Marco Pessotto

How to install AmuseWiki

    General installation

    Configure the initial site

    Start the application

    Multiple installations

    FreeBSD

    CentOS 7

    Configuration file

    Mail with SMTP

    Caddy webserver

The recommended way to install Amusewiki is via http://packages.amusewiki.org, where a Debian repository with the packages is provided. If you want to install manually, read on. If you need to do some post-installation tweaking for ports and webserver logging, jump to the final section. Otherwise feel free to skip this document entirely.

Windows is not supported in any way.

General installation

The installation of Amusewiki takes time (depending on speed of the machine and of the network) and requires about 5Gb of disk space because of the full installation of TeX Live. If you're short on disk space, don't even start to install (the app will create files at full speed anyway, so consider 10Gb for a reasonable start).

On a slow server, it takes 2 hours (mostly spent on installing and testing Perl modules, and 20 minutes to download and install the full TeX Live 2015), but the procedure is fully automated, so start it, check if it bails out at the beginning, forget about it for an hour or two (run it under screen), then come back later and finish it up to complete it for the operations which require root privileges (notably the webserver configuration).

You can speed up the process installing the available modules and TeX Live from the OS repositories, which is the suggested approach because this way the security fixes are delegated to the standard tools.

The supported and recommended setup is nginx + FCGI. The FCGI setup should work with Apache as well, but it's not currently actively supported, even if perldoc Catalyst::Manual::Deployment::Apache::FastCGI should help.

Prerequisites:

  • a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite are supported)

  • a working Perl (i.e., you can install modules with cpanm without warnings). Usually this means you have to install liblocal-lib-perl and cpanminus in Debian (or you install Perl in your home).

  • fontconfig (install it before installing TeX Live)

  • GraphicsMagick (for thumbnails) and ImageMagick (for preview generation)

  • a mime-info database: shared-mime-info on Debian

  • a dedicated system user (with a clean home) which is going to run the site

  • SSL binaries and development libraries (openssl and libssl-dev)

  • Xapian libraries and development files (xapian-tools libxapian-dev)

  • commonly used utilities: unzip, wget, git, rsync

  • TeX Live full > 2012, either from system repo (recommended) or from https://www.tug.org/texlive/

Log in as the user you want to run the site.

If you have a system wide perl, to install modules in your home you should install local::lib (liblocal-lib-perl on Debian) and add to .profile (or equivalent): 

 eval `perl -Mlocal::lib`

If you installed TeX Live from the installer, tweak the shell rc file to include the binaries in the PATH.

Logout and login again.

Unpack the sources (or clone the repo) and change directory into them.

Install the prerequisites and complete the installation with:

Complete the installation with: 

 ./script/install.sh

Configure the initial site

Create a database for the application. E.g., for MySQL: 

  mysql> create database amuse DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
  mysql> grant all privileges on amuse.* to amuse@localhost identified by XXX

Or, for PostgreSQL:

Login as root. 

 su - postgres
 psql
 create user amuse with password 'XXXX';
 create database amuse owner amuse;

For SQLite no setup is required.

Copy dbic.yaml.<dbtype>.example to dbic.yaml and adjust the credentials, and chmod it to 0600. (For SQLite is good as it is).

If you have multiple Amusewiki instance (please note, multiple sites are just fine on a single instance) on the same machine, see below before proceeding (you probably want to tweak the configuration)

Configure the initial site with: 

 ./script/configure.sh [ hostname ]

Please note that the installation procedure will create a mirror of amusewiki.org under the subdomain amusewiki.<your domain>, where <your domain> is the output of hostname -d. Nothing you can't change later from the admin console, but you need to access it. You can pass the desired hostname as first argument to the configure script.

Start the application

To set the number of FCGI workers, set the environment variable AMW_WORKERS (defaults to 3). 

  export AMW_WORKERS=5

To start/stop/restart the application: 

  ./init-all.sh start
  ./init-all.sh stop
  ./init-all.sh restart

This is not needed if you use systemd.

To regenerate the nginx configuration after adding a site: 

  ./script/amusewiki-generate-nginx-conf

(and read the output).

