Install and setup PHPList

PHPList is an open-source newsletter manager, free to download, install and use. Follow this link to know more...
http://www.phplist.com/details
Here I'm trying to document how to set up PHPlist on Ubuntu that should work for other distributions with little modifications.

Setup Apache, PHP & MySQL:

Install Apache2 and PHP5

 apt-get install apache2 php5

Following NEW packages will be installed

 apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5 libapr1 libaprutil1 libexpat1 libmagic1 libpq5 libxml2 php5 php5-common ucf

Install MySQL that must be 3.23 or higher

aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql

The following NEW packages will be installed

apparmor apparmor-profiles libapache2-mod-auth-mysql libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libmysqlclient15-dev libmysqlclient15off libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libterm-readkey-perl mysql-client mysql-client-5.0 mysql-common mysql-server mysql-server-5.0 php5-mysql zlib1g-dev

You will be also prompted to enter an admin password

Get strong one.

To check whether these packages installed or not, just fire

 dpkg --get-selections
 dpkg -L php5|apache2|mysql-client-5.0

To check whereabouts of MySQL

root@moinhaidar:~# find / -type d -name "mysql"

It will give you sth like this...

/var/lib/mysql
/var/lib/mysql/mysql
/var/log/mysql
/usr/lib/mysql
/usr/lib/perl5/DBD/mysql
/usr/lib/perl5/auto/DBD/mysql
/usr/include/mysql
/usr/share/mysql
/etc/mysql

Setup Database

Lets login to mysql we just installed

root@moinhaidar:~# mysql -uroot -p

Enter the password you fed while installation.
Now you should be on mysql command line as seen like this

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql>

Create a database for PHPList namely myphplist

mysql> create database myphplist;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Grant privileges

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON myphplist.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Check that out

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| myphplist          |
| mysql              |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now its time to look into PHP installation. Create file say test.php using your favorite editor having

<?php
 phpinfo();
?>

Now fire root@moinhaidar:~# php test.php
Ooooo!!! You got an error like php not found! Okay lets install this package to get command line PHP.

 apt-get install php5-cli

So far so good!

Configuring PHP to Work With MYSQL

Again fire root@moinhaidar:~# php test.php and look for extension_dir something like below.

 extension_dir => /usr/lib/php5/20060613 => /usr/lib/php5/20060613

Now its time to find php.ini and get it configured...

 find / -name php.ini

Output should sth like this

/etc/php5/cli/php.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Open /etc/php5/cli/php.ini and search for extension_dir this should be sth like this

; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside.
;extension_dir = 

Uncomment if commented and set extension_dir what you find with root@moinhaidar:~# php test.php like

extension_dir = "/usr/lib/php5/20060613"

Setup PHPList

Get the latest version of PHPList

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/phplist/files/phplist-development/2.11.5/phplist-2.11.5.tgz/download

Copy to appropriate loation, usually /var/www/ and untar/unzip whatever...

root@moinhaidar:~# mv phplist-2.11.5.tgz /var/www
root@moinhaidar:~# tar -xvzf phplist-2.11.5.tgz
root@moinhaidar:~# mv phplist-2.11.5 mylists

Now its time to configure ./mylist/config/config.php

[General settings for language and database]
$database_host = "localhost";
$database_name = "myphplist";
$database_user = "root";
$database_password = "dbpassword";
$installation_name = 'Whatever';


[Settings for handling bounces]
$message_envelope = 'noreply@yourdomain.com';
$bounce_mailbox_user = 'noreply';
$bounce_protocol = 'mbox';
$bounce_mailbox = '/var/mail/noreply';


[Security related settings]
$require_login = 1;


[Debugging and informational]
define ("TEST",0);
define('SEND_ONE_TESTMAIL',1);

Lets create new site namely phplist

root@moinhaidar:~# cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/phplist

Now "vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/phplist" and get it configure...
+ indicates new addition
* indicates modified

+ ServerName yourdomain.com
* ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com
+ ServerAlias *.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com
* DocumentRoot /var/www/mylists
#*Setting Off PHP safe mode in order to acheive bounce processing - site wise
php_admin_flag safe_mode Off

        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None


        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
        + DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

Okay, Now enable mylists site and disable default one

sudo a2dissite default
sudo a2ensite lists

Now Check "vi /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mylists", that should be same as sites-availabe one.
Installed IMAP module for PHP bcoz phpList bounce processing connects to your mail server via a PHP module called IMAP.

 apt-get install php5-imap

Checklist

#Create a temp dir
Create tmp dir to ./var/www/mylists/ if not there.
root@moinhaidar:~#
#Change permission
root@moinhaidar:~# chmod -R 777 /var/www/mylists
#Restart server
root@moinhaidar:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Done Hit http://yourdomain.com/admin/
Got uninitialized database?
Hit initialized database link. It will populate your database(myphplist).
Cross check the database

root@mail:~# mysql -uroot -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 15
Server version: 5.0.51a-3ubuntu5.5 (Ubuntu)
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql> use myphplist;
mysql> show tables;
+----------------------+
| Tables_in_myphplist  |
+----------------------+
| admin                |
| admin_attribute      |
| admin_task           |

Done! Go to http://yourdomain.com/admin/?page=setup and setup remaining thing and enjoy!

Basic Mail Server Setup

Install follwing package choosing options...
Option 1 - internet site : Mail will be get read/delivered directly via SMTP

Option 2 - mail.youdomain.com : FQDN

root@moinhaidar:~# aptitude install postfix telnet mailx postfix-mysql

Configure /etc/postfix/main.cf adding followings

myhostname = mail.yourdomain.com
myorigin = $mydomain
mydestination =  $mydomain, localhost.$mydomain, localhost

Edit /etc/mailname and /etc/hostname having

 mail.yourdomain.com

Edit /etc/hosts having

127.0.0.1     localhost localhost.localdomain
server-ip    mail.yourdomain.com

Reboot the system

sudo reboot

Add a user namely noreply

Setup Reverse DNS

Quick Test

mail email@yourdomain.com
Subject: test email from yourdomain.com
test body of the email.
.
Cc:

No confirmation is given that the email has been sent but the logs will show the details.

Check the receiving email address and I hope you got expected!!! :)

Open Social Ruby Wrapper 0.0.4 - NameError : uninitialized constant

Problem

NameError: uninitialized constant ActionController::AbstractRequest
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:440:in `load_missing_constant'
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.5/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:80:in `const_missing'
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/opensocial-0.0.4/lib/opensocial/auth/action_controller_request.rb:32
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require'
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/opensocial-0.0.4/lib/opensocial.rb:19
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `gem_original_require'
        from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'

Fix

Open

C:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\opensocial-0.0.4\lib\opensocial\auth\action_controller_request.rb

and resplace "proxies ActionController::AbstractRequest" with "proxies ActionController::Request" at Line 32
or more specifically

module OAuth::RequestProxy #:nodoc: all
  class ActionControllerRequest < OAuth::RequestProxy::Base
    # proxies ActionController::AbstractRequest
    if ActionController.const_defined?(:AbstractRequest)
      proxies ActionController::AbstractRequest
    else
      proxies ActionController::Request
    end
  #...
  #...
end

OAuth Twitter API: Post message , status 401 Unauthorized

   First thing first check out the access level. If its read only, fix it read and wirte both.

   If its already read and write then most probably you are doing post having read and write access but authorization is still of read only. Follow this link to revoke the access and reauthorize it again.
https://twitter.com/settings/connections