Ubuntu 10.10 Server with Gitorious and Redmine
The server Installation
To start go to http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/download and get the ISO image of ubuntu server 11.10 (64bit or 32bit depending on the architecture of your machine) then either burn the ISO on an empty disk or create a bootable USB Flash drive, using either Linux Live USB creator or any other piece of software of your choice, if your system supports booting from a flash drive.
As soon as you boot from the media you will come across the language selection screen, select English and continue.
On the next screen select Install Ubuntu Server,
At the next screens you will once again get asked to select a language, choose English. In the Select your Location screen you select the location of your server, this has to do with the time zone.
If you get asked to Configure Locales choose United States – en_US.UTF8 and continue. At the Configure the Keyboard screen select NO and in the Country origin of the Keyboard list go and select English (US). Next in the Keyboard Layout select once again English(US).
Next in our installation is the network configuration. You will be asked to enter a hostname for the system, you can add a name for the system depending on your network.
Next there will be the Configure the clock screen. You just have to confirm your timezone (It should be the correct since you choose the country previously).
Now we have to partition our disk(s). We will select the manual partitioning.
In our example we have 3 physical drives available. We will configure them using the Logical Volume Manager. Select the physical drive. In ca
If you get a message saying You have selected an entire device to partition…. select Yes. This will be probably be the same for every drive. If the drive already has partitions you will have to remove them before proceeding. At some point you should see under the first drive some text saying pri/log DrivesSpace GB FREE SPACE go there and press Enter. On the Partition disks screen select Create a new partition and press enter.
When asked for the New partition size write something around 0.6GB, this will be reserved for the /boot partition, and press continue. The Type for the new partition should be Primary
Then you should get across the following: Select the Use as: line, press enter and Select on the menu the Ext4 journaling filesystem, on the Mount Point select /boot and set the bootable flag to on. Then go to Done Setting up the partition to finish with the boot partition.
After finishing with the /boot partition there should be a line under the first drive looking like this #1 primary 600.0 MB f ext4 /boot and the line containing the word FREE SPACE should be right under this. You also have to create Empty Partitions for every single drive you want to use for the Volume Group.
At this point you should go to the option saying Configure the Logical Volume Manager. In the screen with the Summary of current LVM configuration all the values should be zero. On the LVM configuration action: you should create the Create volume group. Give a name to the volume group, something like server_vg.
When you get asked to select the devices for the new volume group. Select the other drives along with the empty space in the first drive.
After selecting the drives you can continue. the new volume group should contain all your drives. Write the changes and continue.
At this point the summary of the LVM configuration should have 3 Used physical volumes and one Volume Group. The next step is to create logical volumes inside the server_vg or whatever is the name you choose. Select Create logical volume, then select the volume group.
At this point you will get asked for the name of the Logical volume, generally I use as a name for each volume the name of the Mount point that will used for the volume.
The first logical volume will be used for the swap partition. So I will name it swap. When asked for the Logical Volume size use 1.5 times the amount of the server’s RAM.
Then you have to create Logical volumes for at least root(/) and (/home), I used about 10GB for the root logical volume of my server and the rest for /home.
I also used a separate logical volume for /var, to keep it separate from the root partition, because there resides the web root folder, along with my git repositories etc. For the /var partition I used 20GB.
So we have the following: swap – 1.5*RAM, root – 10GB, var – 20GB and home – the rest of the available space.
At the end of the creation of the logical volumes if you choose Display configuration details as an LVM configuration action you should get a screen that looks like the following.
At this point select Finish, that should take you back to the overview of partitions and mount points. There you should now see the Logical Volumes above the physical ones. At this point we have to format the partitions – logical volumes and assign mount points like we did with the boot partition. To do so go to the numbered entry underneath each volume and press enter. At the Use as: you have to select Ext4 Journaling file system for every single partition except the Swap (for swap it should be swap area). Remember we have named each logical volume after the mount point it is going to host. So it will be easy to select mount points for each volume. /home is for the home volume, / is for the root one, /var for the var. After finishing with the setting for each partition you should select Done setting up the partition to return to the overview.
When you are done with every single partition select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk, to continue. You will then be asked to write the changes to disk, select Yes and continue.
