Dirk große Osterhues

Introduction

Starting with Firefox 4 it is really easy to keep your different Firefox browser setups at home, on your mobile or at work in sync. The Mozilla Corporation even hosts a central server for you so basically the setup can't be more easy.

Yet, if you're a little paranoid and you don't want to store your precious browser data on someoneelse's servers, you might wish for your own sync server. There are two posibilities to setup your own server: the Weave Minial Server and the full blown one.

Weave Minimal Server's development has been stopped now and is deprecated since shortly after FF4's relase. Therefore, this article documents the setup of the full server.

The chosen install location will be /var/www/weave. The article assumes a Mysql server for authentication installed locally. Further, a functional Apache 2 server is assumed with a fully configured SSL setup. The documentation was tested using an Ubuntu 10.10 setup.

Package Retrieval and Storage

A working installation of a full Weave server consists of of two packages: the Weave Sync Server and the Weave Registration Server. You may download and unpack the archives like this:

mkdir -p /var/www/weave/weave-synchronisation \
         /var/www/weave/weave-registration 
cd /var/www/weave && touch index.html
   wget http://hg.mozilla.org/services/sync-server/archive/tip.tar.gz
   tar xzf tip.tar.gz -C weave-synchronisation --strip=1 && rm tip.tar.gz
   wget http://hg.mozilla.org/services/reg-server/archive/tip.tar.gz
   tar xzf tip.tar.gz -C weave-registration --strip=1 && rm tip.tar.gz

In case the download links are deprecated, go and look for the according packages at their respective root directories: http://hg.mozilla.org/services/sync-server/ and http://hg.mozilla.org/services/reg-server/.

Note as of Oct 29, 2011: the links are deprecated as the whole sync-server gets an overhaul. The old version is still running smooth though, so the updated links are: http://hg.mozilla.org/services/deprecated/sync-server/ and http://hg.mozilla.org/services/deprecated/reg-server/.

Database Setup

Create a new database called weave containing the following tables:

CREATE TABLE collections (
  userid int(11) NOT NULL,
  collectionid smallint(6) NOT NULL,
  name varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (userid,collectionid),
  KEY nameindex (userid,name)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE wbo (
  username int(11) NOT NULL,
  collection smallint(6) NOT NULL default '0',
  id varbinary(64) NOT NULL default '',
  parentid varbinary(64) default NULL,
  predecessorid varbinary(64) default NULL,
  sortindex int(11) default NULL,
  modified bigint(20) default NULL,
  payload longtext,
  payload_size int(11) default NULL,
  ttl int(11) default '2100000000',
  PRIMARY KEY  (username,collection,id),
  KEY parentindex (username,collection,parentid),
  KEY modified (username,collection,modified),
  KEY weightindex (username,collection,sortindex),
  KEY predecessorindex (username,collection,predecessorid),
  KEY size_index (username,payload_size)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

create table users (
 id int(11) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY auto_increment,
 username varchar(32),
 password_hash varbinary(128),
 email varbinary(64),
 status tinyint(4) default '1',
 alert text,
 reset varbinary(32) default null,
 reset_expiration datetime
) engine=InnoDB;

Now, create a user named weave in mysql with data permissions on the newly created Weave database. Remember the user's password for later.

Config Adjustments on Sync and Reg Server

To customise the configs of reg and sync portion of the full Weave server, two files have to be created before being edited:

cd /var/www/weave/weave-synchronisation/1.1 && \
   cp default_constants.php.dist default_constants.php
cd /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0 && \
   cp weave_user_constants.php.dist weave_user_constants.php

Adjustment of the Synchronisation Server

Now, edit /var/www/weave/weave-synchronisation/1.1/default_constants.php. First, adjust the mysql user's database password according to the previous step. Chanve weave to your own password there in the two line that say:

if (!defined('WEAVE_MYSQL_STORE_READ_PASS')) { define('WEAVE_MYSQL_STORE_READ_PASS', 'weave'); }

Next, adjust the size of maximum payload in the following line. I recommend just adding a zero to 262144:

if (!defined('WEAVE_PAYLOAD_MAX_SIZE')) { define('WEAVE_PAYLOAD_MAX_SIZE', 262144); } #256K

Now, uncomment the following line and insert a random character string where its supposed to:

#if (!defined('WEAVE_SHA_SALT')) { define('WEAVE_SHA_SALT', 'salt goes here'); }

You might also want to adjust the default quota from 5 MB to maybe 20 MB. Uncomment this line and adjust it:

#if (!defined('WEAVE_QUOTA')) { define('WEAVE_QUOTA', 5120000); } #5M

Adjustment of the Registration Server

The configuration file for the registration server is located at /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0/weave_user_constants.php. The following lines need to be customised. First, insert the mysql password by replacing the string weave:

if (!defined('WEAVE_MYSQL_AUTH_PASS')) { define('WEAVE_MYSQL_AUTH_PASS', 'weave'); }

Next, uncomment the salt line as before and insert the same character string as before for the sync server:

#if (!defined('WEAVE_SHA_SALT')) { define('WEAVE_SHA_SALT', 'salt goes here'); }

If you like to have user registration protected by captcha (I assume you do), get an account at http://recaptcha.net/ and get yourself a global key. Adjust the following three line to suit your needs:

#if (!defined('WEAVE_REGISTER_USE_CAPTCHA')) { define('WEAVE_REGISTER_USE_CAPTCHA', 0); }
#if (!defined('RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY')) { define('RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY', '6LfWcwUAAAAAABnmLyhmgddYeJGdiRlo2MWSOpAl'); }
#if (!defined('RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY')) { define('RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY', '6LfWcwUAAAAAAHpjpBNSaxwLVQXQIG-S0Y6IG38O '); }

Apache2 Setup

This article assumes that you have your Apache 2 webserver SSL-secured and that you want the Weave server to be located at https://yourdomain.tld/weave/. Therefore, the following lines need to be inserted into your Apache 2 config (in Ubuntu that is /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default-ssl):

# ----- weave-server -----------------------------------------------------------------

  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  AllowOverride none
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all


Alias /weave/1.0 /var/www/weave/weave-synchronisation/1.1/index.php
Alias /weave/1.1 /var/www/weave/weave-synchronisation/1.1/index.php
Alias /weave/1.2 /var/www/weave/weave-synchronisation/1.1/index.php

Alias /weave/user/1.0 /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0/index.php
Alias /weave/user/1 /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0/index.php
Alias /weave/user /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0/index.php
Alias /weave/misc/1.0/captcha_html /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0/captcha.php
Alias /weave/misc/1/captcha_html /var/www/weave/weave-registration/1.0/captcha.php

Alias /weave /var/www/weave
# ----- /weave-server ----------------------------------------------------------------

Run

service apache2 reload

to make the changes work.

Client Setup

To use your brand new Weave server in your shiny Firefox 4, choose Set Up Sync... from the Tools menu. There, you will need to create a new account and enter your server address (https://yourdomain.tld/weave/) in the server field after choosing the use of a custom server over Firefox Sync Server.