HumHub - social network software

[nebulon]

https://www.humhub.org/en

[A Former User]

@nebulon this looks like a good choice, did anyone look into it?

[scooke]

@YurkshireLad I've played around with it before but was prompted by your question to install it in a LAMP app. Wow. I did not know that it has modules that can expand its functionality, and two of those modules, which are free, are a Jitsi Meet module and an Etherpad module. Note, the Etherpad module needs to link to an existing etherpad somewhere, so it isn't as awesome as the built-in Jitsi Meet! (I should note that the Etherpad app offered by Cloudron also can use a video chat module.)
Anyway, visually it hearkens back to groupware from ages ago, but it looks pretty handy. And not to slow either.

[ruihildt]

Main drawback from me was the lack of an Android/iOS/PWA app.

Users now expects to have those for social networks.

[A Former User]

@ruihildt said in HumHub - social network software:

Main drawback from me was the lack of an Android/iOS/PWA app.

Users now expects to have those for social networks.

Good point, but which alternatives have apps?

[A Former User]

I think HumHub supports LDAP out of the box so it should be easy (!) to port to Cloudron.

[ctrl]

@A-Former-User said in HumHub - social network software:

@nebulon this looks like a good choice, did anyone look into it?

We've been using it in production since a couple of years now. Currently our instance runs on a shared webspace at Uberspace7.

Originally our main goal was to create some kind of a basecamp or starting point for all of our concerns. As an example we created a space (topic) for each of our projects. Everything related to a project is linked and lives there and serves as a project hub. Very much everything like repos, wikis, external resources, briefings, documents, discussions can be found in such a space. It used to work very sufficient for our needs.

Basically and to some extent we used to use it in a similar manner like one would use Atlassian Confluence. But I'd say that is just one use case. It's a little jack of all trades in its own field but not a specialized application that does one thing very well - IMHO of course.

@scooke said in HumHub - social network software:

Anyway, visually it hearkens back to groupware from ages ago, but it looks pretty handy. And not to slow either.

Yes.

[yusf]

@A-Former-User said in HumHub - social network software:

HumHub supports LDAP out of the box so it should be easy (!) to port to Cloudron.

Only HumHub Professional Edition supports LDAP, so alas no.

[ctrl]

@yusf
The professional edition supports extended LDAP (Mapping), but basic LDAP authentication seems to be available in the community edition, too.

I attached a recent screenshot from the backend of our instance.

Would it be possible to test authentication over LDAP by using the LDAP backend provided by Cloudron?

[fbartels]

@ctrl said in HumHub - social network software:

Would it be possible to test authentication over LDAP by using the LDAP backend provided by Cloudron?

No, not really as the ldap is only available internally to apps that have it enabled.

The lamp app however seems to have ldap enabled by default so one could do a manual installation if Humhub into it.

[jdaviescoates]

I think this is probably the best current open source self-hosted alternative to Facebook Groups, would be great to have it on Cloudron!

[fbartels]

I recently talked to the CEO of Humhub and also made him aware of Cloudron and this topic. He said that they are currently busy with investigating ways to automate deployments in container scenarios and once that is solved they would be open to collaborate on an app for Cloudron.

[jdaviescoates]

@fbartels nice one, keep us posted!

[kaxline]

I was able to migrate a Humhub instance to Cloudron inside the LAMP app. If anyone comes here wanting to do the same and is running into trouble, feel free to ping me.

[Sam_uk]

@nebulon I'd be potentially interested in this. How much work would it be do you think?

[Sam_uk]

@jdaviescoates @fbartels Yes I'm interested in this too.

[doodlemania2]

@kaxline I might could package this for you if you send me the instructions for how you did it in LAMP stack!

[kaxline]

@doodlemania2 Ah OK, cool! I'll see if I can write down my process.

[jdaviescoates]

@kaxline said in HumHub - social network software:

I'll see if I can write down my process.

Did you manage to do that? I'd love to be able to use HumHub on Cloudon

Thanks!

[scooke]

@jdaviescoates Does it not install easily in the LAMP app?

[jdaviescoates]

@scooke I don't know, I've not tried it (I've not tried installing on anything on LAMP stack because in my eyes that kinda defeats the purpose of Cloudron although it's great it's an option)

[Sam_uk]

@kaxline Did you get a chance to do this yet?

[Lealda]

Many local companies are adopting it, any news about being added?

[scooke]

@lealda Really? Could you share some links please? I'm interested in how it looks, how it is presented, etc.

[Sam_uk]

@doodlemania2 Would it be a lot of work to start from scratch?

[Lealda]

@sam_uk said in HumHub - social network software:

@doodlemania2 Would it be a lot of work to start from scratch?

I am trying to run it, but cron is failing and some other errors. I noticed that on docker they use 1.6.
https://hub.docker.com/r/mriedmann/humhub

[doodlemania2]

@sam_uk well it could be - if you can share the instructions for how to install it on LAMP app, I might could back port that into a custom full blown app.

[Sam_uk]

@doodlemania2 I have no experience of running it I'm afraid.

The Lamp instructions are here: https://docs.humhub.org/docs/admin/server-setup/

[Lealda]

@doodlemania2
It would be wonderful if you could.

[Sam_uk]

I wonder if Gitcoin could be useful for app bounties?

I posted here: https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/4951/gitcoin-for-app-bounties

I couldn't commit to putting funds in from my organisation yet, but it's something I could explore if there was a transparent way of handling payments.

[Sam_uk]

@jdaviescoates @doodlemania2 @kaxline Has anyone done any work on Humhub? I'm pretty keen and may be able to pay if I had an idea of how much work it would be.

[doodlemania2]

@sam_uk I'm going to try next week when things at work calm down a bit.

[Sam_uk]

@doodlemania2 Great stuff, thanks..