At this point the installation of the base system will start. When that finishes you will asked to create a new user. First you will be asked for the Fullname, then the username, then the password (twice). You will also be asked if you want to encrypt you home directory, that’s up to you, I usually leave it unencrypted. Then it is the proxy configuration, probably you will have to leave it blank and continue.
After a while you will get asked how you want to manage upgrades on the system. I usually prefer to do the updates on my own, so I prefer No automatic updates. Then will be prompted to select software to be installed, installed, ignore every single option and continue we will install everything needed on our own.
When you get prompted for the GRUB installation select Yes, to install the boot loader to the Master Boot Record. At this point you should get an Installation complete message. Remove the installation media and press Continue. The system should reboot at this point.
After the boot process is finished you will be presented with the login prompt, use your username and password to login.
At this point you should first do the following to update the installation to the latest packages.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
At this point we are going to install the OpenSSH Server in order to have shell access to our server.
sudo apt-get install ssh
After the installation of the OpenSSH server we have to edit the ssh daemon’s configuration file and change the Port from 22 (the default ssh port) to some other port of our selection. This is done for security reasons. This way you will avoid lot’s of automated brute force attacks that target the default ssh port.
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Now it’s time to restart the sshd to do so.
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
At this point you should be able to connect to the server from another machine using an ssh client (on windows I prefer using Putty).
Installing Apache, MySQL and phpMyAdmin
To install the apache webserver we have to run the following:
sudo apt-get install apache2
After this we have to install php5:
sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5
and then we install the mysql server:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
During the installation you will be asked to provide the password for the root user of the database. This password is the administrative password for the MySQL database. You will need it for the administration of the MySQL installation, like creating new users/tables editing privileges etc.
After this we are gonna install phpMyAdmin for the easy management of the database.
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin
At some point during the installation you will get asked for the automatic configuration of phpMyAdmin. During this you will have to use the MySQL root (administrative user) password to allow the installer to configure automatically phpMyAdmin. After this you will also get asked for a password for the phpMyAdmin administrative user.
Dynamic IP and Dynamic-DNS
If you use a dynamic dns service like DynDNS or no-ip, with the free service you can get up to two different hostnames per account. Since gitorious needs its own hostname you can use own for gitorious and the second one for a normal site that will also host redmine as a sub-uri and phpmyadmin etc. If you use a router with DD-WRT or running INADYN on the server it self you can configure it to update the two hostnames to your connection’s IP.
To do so in DD-WRT you have to go to Setup then DDNS there add you username – password and in the Host Name field add the following “hostname1 – a hostname2“, now DD-WRT should update both the hostnames with your IP every time it changes. With the usage of the virtual hosts in apache you you can now use the hostname1 for redmine, phpmyadmin, and the website and hostname2 for gitorious.
Preparing for Gitorious – Installing Git System and Various Essentials
First we have to install the git related packages, to do so we have to run the following command:
sudo apt-get install git-core git-svn
After this we are gonna install the MySQL client along with the development libraries. We are gonna need these for the Gitorious installation later.
sudo apt-get install mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev
All the following packages are gonna be needed at some point during the Gitorious installations so we are gonna install them all before starting the installation.
sudo apt-get install apg build-essential libpcre3 libpcre3-dev postfix make zlib1g zlib1g-dev sudo apt-get install libonig-dev libyaml-dev geoip-bin libgeoip-dev libgeoip1 sudo apt-get install imagemagick libmagickwand-dev libmagick++-dev zip unzip sudo apt-get install libxslt-dev libxml2-dev sudo apt-get install libssl0.9.8 sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev apache2-prefork-dev libapr1-dev libaprutil1-dev sudo apt-get install uuid uuid-dev openjdk-6-jre
Afterwards we will install memcached and add it to the default running services of our server.
sudo apt-get install memcached sudo update-rc.d memcached defaults
Gitorious setup and configuration.
Ruby Enterprise Edition
At this point we have to get and install the Ruby Enterprise Edition (REE).
Before we start with the installation we are going to create a folder inside our home folder. There we are going to download and unzip all the resources need in this guide.
cd ~/ mkdir tmp cd tmp
Since we are already inside the temporary directory now we can go to the website of REE and get the latest version. At the point of this installation the latest edition was v1.8.7-2011.03.