Multiple installations

If you run a Debian machine and you have only one instance running and if you have the port 9015 free, you don't need any of this.

Please note: "multiple instances" doesn't mean "multiple sites". On a single instance you can have as many sites as you want.

The interaction between nginx and the application, including cgit, is controlled by the Webserver model. You can configure it creating a file in the application root named amusewikifarm_local.conf with this content (here listed with the defaults). 

<Model::Webserver>
    # cgit port
    cgit_port 9015
    log_format combined
    nginx_root /etc/nginx
    instance_name amusewiki
    fcgiwrap_socket /var/run/fcgiwrap.socket
</Model::Webserver>

The instance_name is just a string used to create the nginx configuration files to avoid conflicts with other installations. So you may have one instance named "testing" and the other "live".

FreeBSD

Install as much as possible from the repository: 

pkg install perl5 p5-App-cpanminus git texlive-full-20150521 \
    cgit ImageMagick \
    GraphicsMagick shared-mime-info xapian-core xapian-bindings \
    nginx fcgiwrap unzip rsync wget bash \
    p5-Module-Install \
    p5-local-lib \
    p5-Catalyst-Devel \
    p5-DBIx-Class p5-DBIx-Class-Schema-Loader p5-DBIx-Class-PassphraseColumn \
    p5-DBIx-Class-DeploymentHandler p5-DBIx-Class-Helpers p5-DBIx-Class-Schema-Config \
    p5-DateTime-Format-RFC3339 \
    p5-Locale-Maketext-Lexicon \
    p5-Locale-PO p5-File-MimeInfo \
    p5-Protocol-ACME \
    p5-CAM-PDF                    \
    p5-Test-Differences                       \
    p5-Catalyst-Runtime                       \
    p5-Catalyst-Plugin-ConfigLoader           \
    p5-Catalyst-Plugin-Authentication         \
    p5-Catalyst-Plugin-Session                \
    p5-Catalyst-Plugin-Session-Store-FastMmap \
    p5-Catalyst-Plugin-Session-State-Cookie   \
    p5-Catalyst-Plugin-Authorization-Roles    \
    p5-Catalyst-View-TT                       \
    p5-Catalyst-Action-RenderView             \
    p5-Moose                                  \
    p5-namespace-autoclean                    \
    p5-Test-WWW-Mechanize-Catalyst            \
    p5-Term-Size-Any                          \
    p5-MIME-Types                             \
    p5-FCGI                                   \
    p5-FCGI-ProcManager                       \
    p5-Unicode-Collate                        \
    p5-DBIx-Class                             \
    p5-DBD-SQLite                             \
    p5-Daemon-Control                         \
    p5-MooseX-NonMoose                        \
    p5-JSON                                   \
    p5-JSON-XS                                \
    p5-DBIx-Class-Schema-Loader               \
    p5-SQL-Translator                         \
    p5-DBIx-Class-Schema-Config               \
    p5-DBIx-Class-PassphraseColumn            \
    p5-DBIx-Class-InflateColumn-Authen-Passphrase \
    p5-DateTime                               \
    p5-DateTime-Format-SQLite                 \
    p5-DateTime-Format-MySQL                  \
    p5-DateTime-Format-Pg                     \
    p5-DateTime-Format-Strptime               \
    p5-XML-FeedPP                             \
    p5-XML-Atom                               \
    p5-Git-Wrapper                            \
    p5-Text-Wrapper                           \
    p5-Email-Valid                            \
    p5-File-Copy-Recursive                    \
    p5-Search-Xapian                          \
    p5-Catalyst-Model-Adaptor                 \
    p5-Text-Unidecode                         \
    p5-Log-Contextual                         \
    p5-Log-Log4perl                           \
    p5-Log-Dispatch                           \
    p5-Log-Dispatch-File-Stamped              \
    p5-Email-Sender                           \
    p5-HTTP-Tiny            \
    p5-MooseX-MarkAsMethods \
    p5-PDF-API2 \
    p5-Bytes-Random-Secure \
    p5-Crypt-OpenSSL-X509 \
    p5-HTTP-BrowserDetect \
    p5-Type-Tiny \
    p5-Archive-Zip \
    p5-Template-Tiny \
    p5-Catalyst-Model-DBIC-Schema

