Install WriteFreely on NFSN
January 22, 2024
Recipe to install WriteFreely on Nearly Free Speech Net. Adpated from WriteFreely start guide and this forum thread. Posted to nfsn wiki.
NFSN website#
Login » Sites » Your WF Site
- set Software Realm to “White”
- set Server Type to “Kitchen Sink” (in order get Daemons and Proxies).
SSH#
Begin by verifying WF is available, download the WF release archive to get templates and assets, put the WF config and database into your protected directory. We're going to use sqlite db.
which writefreely
...should emit “/usr/local/bin/writefreely”
Download the latest release for MacOS. It probably doesn't matter which system though as we're just after the templates and other resources.
cd ~/../protected
wget https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely/releases/download/v0.14.0/writefreely_0.14.0_macos_amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzvf writefreely_0.14.0_macos_amd64.tar.gz
cd writefreely
# delete the MacOS executable
rm ./writefreely
Settings#
writefreely config start
Use whatever values you want for ones not listed. Afterwards peruse config.ini for
other things you might want to change that aren't part of the wizard.
| Deployment | Production, behind reverse proxy |
|---|---|
| Local port | 8080 (or anything above 1024) |
| Database | Sqlite |
| Filename | writefreely.db (or mywf-blog.db or whatever) |
| Site type | Single user blog |
| Public URL | https://sitename.nfshost.com/ or https://yourdomain.org/(trailing slash, no port) |
We generate keys as WF errors out without them even though they're unecessary with external TLS, and then allow web server to read the keys.
writefreely keys generate
chgrp web keys keys/*
chmod g+r keys keys/*
NFSN website#
Site » select site : Daemons and Proxies
DAEMON
tag = writefreely
command line = /usr/local/bin/writefreely
working directory = /home/protected/writefreely
Run daemon as = web
PROXY
protocol = HTTP
base uri = /
document root = /
target port = 8080
File and directory permissions#
cd /home/protected/writefreely
# Recursively add files and dirs to Web group
chgrp -R web ./
# strip existing permissions for group and other
chmod -R g-rwx ./
chmod -R o-rwx ./
# Allow web user to read all files recursively
chmod -R g+r ./
# Allow web user to enter direcories
find ./ -type d -exec chmod g+x {} +
# Allow web user to create and write sqlite journalling files
chmod g+w ./
# Allow Web user to modfify the db
chmod g+w ./*.db
At this point you should be able to point a browser at https://sitename.nfshost.com or your domain name and login to WriteFreely. Leave off the port selected above, that's for internal communication.
Visit the NFSN Sites page to start/stop/restart etc. the daemon. For troubleshooting see:
/home/logs/daemon_writefreely.log
Cross posted to https://members.nearlyfreespeech.net/wiki/Applications/WriteFreely.