To download REE we have to go to the terminal, and download the latest version (get the URL from the download site) using wget.
wget http://rubyenterpriseedition.googlecode.com/files/ruby-enterprise_1.8.7-2011.03_amd64_ubuntu10.04.deb
In order to install REE we have to use dpkg,
sudo dpkg -i ruby-enterprise_1.8.7-2011.03_amd64_ubuntu10.04.deb
In case you downloaded a different, newer version just replace the filename with that of the one you downloaded.
After installing REE you have to append a few lines at the bottom of the /etc/profile file. In order to do so you have to open /etc/profile with an editor (I am gonna use nano) having administrative privilegdes,
sudo nano /etc/profile
and append the following,
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib" export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib -Wl,-rpath,/usr/local/lib"
Afterwards we have also to prepend the following to the /etc/ld/so.conf file.
sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf
to open the file and then add to the top of the file the following:
/usr/local/lib include ld.so.conf.d/*.conf
The next step after this is to run the following:
sudo su source /etc/profile sudo ldconfig
Ruby Gems Installation
At this point we are going to get and install Ruby gems. For this we will use again the temporary directory we created before.
cd ~/tmp wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/73882/rubygems-1.4.2.tgz tar xvzf rubygems-1.4.2.tgz cd rubygems-1.4.2 sudo ruby setup.rb
The following gems will be needed for Gitorious so we are gonna install them,
sudo gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc -v 0.8.7 rake sudo gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc -v 1.1.0 daemons sudo gem install -b --no-ri --no-rdoc rmagick passenger bundler
Sphinx Search Server Installation
After this we are gonna install the sphinx search server. If you check the website, the recommended version is the Beta of v2.0 or generally some newer version, but we are gonna use version 0.9.9 because that’s the one used in every guide, and it seems to be working fine. (To be honest I didn’t test the system using a newer version so I have no idea if it is working or not). (before downloading the file change in the tmp folder cd ~/tmp).
wget http://sphinxsearch.com/files/sphinx-0.9.9.tar.gz tar xvfz sphinx-0.9.9.tar.gz cd sphinx-0.9.9/ ./configure --prefix=/usr make sudo make install
Install Apache ActiveMQ
If you check the various guides on the net you will find out that many use as an alternative the stompserver. In our case we will use the Apache ActiveMQ as the messaging system.
Visit the ActiveMQ download page and search for the latest version. Go in the tmp folder we created (cd ~/tmp), copy the url and go to the terminal. There you have to:
wget ftp://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/apache//activemq/apache-activemq/5.5.1/apache-activemq-5.5.1-bin.tar.gz sudo tar xzvf apache-activemq-5.5.1-bin.tar.gz -C /usr/local/ sudo sh -c 'echo "export ACTIVEMQ_HOME=/usr/local/apache-activemq-5.5.1" >> /etc/activemq.conf' sudo sh -c 'echo "export JAVA_HOME=/usr/" >> /etc/activemq.conf' sudo chown -R activemq /usr/local/apache-activemq-5.5.1/data
After this you will have to edit the ActiveMQ configuration xml to prepare it for our Gitorious Installation. To do so:
sudo nano /usr/local/apache-activemq-5.5.1/conf/activemq.xml
Inside the xml file find the <transportConnectors> tags and add the following line inside:
<transportConnector name="stomp" uri="stomp://0.0.0.0:61613"/>
Then we have to create a symbolic link of the ActiveMQ init script inside the /etc/init.d:
sudo ln -sf /usr/local/apache-activemq-5.5.1/bin/activemq /etc/init.d/
Make it executable:
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/activemq
And finally add it to to the services with default priority so it starts when the machine starts.
sudo update-rc.d activemq defaults
Getting and configuring Gitorious
First we have to create the folder that will host the Gitorious installation inside the /var/www
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/gitorious
After this we have to create a new user for git. To do so:
sudo adduser --system --home /var/www/gitorious/ --no-create-home --group --shell /bin/bash git
At this point we will clone the gitorious repository to the folder we previously created.