[root@freebsd ~]# adduser
Username: amusewiki
Full name: Amusewiki
Uid (Leave empty for default):
Login group [amusewiki]:
Login group is amusewiki. Invite amusewiki into other groups? []:
Login class [default]:
Shell (sh csh tcsh zsh rzsh bash rbash git-shell nologin) [sh]: bash
Home directory [/home/amusewiki]:
Home directory permissions (Leave empty for default):
Use password-based authentication? [yes]: no
Lock out the account after creation? [no]:
Username   : amusewiki
Password   : <disabled>
Full Name  : Amusewiki
Uid        : 1001
Class      :
Groups     : amusewiki
Home       : /home/amusewiki
Home Mode  :
Shell      : /usr/local/bin/bash
Locked     : no
OK? (yes/no): yes
adduser: INFO: Successfully added (amusewiki) to the user database.
Add another user? (yes/no): no
Goodbye!

Add to /etc/rc.conf 

nginx_enable=YES
fcgiwrap_enable=YES
fcgiwrap_user=www
fcgiwrap_socket="unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap/socket"

# create an include sites-enabled directory for nginx and log dir
mkdir /usr/local/etc/nginx/sites-enabled
mkdir /var/log/nginx/
# and add an include directive in nginx.conf inside the http { } stanza, at the end.
# include /usr/local/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
vi /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

And start the services 

service nginx start
service fcgiwrap start

su - amusewiki
git clone https://github.com/melmothx/amusewiki.git
cd amusewiki
eval `perl -Mlocal::lib`
./script/install.sh
# create the config
cat << EOF > amusewikifarm_local.conf
<Model::Webserver>
    nginx_root /usr/local/etc/nginx
    fcgiwrap_socket /var/run/fcgiwrap/socket
</Model::Webserver>
EOF

Then decide to which hostname you want to serve this and run 

./script/configure.sh amw.localdomain

Take note of the credentials, and follow the instructions.

CentOS 7

Most of these instructions will apply to other GNU/Linux systems with systemd and SELinux.

TeX Live is obsolete, so we will install it from CTAN. The same goes with Perl.

From a fresh install: 

# yum install epel-release
# yum install git nginx perl-local-lib sqlite cgit \
    perl-App-cpanminus fontconfig GraphicsMagick ImageMagick shared-mime-info openssl openssl-devel \
    xapian-core xapian-core-devel unzip wget libxml2 libxml2-devel expat-devel \
    policycoreutils setroubleshoot
# yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'

Tweak nginx configuration to conform to Debian standard 

# mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Modify /etc/nginx/nginx.conf adding this line: 

  include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

Right after include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;

(Probably you may also want to add client_max_body_size 8m; as the default is way too low).

Start nginx: 

# systemctl enable nginx
# systemctl start nginx

Open the firewall 

# firewall-cmd --get-active-zones
# firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http --permanent
# firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=https --permanent
# firewall-cmd --reload

Prepare the installation directory for your user (say amusewiki, but any other will do).

Please note that we install it under /var/www/ to avoid problems with SELinux. 

# mkdir /var/www/amusewiki
# chown amusewiki:amusewiki /var/www/amusewiki

As the user which is going to run Amusewiki, install a fresh Perl. This way we simplify and make our install independent from the base system, which is lacking way too many modules. 

$ eval `perl -Mlocal::lib`
$ cpanm Perl::Build
$ perl-build -j 3 --test 5.24.1 $HOME/amw-perl
$ cd /vaw/www/amusewiki
$ git clone https://github.com/melmothx/amusewiki.git
$ cd amusewiki # you're now in /vaw/www/amusewiki/amusewiki, our app home
$ ./script/install-texlive.sh # install texlive
$ echo 'export PATH=$HOME/amw-perl/bin:$HOME/texlive/2017/bin/x86_64-linux:$PATH' >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ chmod 755 $HOME  # open the home so plackup is accessible to nginx

Logout and login again and check the program paths to point to the newly installed ones 

$ which perl # should be: ~/amw-perl/bin/perl
$ which xelatex # should be ~/texlive/2017/bin/x86_64-linux/xelatex

Install cpanm and the dependencies 

$ perl -MCPAN -e 'install App::cpanminus'
$ which cpanm # should be ~/amw-perl/bin/cpanm
$ cd /var/www/amusewiki/amusewiki/
$ ./script/install.sh

Decide the initial server name to serve Amusewiki (to get access to the admin), e.g. amw.localdomain.