[doodlemania2]

All - I wanted to report back and not just be a flake - I've been saddled with a crazy go nuts project at work and won't be able to work on this for a while. I've really very sorry, I had gotten everything loaded and was about to start

I hope another app_dev person can pick this up!

[Sam_uk]

@doodlemania2 Ah no worries, thanks for letting us know.

I wonder if @ATRILAHIJI could take a look at it and estimate the work involved?

[Sam_uk]

@sam_uk Just to update @atrilahiji is going to take a look at this one over the next couple of weeks.

[atridad]

I have it "working" as in it deploys just fine, but it will need manual DB, SMTP, and LDAP config at the moment.

They seem to prefer to route everyone through web UI configuration instead of easy CLI config. Looks like I gotta find what DB entries the config makes and do it manually

[doodlemania2]

@atrilahiji Make sure to take advantage of the environment vars inside the container for all CR apps which provide you with full connection details of all associated resources from your manifest.

[atridad]

@doodlemania2 Yeah for sure, I'm going to make use of those.

[atridad]

I got permission from @Sam_uk to make the repo public:
https://git.atrilahiji.dev/Alt-Ron/cloudron-humhub-app

Todo:

1. Properly address the update process
2. See if its possible to config LDAP and SMTP automatically (this is the part I am really struggling with right now.

[fbartels]

@atrilahiji said in HumHub - social network software:

this is the part I am really struggling with right now

Did you already have a look at https://github.com/humhub/docker/blob/master/docker-entrypoint.sh ?

[atridad]

@fbartels Wowee nope. Good catch lol

EDIT: You know, I have no clue why it never occurred to me that I can look for a docker version of the app.

[atridad]

I have finished getting things automated (sort of). The DB is set up on the first install, and the LDAP and SMTP configuration is set up after a re-start (and is updated after every restart).

[atridad]

Encountering a snag:

The ONLYOFFICE integration seems to fail to send the JWT token to an ONLYOFFICE instance. My best guess rn is its an issue with apache -> nginx -> ONLYOFFICE. Is anyone else more familiar with this sort of reverse proxy issue?

Edit: Fixed it. Testing and pushing a new release.

Edit 2: I am tempted to leave updating to the app, similar to Wordpress Developer Edition. I auto install the Updater module. If @staff want to take a look at this let me know. Repo is here: https://git.atridad.dev/CTPR/cloudron-humhub-app. It was a sponsored app. If you need an instance to take a look at it let me know via a direct message and I can let you in @staff.

[girish]

@atrilahiji ah, great stuff! Ideally, the app shouldn't update itself and the code should be readonly. Is that possible? It's best to keep updates consistent i.e from Cloudron dashboard.

[atridad]

@girish I can definitely try. Much like Moodle, it has a lot of plugins or "modules" people use. I think in this instance they are all in a single directory though. I'll take a look.

[girish]

@atrilahiji thanks! let me know if you hit any bumps and I can take a look as well.

[atridad]

@girish Sure, thanks! I'll shuffle some things around in the package and see what I can do. My hope is I can just symlink everything that is needed in a migration to /app/data, which will also make updates a lot easier.

[atridad]

@girish Actually, I just thought of something. If the modules folder is symlinked and the app is expecting to write to the modules folder in /app/code, it will error right? I imagine it wouldn't just look at the actual folder in /app/data. The trouble here is there is a "module store" of sorts built right into the app.

[girish]

@atrilahiji maybe you can symlink /app/code/modules to /app/data/modules and that way it will become writable.

To give a high level idea, let's say humhub app comes with some default modules. Then, in Dockerfile, you would move them to some other location like:

RUN mv /app/code/modules /app/code/modules_orig && ln -s /app/data/modules /app/code/modules

Then in start.sh:

mkdir -p /app/code/modules
cp -r /app/code/modules_orig/* /app/data/modules

In many apps, instead of the blind copy above, we try to symlink each "module". So, there will be a symlink from /app/data/modules/x to /app/code/modules_orig/x . This sometimes works or not depending on the app. But hopefully you get the idea!

[atridad]

@girish my confusion here is if the app still tries to write to /app/code/modules it would hit permissions issues no?

[atridad]

@girish Running into issues here: https://docs.humhub.org/docs/admin/installation/#file-permissions

There appears to be no way to configure where Hubhub looks for those files, so it will just keep trying to write to the symlink in /app/code and fail. In fact, you cant even get the site to load after installation without having the assets directory writable. This is something it has to do on startup. I can still make an update script for this, but I think it will have to sit in /app/data just based on how this was written. Unless I'm missing something?

[fbartels]

@atrilahiji said in HumHub - social network software:

if the app still tries to write to /app/code/modules it would hit permissions issues no?

no, that should not be the case (at least when the symlinked dir has proper permissions for this).

[atridad]

@fbartels Weird... it seemed to think it didn't have permission to write...

[atridad]

[scooke]

@atrilahiji Never stop never stopping! You're doing great!

[fbartels]

@atrilahiji can you push your current wip? I'd like to give the code a look.

[atridad]

@fbartels Sure thing: https://git.atridad.dev/alt-ron/cloudron-humhub-app/-/tree/harden-app-code

Thanks! I'm convinced this is 1) impossible or 2) something so simple yet I have not noticed it somehow

[fbartels]

@atrilahiji for me this works with

➜  cloudron-humhub-app git:(harden-app-code) git rev-parse --short HEAD
0b5df1c

Steps I tried:

• Install app (in debug mode, but only so that i could override and start the start.sh manually)
• finished Humhub installation
• went into admin and selected modules
• installed a module
• activated a module
• no php error can be seen

[atridad]

@fbartels Huh so you manually started start.sh from the terminal in recovery mode? I get the exact same error doing that. Did you do something else to modify the permissions?