sudo git clone git://gitorious.org/gitorious/mainline.git /var/www/gitorious
Then we have to give the ownership of the gitorious folder to the git user and then change the rights to the directory.
sudo chown git:git /var/www/gitorious/ sudo chmod -R g+sw /var/www/gitorious/
Afterwards we have to go to the gitorious directory:
cd /var/www/gitorious/
And then run the following:
sudo git submodule init sudo git submodule update
Then we have to create a symbolic link of the gitorious in the binary path:
sudo ln -s /var/www/gitorious/script/gitorious /usr/bin
Then we have to create some folders inside the gitorious folder, and change the rights:
sudo mkdir -p tmp/pids sudo chmod ug+x script/* sudo chmod -R g+w config/ log/ public/ tmp/
Configuring the rest of the services
First we have to edit the git-daemon init script:
sudo nano /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/git-daemon
In the file search for the line that starts with RUBY_HOME= and change it’s existing value, if it has one with the your ruby installation path. If you installed ruby enterprise edition as suggested, from the .deb package then it is probably in /usr/local.
RUBY_HOME="/usr/local"
You have to do the same for the git-poller script, it is in the same directory as the git-daemon.
Then we have to create the symbolic links of the following scripts in the /etc/init.d/
sudo ln -s /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/git-ultrasphinx /etc/init.d/git-ultrasphinx sudo ln -s /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/git-daemon /etc/init.d/git-daemon sudo ln -s /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/git-poller /etc/init.d/git-poller
Next we have to make the scripts executable.
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/git-ultrasphinx sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/git-daemon sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/git-poller
And then we have to add them to the services with default priority.
sudo update-rc.d git-ultrasphinx defaults sudo update-rc.d git-daemon defaults sudo update-rc.d git-poller defaults
Next we have to get in the gitorious folder and install the bundle:
cd /var/www/gitorious/ sudo bundle install
Afterwards we have to create the directories that will host the git repositories along with the tarballs for gitorious and give the ownership to git (user/group).
sudo mkdir /var/git cd /var/git sudo mkdir repositories sudo mkdir tarballs sudo mkdir tarballs-work</pre> sudo chown -R git:git /var/git/
Check the ownership of the gitorious folder, if the owner is not the git and the git group then
sudo chown -R git:git /var/www/gitorious/
Preparing for the SSH authentication
Then we have to prepare the server for the SSH authentication. To do so we have to get logged in as the git user.
sudo su git mkdir ~/.ssh chmod 700 ~/.ssh touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys
Configuring Gitorious
Next we have to configure Gitorious itself. I supposed you are still logged as the git user, if not do so (sudo su git).
Go in the Gitorious home directory (cd ~/) and copy the sample configuration files to create the new configurations files.
cp config/database.sample.yml config/database.yml cp config/gitorious.sample.yml config/gitorious.yml cp config/broker.yml.example config/broker.yml
The next step will be to edit the config/gitorious.yml file, but before doing so we have to use apg -m 64 on the terminal in order to create the cookie secret code. Copy the generated code to some text editor and remove the newlines, so it will be a single line string.
Now we can proceed with the file editing. To so use nano config/gitorious.yml (Remember you should be logged as git and in the user’s home directory).
Once inside the gitorioys.yml configuration file, you have to search for the line that starts with the production: string. This is the section of the configuration file that interests us.
In gitorious_host: you should put the host name used for your gitorious instance eg. gitorious.example.com
Note: The repository paths should be in /var/git we created previously so there will be no need to edit it in the configuration file, unless you decided to change the path.
In cookie_secret: you will have to paste the output of the apg -m 64 command you kept in the text editor previously.
Next you have to go to the is_gitorious_dot_org: false line. Uncomment it and make sure it is false. Also if you don’t want your repositories to be available to public you have to uncomment the public_mode: false, if it is not false you will have to make it. You can also search through the configuration file and find if you want to change any other options, they are pretty much well commented so you will have no trouble figuring out what each one does. You can also remove or comment the whole test: section.
The next step will be the to create and migrate the database. Before we do anything at all we have to create the gitorious user and the related table in our database. Most people prefer to do so through the terminal in their guides, if you want to do so you can follow one of the links in the end to find how to do so, if you don’t already know. My own approach will be using phpMyAdmin.
