Deploying GroupServer
Summary
- There are 6 posts — by 2 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Dan Randow at 2010 Apr 28 05:17 UTC
While work on GroupServer has not been very noisy lately, there has been some large steps forward. The biggest change is that Richard, Alice and I have managed to switch the version control system that we use over to Mercurial <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/> from Subversion. This should allow OnlineGroups.Net to provide access to the development version of GroupServer. As part of this I have been cleaning up the code, so it is presentable to the wide world. Richard has also been working at getting the "buildout" system working better. Already things are running far more smoothly for Alice and me. The next release of GroupServer will probably consist of many Python packages (eggs, as they are known in the Python community) that will be far easier to install than the current subversion-based code. I have tried to improve the page-templates that normally ship with GroupServer. Most templates are now accessed from the file-system, so they are updated with the rest of the Python code that makes up GroupServer. A few templates (mostly relating to the group homepages and menus) still reside in the ZMI. They have proven to be difficult to update automatically, which is why we are slowly getting rid of them. However, for at least the next release it looks like we will ship ZMI-side templates. Talking of groups, Alice is *actually* working on the Mythical Group Project. The MGP is a complete rewrite of the group-specific pages (outside the display of messages). It is a huge job (of mythic proportions, naturally) because of the many different types of group members and administrators you can have in a group. While none of the code is deployed, I hope you will be able to see the code soon, once we figure out the last few security issues with the Mercurial version control system. Finally, there is the hope that we will be able to install a new version of Zope 2.10, which supports the newer versions of Python. Richard has already preformed a smoke-test, so things are looking up. However, we need to make sure all the pages are working like they did under the old system. This is not a quick job, sadly. The GroupServer deployment work is fiddly and unglamorous. While it is necessary for a public release, it is hard to prioritise over other development tasks. Because of this it normally fits in between work on other projects, which is why it has taken so long. On the up side we are now close to being able to make a release that will be * Open, * Useful, and * Easy to install. (Or at least as easy as other complex systems that interact with at least three different types of server software!) That is all the news from the coal face ☺
I am delighted to say that progress with making GroupServer deployable has surged forward. I have been the performing the function of smoke-tester; the theory being that if a non-technical user such as I can successfully install it, then the target user, an experienced system administrator, should be able to. Here is a brief account of my experience installing GroupServer, including some of the problems that I encountered. I do not intend this to become the topic for getting help with installing GroupServer. The place for that is GroupServer Admin. http://www.groupserver.org/groups/groupserver_admin Rather, the purpose of this is to highlight, from a development point of view, the issues that we need to address, to make the process of installing GroupServer smooth. First, some backstory. A couple of weeks ago, we released, quietly, what we hoped would be the last alpha of GroupServer 1.0. This is a bit of a misnomer, as we have changed an enourmous amount since the previous alpha of 1.0 was released. Nonetheless, we did not want anyone to expect to reliably be able to install it, let alone actually do anything with it. Of course, Alice, Michael and Richard had been happily using that exact package to build numerous development, and even production sites. Despite this, however, we needed to know whether someone who wasn't us could get a works-for-me from at least the installation process. Based on the previous version by Richard, Michael wrote an excellent Installation Guide, http://www.groupserver.org/downloads/install/ which I followed. The first time I installed GroupServer, I needed a bit of help installing the requirements, making the required changes to /etc/hosts, and the postgres and GroupServer configuration, and with figuring that you needed to download, and expand the tarball. I am assuming that most system admins would be fine with all that. Unfortunately, the first time I succssfully completed the installation, GroupServer did not go. Considerable troubleshooting ensued (it was still working fine for Michael). Finally, yesterday, I managed to install GroupServer on my desktop machine. And today, I successfully built it out onto my laptop. Woohoo! With huge thanks to Richard, Alice and Michael, it looks like we may be a hairsbreadth from something we can call GroupServer 1.0 beta 1. If you would like to help out with testing, the latest alpha is available now. http://www.groupserver.org/downloads Now, I will start playing with my new GroupServer instance, to