See above if you want a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. The following command will create a sample site with the current Amusewiki documentation. 

$ ./script/configure.sh amw.localdomain

Remove the cgit wrapper, we're going to install systemd unit files. 

$ rm root/git/cgit.cgi
$ ./script/generate-systemd-unit-files
$ ./script/amusewiki-generate-nginx-conf

Read the output and install the fresh nginx configuration.

Finally, open the permission for SELinux. As root: 

cd /var/www/amusewiki/amusewiki/doc/centos/
checkmodule -M -m -o amusewiki.mod amusewiki.te
semodule_package -o amusewiki.pp -m amusewiki.mod
semodule -i amusewiki.pp

Reboot to be sure everything is ok, open with a browser the location you configured (say, amw.localdomain, you may want to add the entry /etc/hosts to access it) and login.

You probably want to head to the admin panel under /admin/sites to create a new site.

Configuration file

Normally, you don't need to change anything. However, may need to do some tweaking to the webserver configuration. This is done via the configuration file.

If amusewiki was installed with a debian package, the location is /etc/amusewiki.conf otherwise you should create a file called amusewikifarm_local.conf in the application directory, which will override the existing settings in amusewikifarm.conf

Example with the defaults: 

  <Model::Webserver>
      ## cgit port
      cgit_port 9015
      ## nginx log format
      log_format combined
      ## nginx root
      nginx_root /etc/nginx
      ## string to identify this installation
      instance_name amusewikidebian
      webserver_root /usr/share/perl5/AmuseWikiFarm/root
      fcgi_socket /var/lib/amusewiki/amusewiki.socket
  </Model::Webserver>

Mail with SMTP

You need to set the desired parameter as environment variable (in the systemd unit file or in the user starting the application). See https://metacpan.org/pod/Email::Sender::Manual::QuickStart and https://metacpan.org/pod/Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP for details.

Previously we used the application config file, but that's sloppy because it prevents the jobber to send mails properly.

Example: 

$ export EMAIL_SENDER_TRANSPORT=SMTP
$ export EMAIL_SENDER_TRANSPORT_host=smtp.example.com
$ export EMAIL_SENDER_TRANSPORT_port=2525
./init-all.sh restart

If you use systemd unit files to start/stop/restart the application, you need to override them and set the environment variables instead. 

cp /lib/systemd/system/amusewiki-web.service \
   /lib/systemd/system/amusewiki-jobber.service \
   /etc/systemd/system

Add in the [Service] stanza the needed variables, like this 

Environment="EMAIL_SENDER_TRANSPORT=SMTP"
Environment="EMAIL_SENDER_TRANSPORT_host=smtp.example.com"
Environment="EMAIL_SENDER_TRANSPORT_port=2525"

Caddy webserver

Although recommended and supported setup in nginx, Caddy server may be easier to setup, at least for development purposes.

Here, Amusewiki is assumed to be installed in /home/amusewiki/amusewiki/ and hostname is amusewiki.local.

When downloading Caddy, enable http.cgi plugin. To run Amusewiki, create a Caddyfile in the Amusewiki installation directory with the following contents: 

amusewiki.local:8080
tls off
log ./access.log
errors ./error.log
root /usr/home/amusewiki/amusewiki/root

cgi {
        except /git/cgit.css
        except /git/cgit.png
        match /git
        exec /home/amusewiki/amusewiki/root/git/cgit.cgi
}

fastcgi / unix:/usr/home/amusewiki/amusewiki/var/amw.sock {
        except /static/
        except /git/
}

Start Amusewiki services with ./init-all.sh start and then start caddy.

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