Go to the phpMyAdmin page (it should be something like hostname/phpmyadmin or serverip/phpmyadmin). Log in and then go to the tab Priviledges. Once in there click on the Add new User option.
In the field User Name: you should put gitorious, in the Host: field you have to select localhost and generate a random password. Keep the generated password noted somewhere because we are going to need it in the database.yml configuration file. Then find the Database for user section and select Create database with same name and grant all privileges. Finally click on the create user button to create our new database user.
Now we have to return to the terminal and open the database.yml configuration file for editing (nano config/database.yml). Once open search for the production: section and edit it so it looks like this:
production: adapter: mysql database: gitorious username: gitorious password: the password we kept previously host: localhost encoding: utf8
Now we can finally exit from the git user (just type exit and you should be back to your normal user). Then change to the gitorious folder (cd /var/www/gitorious) once there run the following:
sudo rake db:setup RAILS_ENV=production
Then we have to create the administrative user for gitorious.
sudo env RAILS_ENV=production ruby script/create_admin
As soon as we create the administrative user we have to get the ultrasphinx running. To do so we have to run the following (we should be in the /var/www/gitorious):
rake ultrasphinx:bootstrap RAILS_ENV=production
If you by any case get the following error:
ERROR: index 'main': sql_range_query: Unknown column 'base_tags.name' in 'field list'
You have to got to app/models/project.rb and replace the following,
s.collect(:name, :from => “ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag”, :as => “category”
with this,
s.collect(‘tags.name’, :as => “category”
Also there is a chance that you will also get a message about the “address” being deprecated. In that case you will have to do the following,
sudo nano config/ultrasphinx/default.base
In the default.base search for the searchhd text and replace the word address with listen. After this the bootstrap command should run without issues.
Then we have to change the rights for a few folders and files (some of the folders there should already have the proper rights).
sudo chmod -R g+w config/environment.rb script/poller log tmp sudo chmod ug+x script/poller
Then we have to add a cron job for ultrasphinx. To do so we have to type sudo crontab -e and add inside the following,
* * * * * cd /var/www/gitorious &&/usr/local/bin/rake ultrasphinx:index RAILS_ENV=production
Configuring Logrotate
Go inside the gitorious directory (cd /var/www/gitorious) and copy the logrotate template and make it executable,
sudo cp doc/templates/ubuntu/gitorious-logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/gitorious sudo chmod +x /etc/logrotate.d/gitorious
Install the Passenger module
Now we have to install the apache passenger module to do so:
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
At some point the passenger installation will generate something like the following,
Please edit your Apache configuration file, and add these lines: LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so PassengerRoot /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9 PassengerRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby
Keep it noted for a moment because we will need it for the passenger module configuration files.
First we are going to create the .conf file, to do so type sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf. Inside the empty file add the PassengerRoot and PassengerRuby lines and save the file. It should look something like the following,
PassengerRoot /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9 PassengerRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby
Then we are going to create the .load file, to do so type sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load. Inside the empty file we should add the LoadModule line. It should look something like the following,
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
Note: the paths or the versions may differ so adjust accordingly.
Then we have to create some apache modules:
sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo a2enmod deflate sudo a2enmod passenger sudo a2enmod expires sudo a2enmod ssl
At this points we have to disable the default apache site if it is enabled,
a2dissite default
and then restart apache sudo /etc/init.d/apache restart.
Then we have to append the following to ~/.bashrc as the git user (sudo su git).
#User specific aliases and functions export RUBY_HOME=/usr/local export GEM_HOME=$RUBY_HOME/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems
Finally we have the apache configuration for gitorious. We will start with the configuration for the port 80. Type in the terminal sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/gitorious. In the empty file created add something that looks like the following,
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName gitorious.example.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/gitorious/public
ErrorLog /var/www/gitorious/log/gitorious-error.log
CustomLog /var/www/gitorious/log/gitorious-access.log combined
<IfModule mod_xsendfile.c>
XSendFile on
XSendFileAllowAbove on
</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>
Now we can activate the the gitorious site with the command a2ensite gitorious.