see what I can do with it. This is not intended as an exhaustive test. The templates that are used in the my new site are the same ones that are used in our production site, so they are mainly tested. (We can give you a comprehensive test plan, if you'd like to do a thorough test!) I see that my new site already has a group, with two members. The first thing I want to do is log in and post. I see in instance.cfg that the following are specified: gs_admin_name = gsadmin gs_admin_password = gsadminpass I log in with these, and presto, I am 'Default Administrator'. Should this be in the installation document, perhaps in a Post-Installation section? Should the name of the account be made more consistent with the id? My first task is to post to the group. On the Groups page, I see a link to Example Group, of which I am a member. I follow the link to that group, then visit Topics, then Start a Topic. This enables me to make a post. The system confirms that my post is made, but there are no topics displayed. I make a second post, and see that there is now a topic in the Topics, and on the site home page. Is this the following bug? https://projects.iopen.net/groupserver/ticket/203 Now I click on my profile. http://gstest:8080/p/gsadmin/ There I see that the group I am in is shown. Using that, I try to navigate to the group. The system displays an Apache "Not Found" error. The link on my profile goes to http://gstest/groups/example_group but the correct link shown on the GRoups page, includes the port number. http://gstest:8080/groups/example_group A canonical host issue? Is the lovely GroupServer "Page Not Found" page missing? The link to the group from the site index has the same problem. Next, I change the site title and site introduction. Success! Now, I want to log in as the other member of Example Group, Example User. http://gstest:8080/p/example_user But, alas, I can not find the password. Can someone tell me what it is? Should this, too be in the install document? For now, tho, I am pretty happy with progress. I will now attempt to configure postfix!
Dan
First, a caveat: I have not actually tested the version of GroupServer that is installed by the GroupServer TAR-ball. Actually, this site is running that code, so I know the *code* works, but I am unsure how much work is required to get GroupServer to go out-of-the-box. I think it is more important to give the default administrator an email address than a good user-ID. (You just happened to know that you can log in with your ID, and not just your email, Dan.) It will take some work for me to figure out how to get the default administrator's address set, but I can do it. Yes, you hit Bug 203, where the latest topics does not always refresh. It irritates me too. Unlike the production sites, the out-of-the-box GroupServer uses an odd port: 8080. One of the problems with this is that none of the code is designed to chuck port-numbers into URIs. If we leave off the site-name (and just use "/") there is no problem. If we explicitly make a reference to the canonical host you get an error. In the long-run, we have to make sure that ports are handled (as notifications will need to make reference to the port). On Monday I will get you to try adding ":8080" to the end of you canonical_host property (in the Division Configuration) and see if it * Fixes the problem, or * Causes the system to halt and catch fire. The example user should be set up with a known password too, but more importantly the example user should have an email address. Actually, I am tempted to leave the example user out entirely and make the new administrator add a new user (which he cannot do without the notification system going).
I have worked in a tweak to allow the port to be specified when installing GroupServer, and now this port is used in the pages whenever it is needed. <http://groupserver.org/downloads/groupserver-1.0alpha-20100427.tar.gz> The configuration options have changed. I renamed one option: gs_hostname, is now gs_host. The change in name was to make it consistent with the other host names. The gs_port has been added, and defaults to 8080. The links on the install page still point to an old version. I will update the links when I hear that others can install 20100427.
Dan was kind enough to test 20100427 for me. Accordingly, I have updated the links on the Download page to point to the new version <http://groupserver.org/downloads>.
After a burst of effort on Trac, I have: - closed or moved all the tickets from 1.0α, and completed it, as the alpha is already released, https://projects.iopen.net/groupserver/milestone/GroupServer%201.0%CE%B1%20%E2%80%94%20Cream%20Freeze%20at%20the%20Beach - made tickets for all the issues that have arisen during testing of 1.0α to date, and - moved all tickets out of 1.0β, unless they relate to either the worst problems or vital features. This leaves only some installation/setup issues, and one security bug, before we can release 1.0β. https://projects.iopen.net/groupserver/milestone/GroupServer%201.0%CE%B2%20%E2%80%94%20Semifreddo%20as%20a%20Late%20Night%20Snack Michael has fixed one of the problems already, https://projects.iopen.net/groupserver/ticket/351 and is working on another. https://projects.iopen.net/groupserver/ticket/353
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