Article Notifications User Guide: Setup and Configuration

Guide to setting up notifications.

Overview

By default, Phabricator delivers information about events (like users creating tasks or commenting on code reviews) through email and in-application notifications.

Phabricator can also be configured to deliver notifications in real time, by popping up a message in any open browser windows if something has happened or an object has been updated.

To enable real-time notifications:

• Set notification.enabled in your configuration to true.
• Run the notification server, as described below.

This document describes the process in detail.

Running the Aphlict Server

Phabricator implements realtime notifications using a Node.js server called "Aphlict". To run it:

• Install node.js.
• Run bin/aphlict (this script must be run as root).

The server must be able to listen on port 843 and port 22280 for Aphlict to work. You can change the latter port in the notification.client-uri config, but port 843 is used by Flash and can not be changed. In particular, if you're running in EC2, you need to unblock both of these ports in the server's security group configuration.

You may want to adjust these settings:

• notification.client-uri Externally-facing host and port that browsers will connect to in order to listen for notifications.
• notification.server-uri Internally-facing host and port that Phabricator will connect to in order to publish notifications.
• notification.log Log file location for the server.
• notification.user Non-root user to drop permissions to after binding to privileged ports.
• notification.pid Pidfile location used to stop any running server when aphlict is restarted.

In most cases, the defaults are appropriate, except that you should set notification.user to some valid system user so Aphlict isn't running as root.

Verifying Server Status

Access /notification/status/ to verify the server is operational. You should see a table showing stats like "uptime" and connection/message counts if the server is working. If it isn't working, you should see an error.

Testing the Server

The easiest way to test the server is to have two users login and comment on the same Maniphest Task or Differential Revision. They should receive in-browser notifications about the other user's activity.

Debugging Server Problems

You can run aphlict in the foreground to get output to your console:

phabricator/ $ sudo ./bin/aphlict --foreground

You can run support/aphlict/client/aphlict_test_client.php to connect to the Aphlict server from the command line. Messages the client receives will be printed to stdout.

You can set notification.debug in your configuration to get additional output in your browser.

The server also generates a log, by default in /var/log/aphlict.log. You can change this location by changing notification.log in your configuration. The log may contain information useful in resolving issues.