Then we have to create the apache configuration for the port 443 (the SSL connection) to do so go type sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/gitorious-ssl. In the empty file created you have to add something that looks like the following
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName gitorious.example.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/gitorious/public
ErrorLog /var/www/gitorious/log/gitorious-ssl-error.log
CustomLog /var/www/gitorious/log/gitorious-ssl-access.log combined
<IfModule mod_xsendfile.c>
XSendFile on
XSendFileAllowAbove on
</IfModule>
# SSL Engine Switch:
# Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
SSLEngine on
# A self-signed (snakeoil) certificate can be created by installing
# the ssl-cert package. See
# /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz for more info.
# If both key and certificate are stored in the same file, only the
# SSLCertificateFile directive is needed.
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
# SSL Protocol Adjustments:
# The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
# approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
# the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
# approach you can use one of the following variables:
# o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
# This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
# SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received. This violates
# the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
# this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
# mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
# o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
# This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
# SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
# alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
# practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
# this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
# works correctly.
# Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
# keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
# keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
# Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
# their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
# "force-response-1.0" for this.
BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
# MSIE 7 and newer should be able to use keepalive
BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
After saving the file you can activate the gitorious ssl site by typing a2ensite gitorious-ssl then you have to restart apache in order to load the new configuration with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart.
At this point you may also want to disable the password access for the git user, to do so type sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add the following line at the end of the file:
Match User git PasswordAuthentication no
Then you can reload the SSH configuration with sudo /etc/init.d/ssh reload. Now the git user should be accessible only by using public-private key combinations.
Installing Redmine
Previously in the guide we created a tmp folder in the home folder, if you kept the directory change in it cd ~/tmp (if you deleted or just started the guide from this point you can create it before changing in it by mkdir ~/tmp). After changing in the tmp folder you can open your browser and go to RubyForge to find the link to the latest version of redmine. In my case the latest version was the 1.2.1. Copy the link location and then go to the terminal type the wget command and paste it after the command. After downloading the file un-tar it and go in the redmine folder.
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/75097/redmine-1.2.1.tar.gz tar -xvzf redmine-1.2.1.tar.gz cd redmine-1.2.1/
At this point we have to create the redmine user in the database.
Go to the phpMyAdmin page (it should be something like hostname/phpmyadmin or serverip/phpmyadmin). Log in and then go to the tab Priviledges. Once in there click on the Add new User option.
In the field User Name: you should put redmine, in the Host: field you have to select localhost and generate a random password. Keep the generated password noted somewhere because we are going to need it. Then find the Database for user section and select Create database with same name and grant all privileges. Finally click on the create user button to create our new database user.
Then we have to copy the example configuration file in order to create the database.yml file.
cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
And then we have to edit the new database configuration file so it looks like this,
production: adapter: mysql database: redmine host: localhost username: redmine password: The randomly generated password for the redmine user encoding: utf8
At this point we are gonna install the needed gems for redmine to run properly, so you have to install,
sudo gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc -v=0.4.2 i18n sudo gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc -v=1.1.0 rack
Next we have to move the redmine folder inside /opt, to do so:
sudo mkdir /opt/redmine cd /opt/redmine sudo cp -r ~/tmp/redmine-1.2.1 .
Then get inside the new redmine directory it should be /opt/redmine/redmine-1.2.1 and run the following to generate the session store, migrate the database and load the default data.
rake generate_session_store sudo RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate sudo RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:load_default_data
During the default data loading if you get asked for a language, accept the default language (English). Then we have to change ownership on a few folders in the redmine folder, and change the rights on a few more.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data files log tmp public/plugin_assets sudo chmod -R 755 files log tmp public/plugin_assets
The passenger module should already be loaded since we installed Gitorious previously.
Now we have to configure the virtual host for redmine. I have to note at this point that Redmine will be configured in the hostname with the phpmyadmin etc.
