XOMBO Platform Installation

From XOMBO Documentation

The following steps will help you configure Platform. It assumes that you have followed the instructions on the installation page and that all your usernames and paths are configured as-given. The Apache configuration instructions assume that Platform is the exclusive site being hosted by the web server.

Contents 1 Checkout Platform 2 Create the Database 3 Configure Apache 4 Configure PHP 5 Test

Checkout Platform

Logged in as xombo, the first step is to check Platform out of the SVN repository into its own folder.

mkdir ~/www
cd ~/www
svn co http://svn.xombo.org/svn/platform/current/trunk .

Create the Database

MySQL should have come with a default username of root. Platform is configured to use MySQL with that username out of the box. You can refer to the documentation of MySQL on how to create a different account if you want to tighten security. You may also refer to the Platform documentation on how to configure it to use a different MySQL username and password. For our purposes, the default installation of MySQL is "secure enough" when behind a network firewall so we won't spend much time discussing the topic at length.

Launch the MySQL client application for the first time:

mysql -u root

NOTE: If you are updating the database on an existing installation, you will need to drop the current platform database (this will remove any data in the database currently being used, if any):

 drop database platform

Initialize the new database from the mysql prompt:

create database platform
exit

From the shell prompt:

cd ~/www/
mysql -u root platform < platform.sql
rm platform.sql

Configure Apache

This article assumes that you have already chosen and configured a host-name. Configuring your DNS servers and routing is beyond the scope of this tutorial, so we'll operate under the assumption that you can already hit your box via a host name.

Create a folder for logs:

mkdir ~/logs

Let's move to the Apache configuration folder and make some changes.

cd /usr/local/etc/apache22/extra
sudo nano -w httpd-vhosts.conf

The above configuration directives should appear at the bottom of the vhosts file. We will modify those directives to reflect the install path for Platform.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin support@xombo.com
    DocumentRoot "/usr/home/xombo/www"
    ServerName platform.xombo.org
    ServerAlias www.platform.xombo.org
    ErrorLog "/usr/home/xombo/logs/error.log"
    CustomLog "/usr/home/xombo/logs/access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

You'll want to replace support@xombo.com with the appropriate support e-mail address for your organization. ServerName and ServerAlias should be similarly modified to be correct for your domain and DNS configuration. Delete the second vhost configuration directive or comment it out, so that only one VirtualHost directive section is in the configuration file.

Press CTRL+X to exit nano. Confirm that you want to save the file by pressing the "Y" key.

Next, enable the vhosts configuration to be loaded when Apache starts.

cd /usr/local/etc/apache22
sudo nano -w httpd.conf

Press CTRL+W and type "vhosts", then press ENTER. It should take you directly to a line that reads:

Include etc/apache22/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Remove the prepended # to uncomment that line.

Press CTRL+W and type "DocumentRoot", then press ENTER. It will take you directly to a line that reads:

DocumentRoot "/usr/local/www/apache22/data"

Change it to:

DocumentRoot "/usr/home/xombo/www"

Scroll down until you see the following section:

Change the directory line to the same one we specified for DocumentRoot, above.

<Directory "/usr/home/xombo/www">

Continue scrolling down until you see the "AllowOverride" section and change "None" to "All".

Press CTRL+W and type "DirectoryIndex" and press ENTER. Change the DirectoryIndex directive to look like this:

Press CTRL+W and type "User/group" and press ENTER. Change the configuration directly below the explanation to:

User xombo
Group www

Pres CTRL+W and type "Directory /" and press ENTER. You'll see something similar to the image, below:

Change it to:

<Directory />
     Options FollowSymLinks
     AllowOverride All
     Order deny,allow
     Deny from all
     Satisfy all
</Directory>

Press CTRL+X to exit nano and press "Y" to save the changes.

Use the following command to move the htaccess directive into the proper location:

cp ~/www/htaccess_alt ~/www/.htaccess

Configure PHP

mkdir ~/sessions
sudo cp /usr/local/etc/php.ini-recommended /usr/local/etc/php.ini
sudo nano -w /usr/local/etc/php.ini

Find the line that reads:

;session.save_path = "/tmp"

And change it to:

session.save_path = "/usr/home/xombo/sessions"

Note that you have to remove the prepended ";" to uncomment the line.

Test

Restart Apache so it gets all your configuration updates:

sudo apachectl restart

Assuming you didn't make any errors in your configuration, you should be returned to the command line without any further errors.

Test your installation by visiting the host you specified.

You should get something like this: