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StrongLink Installation Guide

Warning: Not for the faint of heart! This process will be streamlined over time. The eventual goal is to have native GUI apps and one-click web hosting. For now, it will take some elbow grease.

Dependencies

Most of the dependencies are included. You might need to install Git to clone the repository, or you can use GitHub's ZIP download.

Additional dependencies:

Ubuntu / Debian / Linux Mint: sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gobjc cmake automake autoconf libtool pkg-config make

Fedora / RedHat: sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ gcc-objc cmake automake autoconf libtool make

OS X: Install the developer tools (xcode-select --install) and Homebrew, then run brew install cmake automake autoconf libtool make

Windows: untested, probably needs work

You can substitute Clang for GCC if you prefer.

A semi-recent version of Node.js or io.js is required for the Node example scripts including sln-pipe.

Basic Installation

  1. git submodule init && git submodule update
  2. ./configure && make
  3. sudo make install
  4. mkdir /path/for/repo
  5. stronglink /path/for/repo

If you don't want to run make install, you will need to manually symlink or copy the res/blog directory into the repo directory before running. For example: cd /path/for/repo && ln -s /path/to/source/res/blog. Or you can install in a different path with PREFIX=/path make install.

Please report any problems through GitHub Issues!

Server Configuration

Right now there is no configuration interface whatsoever (not even a config file). That means you need to edit the code and recompile to change any settings.

  • Port number: set SERVER_PORT_RAW and SERVER_PORT_TLS in src/blog/main.c
  • Server access: set SERVER_ADDRESS in src/blog/main.c
  • Database backend: use DB=xx make where xx is empty (for MDB), leveldb, rocksdb, or hyper
  • Guest access: set repo->pub_mode from 0 to SLN_RDONLY or SLN_RDWR
  • Number of results per page: RESULTS_MAX in src/blog/Blog.c
  • Repo name: by default the name of the directory, but override reponame in src/blog/main.c
  • Internal algorithm: SLN_INTERNAL_ALGO in src/StrongLink.h (only change for new repos!)
  • Number of bcrypt rounds: BCRYPT_ROUNDS in src/util/pass.c (default 13)
  • Logging: SERVER_LOG_FILE in src/blog/main.c (stdout or NULL for disabled)
  • TLS ciphers and protocols: TLS_CIPHERS and TLS_PROTOCOLS in src/blog/main.c

Alternate Database Backends

StrongLink supports several database backends including MDB (the default), LevelDB, RocksDB, and HyperLevelDB. MDB is the smallest and most stable, and it has the best read performance (making it good for public-facing sites). LevelDB has better write performance and compression (so the database storage can take 1/5th the space).

RocksDB is not recommended but might be useful for specialized applications since it has a lot of tuning options. HyperLevelDB is not recommended since it's generally worse than LevelDB.

The backend can be chosen at build time by setting the DB environment variable (see above). This might become a runtime option in the future.

It's not too difficult to add support for any transactional (ACID) key-value store. Embedded, write-optimized stores and distributed stores are the most interesting.

MDB and LevelDB are included in the Git repository. Other backends need to be installed separately to be used.

Client Configuration

Clients (for example the Node example scripts) are configured through a JSON file located at ~/.config/stronglink/client.json. That config file looks something like this:

{
	"repos": {
		"main": {
			"url": "http://localhost:8000/",
			"session": "[...]"
		}
	}
}

Currently there is no interface for managing session keys. The only way to get one is by logging into the blog interface using a web browser or a tool like cURL and checking the cookie that is sent back.

You can set up any number of repositories and the names (like "main" above) are up to you.

You can also use URLs instead of pre-configured names. The session will be null (public access).

What can I do with it?

Once you install StrongLink, you will have an empty repository, which most people won't find very interesting. Here are some simple things you can do to play with it.

Sync from my website using the sln-pipe tool
This is at least a cool demo even if it's not very useful. After configuring a local repository named "main" as above:

# Sync everything
./client/node-sln-client/examples/sln-pipe https://bentrask.com main
# Sync files matching a specific query
./client/node-sln-client/examples/sln-pipe https://bentrask.com main "query"

Import files
You can import arbitrary files into the repository. You can tag and search them, although the interface/tools for this are currently kind of lacking. Full support is provided for plain text and Markdown files.

./client/node-sln-client/examples/sln-import main /path/to/files

Add tags
Simple tagging is possible, although this isn't very friendly yet.

./client/node-sln-client/examples/sln-add-tags main tag "query"

Look up a file by content hash on the command line
The sln-cat tool just takes a hash link and writes the content to standard output.

# Load a file from my site
./client/node-sln-client/examples/sln-cat https://bentrask.com hash://sha256/6834b5440fc88e00a1e7fec197f9f42c72fd92600275ba1afc7704e8e3bcd1ee
# Load a file from your own repo
./client/node-sln-client/examples/sln-cat main hash://sha256/address-of-your-file

Write a custom importer
If you want to import your notes from an existing notetaking system, you might be able to export them and reimport them as files (see above), or you might need to write a new script. This should be pretty easy and the API is documented here. Also take a look at the sln-import and sln-blog-reimport scripts.

Start writing notes
StrongLink will be most useful to you if you use it for notetaking or blogging.

You can set up multiple repositories and sync notes between them. If you want bi-directional sync, you will need to run sln-pipe in each direction.

Please remember StrongLink is still alpha-quality software, and while it's generally pretty reliable, it's still very incomplete. The sln-pipe tool will eventually be replaced with a much faster native sync system, there will be an interface for seeing and modifying tags, etc.

Feedback

If you need any help installing, configuring or using StrongLink, feel free to open a GitHub issue, even if it's not a "bug" per se. Updates or corrections on the documentation are also welcome.