
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}
The only thing changed here is to add, after the line "gzip on;", information to identify the upstream thin and resque ports.
The next step is to configure how nginx handles calls to port 80 (the standard http port) and 443 (the standard https port). So, in a terminal, as root:
cd /etc/nginx/conf.d
You'll see three files there: default.conf, ssl.conf, and virtual.conf. We'll be editing the first two. Let's start with default.conf. It contains the configuration to handle port 80. What we want to do is tell it to redirect port 80 requests to port 443, and we want to tell it where the diaspora pod's public files are located on the computer. Here's my working /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf file (comment lines removed)(except I've replaced my pod's name with "diaspora.[yourdomain].net," and my username with "[your username]" as a placeholder for your particular setup's information:
server {
listen 80;
server_name diaspora.[yourdomain].net www.diaspora.[yourdomain].net;
rewrite ^(.*) https://diaspora.[yourdomain].net$1 permanent;
location / {
root /home/[your username]/diaspora/public;
index index.html index.htm;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
location = /404.html {
root /home/[your username]/diaspora/public;
}
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /home/[your username]/diaspora/public;
}
}
OK, the next step is to edit the /etc/nginx/conf.d/ssl.conf file, to tell it the server name, tell it the location of your SSL files, tell it to check the upstream server at localhost:3000, and to tell it where the diaspora public files are. Here's my working edited version (comment lines removed) (except I've replaced my pod's name with "diaspora.[yourdomain].net," and my username with "[your username]" as a placeholder for your particular setup's information:
server {
listen 443;
server_name diaspora.[yourdomain].net www.diaspora.[yourdomain].net;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /home/[your username]/diaspora/public/SSL.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /home/[your username]/diaspora/public/SSL.key;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
client_max_body_size 4M;
client_body_buffer_size 128K;
if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
}
if (-f $request_filename.html) {
rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
}
if (!-f $request_filename) {
proxy_pass http://thin_server;
break;
}
root /home/[your username]/diaspora/public;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}
Once you've finished editing /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf, and /etc/nginx/conf.d/ssl.conf, restart the server by typing, in a terminal, as root or sudo:
service nginx restart
At this point, you should have the Diaspora thin app server listening on localhost:3000 and the nginx web server listening on localhost:80, which upgrades to localhost:443, which proxies to the app server at localhost:3000.
But the nginx webserver is not visible to the internet yet, because it is likely hidden behind NAT IP addresses assigned by your ISP and your local area network. That is to say, your nginx webserver's IP address likely is something like 192.168.2.6:443, which is not an address reachable from other computers on the internet. Pagekite is a simple way to make the nginx webserver visible to the internet. Here's how (substitute your particulars for the examples in the brackets below):
Go to GoDaddy, VeriSign, or the like, and register a domain matching what you chose up Step 2 above. For example, [yourdomain].net.
Open an account at Pagekite, and create a pagekite, for example, [yourname].pagekite.me. Download the pagekite software and install it. Make note of where the configuration files are located on your computer afterward. For example, on Fedora 16 linux, the configuration files may be found at /etc/pagekite.d/.
Go back to your domain registrar, log in to your domain name account, and create a CNAME record that points to your pagekite. For example, create the CNAME diaspora.[yourdomain].net, and point it to [yourname].pagekite.me. Your domain registrar will have instructions on how to do this. The process will vary by domain registrar.
For SSL to work for nginx at port 443, you need an SSL cert. You can get one free at StartSSL.com. Many domain registrars can do it for you too. Once you've installed your SSL certificate and key, make sure that the SSL location info lines in /etc/nginx/conf.d/ssl.conf point to the location of the cert and key. For example,
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /home/[your username]/diaspora/public/SSL.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /home/[your username]/diaspora/public/SSL.key;
in the sample ssl.conf file above point to diaspora's public directory, for a cert and key located there.
Now you want to direct the CNAME you created, diaspora.[yourdomain].net, through your [yourname].pagekite.me kite, to your local computer, where your nginx webserver is listening at ports 80 and 443. Using a text editor, edit your pagekite configuration files as follows. The file /etc/pagekite.d/10_account.rc should contain the following values:
kitename=diaspora.[yourdomain].net
kitesecret=[your account secret from your pagekite account]
The file /etc/pagekite.d/80_httpd.rc should contain the following:
backend=http:[yourname].pagekite.me:localhost:80:@kitesecret
backend=https:[yourname].pagekite.me:localhost:443:@kitesecret
backend=http:@kitename:localhost:80:@kitesecret
backend=https:@kitename:localhost:443:@kitesecret
Note: If you're having problems with nginx. While you figure the problem out, you can direct pagekite directly to the thin server listening at localhost:3000 with the following 80_httpd.rc config:
backend=http:[yourname].pagekite.me:localhost:3000:@kitesecret
backend=http:@kitename:localhost:3000:@kitesecret
Provided Diaspora and nginx are running, you can now start pagekite, by typing, as root or sudo, in a terminal:
service pagekite start
After a minute or so, you should be able to find your Diaspora login screen in a browser window at https://diaspora.[yourdomain].net. No you can create an account, or log in if you already have one.
If images aren't rendering properly (i.e., if the logo is absent), try setting the serve static assets variable to "true" in ../diaspora/config/environments/production.rb (or development.rb if that's what you have).
If you change local network locations (for example, you take the laptop hosting your pod to an internet cafe), you'll need to restart Pagekite to update your DNS settings. Simply open a terminal and type, as root or sudo:
service pagekite restart
OK? Good luck.