Talk:Installation/Ninefold

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Revision as of 21:24, 14 October 2014 by Jhass (talk | contribs)
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A few notes

Hey User:Brit200313, thanks for the guide! A few notes and questions:

  1. gem 'pg': Why? Setting DB=postgres will enable it, why add it a second time to the Gemfile? See also the next point.
  2. It looks like Ninefold supports setting environment variables. If you set HEROKU=true Diaspora boots up without needing diaspora.yml. Additionally every single setting can set through an environment variable, as described at the top of diaspora.yml.example and for example the Heroku guide. This allows to not commit configuration to the repository, which is inherently bad practice. The config quickly contains secrets, for example your service oauth credentials.
  3. The Redis setting won't work that way. The config is not run through ERB and this is not ERB syntax anyway.
  4. The highlighted settings seem to be rather random tbh.
  5. The guide describes a production pod but your database examples are for development and test? That makes no sense. Also I think it would be nicer to instruct how to make to adjust our database.yml.example.

I have a few style notes but can apply them myself after we resolved above issues ;) --Jhass (talk) 20:10, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


Thanks, User:Jhass. I'll answer each of your questions.

  1. You're right. I'll remove the gem part.
  2. We do support env vars. Are you suggesting that they not adjust the diaspora.yml and compile all of the env vars into Ninefold's interface? I'm fine with that.
  3. We actually have a customer using Diaspora and they are using Redis that way. He told us how he got it working. I'd like to keep that since I know it works.
  4. Those highlighted settings are ones I needed to enable to get my pod going. Do you want me to pull them out?
  5. I'm happy to make the change to database.yml.example

Go wild with styling. :) --Brit200313


2. Yes, I'm suggesting that. As said otherwise users will just end up comitting secrets.
3. If it works it's because REDIS_URL overrides the setting. It's simply not needed.[1]
4. rails_environment and certificate_authorities might be needed but again can be set via an environment variable. For rails_environment just setting RAILS_ENV=production should suffice even. The other settings are definitely optional or even set to their defaults.

--Jhass (talk) 21:19, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


Oh, in my first read through I didn't notice that you recommend a self signed certificate. That won't work with Diaspora as we don't accept those for federation. I recommend to either instruct to use the free StartSSL certificate or disabling SSL by setting ENVIRONMENT_REQUIRE_SSL=false. --Jhass (talk) 21:24, 14 October 2014 (UTC)