In the virtual host configuration you have to add the following lines:
PassengerAppRoot /opt/redmine/redmine-1.2/ RailsBaseURI /redmine RailsEnv production
Then we have to create a symbolic link for redmine public directory in the webroot of the hostname that hosts everything other than gitorious, supposing that the webroot /var/www/ then you have to:
sudo ln -s /opt/redmine/redmine-1.2.1/public /var/www/redmine
We also have to edit the passenger.conf file and add the following line:
PassengerDefaultUser www-data
If you use Eclipse as an IDE for development you may also want to install in the redmine installation the plugin for the Eclipse MyLyn integration. To do so you have to get in the redmine directory and execute the following:
sudo ruby script/plugin install git://redmin-mylyncon.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/redmin-mylyncon/redmine-mylyn-connector
In case you get at some point the the following warning due to having two virtual hosts for port 443 on the same server,
[warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 443, the first has precedence
you have to edit the ports.conf file, sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf, go inside the <IfModule mod_ssl.c>tags and add NameVirtualHost *:443 above the Listen 443 line, then save the file.
Resources Used
http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies
http://cjohansen.no/en/ruby/setting_up_gitorious_on_your_own_server
http://coding-journal.com/installing-gitorious-on-ubuntu-11-04/
http://www.gitorious.org/gitorious/pages/UbuntuInstallation
http://www.silly-science.co.uk/2010/12/12/installing-gitorious-on-ubuntu-10-04-howto/
http://www.samontab.com/web/2011/04/how-to-install-redmine-1-1-2-on-ubuntu-server-10-04/
Redmine SUB-URI and Apache configuration
While trying to setup Redmine in a sub-uri I run across an issue will trying to setup apache. Passenger would display the following error: No such file or directory – config/environment.rb while trying to access the Redmine webpage.
After trying a few suggestions on the issue I managed to get Redmine to work with the following configuration:
The passenger.load configuration file was the following (the paths will probably vary depending on the installation):
LoadModule passenger_module /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2011.03/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so PassengerRoot /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2011.03/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9 PassengerRuby /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2011.03/bin/ruby PassengerDefaultUser www-data
In the Virtual Host configuration I added the following:
PassengerAppRoot /usr/local/lib/redmine-1.2/
RailsBaseURI /redmine
RailsEnv production
PassengerAppRoot represents the path that redmine is installed.
RailsBasedURI represents the sub directory in the URL that represents Redmine eg. www.example.org/redmine
(for this to work is also essential to have a symbolic link of the redmine-*.*/public inside the web root folder).
Also I changed ownership of the redmine-1.2 folder and the symlink redmine folder to the apache user/group (I am under the impression that it was necessary).
Changing author in git
While transferring my code repositories from SVN to git, I completely forgot to change the author name in the commits, so the wrong user appeared. I could possibly just reconvert the svn repository to git to fix the issue but since I have been trying to merge the the SVN generated git with a new git that was the continuation of the last SVN checkout, when I succeeded I didn’t want to go through all that process again. Luckily I found the following post “How to change the author in git“.
The following code is taken from the source specified above:
git filter-branch --commit-filter '
if [ "$GIT_COMMITTER_NAME" = "Wrong Commiter Name" ];
then
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="Right Commiter Name";
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Right Commiter Name";
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="right@email.com";
GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="right@email.com";
git commit-tree "$@";
else
git commit-tree "$@";
fi' HEAD
Skype Now Playing Plugin for MusicBee
Here is a simple now Skype Now playing plugin I created for MusicBee using C#.
The settings panel of the plugin looks like the following screenshot.
The tags supported at the moment are <Artist>, <AlbumArtist>, <Title>, <Year> and <Album> and they have to be like above in the textbox in order for the tag to get displayed. Also there is the option (activated by default) for a “Now Playing” string and a Unicode note char to appear in front of the selected pattern. (Depending on the computer the note may appear as a square).
- <Artist> – <Title> [<Album> (<Year>)]
The plugin uses the Skype4Com Library in order to communicate with Skype. It is has been tested to work with Skype v5.3.0.111.
The plugin consists of two dll files, mb_skypenp.dll and Interop.SKYPE4COMLib.dll, the installation process is pretty simple, you simply must extract the two files in the Plugins folder inside the MusicBee Installation directory (There is a possibility that there will be no Plugins folder, in that case you will have to create it).
If you installed it at the default folder it is:
“C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Plugins” if you are running 32 bit Windows, or
“C:\Program Files(x86)\MusicBee\Plugins” if you are running 64 bit Windows.
After this you have to start MusicBee, and go to Edit->Preferences. Then in the Preferences window you have to click on “Plugins” and then you have to click the “Enable” button under the “skype: now playing”, to enable the plugin.
After that, if Skype is running you will have to Allow MusicBee to access Skype, in order to change the mood to the currently playing track.
You can report any issues or suggest some changes, either here or in the related topic in MusicBee Forum
For download links and information check the dedicated Plugin Page
iPod scrobbling and missing scrobbles
Since the time I got my 160GB iPod classic I started scrobbling, sending all the songs played while on move to my last.fm profile. However since the beginning I had an issue once in while, or many times in the row, when I was syncing iPod with iTunes all my plays where missing. I tried various solutions, one part was avoiding iTunes and windows all over and scrobbling with a linux virtual machine, through the linux version of the last.fm player. Still it seems that the problem persisted.
After a while I discovered that the iPod actually kept play counts and last played dates, but some how iTunes or the last.fm player actually failed to recognize them and they where deleted during the sync process. The solution was accidentally found through the usage of MusicBee. Since the play counts are stored in the iPod there must be probably some inconsistency in the iPod DB that causes the issue. So a workaround is to play a track from the iPod music library with MusicBee, this seems to fix the issue, because afterwards the linux last.fm player gets every single played track in the list with the tracks to be scrobbled.
Server Maintenance
On the 31st of January was a maintenance day for my server. It started as a check to make sure that the non restarting after a sudden one second power lose issue was due to faulty PSU… I just confirmed my suspicions. With the test PSU the issue was gone and the computer was powering up properly afterwards. The 435Watt PSU installed on the server was on it since 2004, the year the system was build. Yesterday I got a replacement psu. An 80+ certified CoolerMaster GX Series 550Watt PSU, and I am gonna replace it as soon as I get back.
I also cleaned lot’s of dust and replaced the thermal paste on the CPU for the first time since I built it. I also found out that finally the fan used for cooling the northbridge was dead. Now I have to search for a round 40mm replacement cooler, though I find it hard to find a replacement here in Greece. Also at some point I will have to also replace the computer chassis with a newer one with better airflow since the system is up 24/7.
So after the cleanup and the reassembling I connect the computer to power and ethernet and I wait for it to boot and to access it via SSH, but nothing happens so I actually plug a monitor and a keyboard and I reboot the system, only yo find out that it is stuck at the GRUB loader waiting for keyboard input for reason unknown. It was the first time I had this issue.
While checking the bootloader I also found out that I had some GB of space allocated to a Windows XP installation that was not needed anymore actually since the machine works as a ubuntu based server. So while deleting the NTFS windows partition I also accidentally destroyed the ext2 formatted /boot partition need to boot my LVM setup.
So after searching for a while for ways to rebuild my setup by creating manually the /boot I found nothing helpful (well maybe I didn’t search enough). However while panicking somehow I decided to re-install Ubuntu 10.10 Server on the same BTRFS formatted LVM volumes without actually formatting the partitions, in order to keep my data intact.
However everything installed in system paths was replaced, so I actually lost all my configuration files, along with the web root, including everything stored in my Database (MySQL). The only things saved where those saved under the /home path. Hopefully my Subversion repositories where stored there, so I was actually able to keep them intact.
On thing I have to admit is that it was actually really easier to setup everything from scratch since I already knew where to search for the features I wanted to implement.
Now I am planning to make a tutorial at some point showing the steps to setup everything, but this has to wait till after my exam period is over.
Studio Ghibli & Level-5: Ni no Kuni
I just checked on Kotaku about a game, collaboration between Studio Ghibli (I am a great fan of their movies) with a Fukoka-based game developer named Level-5. The game is titled Ni no Kuni and it will be released on the PS3. I have to admit that I really like that kind of graphics and the animation on the video seems pretty smooth and nice. You can check the video here.
WoW: Cataclysm preview special on the MMO Report
There is World of Warcraft: Cataclysm preview special on the MMO Report. You can find it here. I have to admit that Cataclysm seems a rather interesting expansion up to this point, and I hope it will be interesting on its release.
