[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Simplifying Ubuntu install documentation (was:Installing on Ubuntu7.10 - ejabber problem)

[Dan Wells]

Hello Dan S.,

I think this sounds like a great idea.  I know the instructions have not kept up with Evergreen installation best practices, but I have been hesitant to rewrite them, since they do (mostly) work.  Ejabberd in particular has always been a problem area, and I have only just recently realized that clearing the Mnesia spool is a quick and dirty way to solve many of them, but if we leave ejabberd listening at localhost I think the worst problems will just go away.

I have already moved out the old page to the "Older Versions" archive and added a promise of new things to come in its place, so feel free to deliver on that promise when you get the chance :)  If you go ahead and copy over the Debian instructions and make the changes you already know about, I will be happy to run through with an attempted Ubuntu newbie mentality to help make them as bullet-proof as possible.

Thanks,
DW



>>> "Dan Scott" <denials at gmail.com> 7/26/2008 11:52 AM >>>
Hi Dan Wells:

2008/7/26 Dan Scott <denials at gmail.com>:
> Hi Faiz:
>
> 2008/7/26 Faiz Ishaq <Faiz at szabist.ac.ae>:
>> Hello!
>>
>> Totally new to Evergreen, I am trying to get it to run on Ubuntu. Started
>> with Edubuntu 7.10 install and carried out the steps as given in the
>> pre-install and install text files. Everything worked fine until step 27,
>> finalizing the OPAC, using the command:
>>
>> sudo -u opensrf ./autogen.sh /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml
>>
>> It gives 'Unable to connect to Jabber server' errors. The ejabber log file
>> has 'Accepted Connection' entries.
>
> Just a wild guess - you followed the Ubuntu install instructions and
> changed hostnames from "localhost" to your fully-qualified domain name
> in various configuration files (including ejabberd.cfg)?
>
> For what it's worth, the development team recommends keeping all of
> the entries (except for the <hosts> entry in opensrf.xml) as
> "localhost" unless you're dealing with a system spread over multiple
> servers. I'll start a new thread to talk about replacing the existing
> Ubuntu instructions.

I really appreciate all of the work you did in finishing off the
Ubuntu install documentation way back when - but based on the ongoing
complications people experience using FQDN throughout various config
files, would you mind horribly if I replaced the Ubuntu 7.10 install
documentation with a copy of the Debian Etch install instructions,
modified slightly to reflect the minor differences for Ubuntu? The
primary differences would be:
  * the use of Makefile.install to eliminate all of the prerequisite
install steps
  * keeping "localhost" throughout to simplify the network setup
  * modifying the opensrf user's environment variables rather than
modifying the autogen.sh and osrf_ctl.sh scripts (as the latter
approach doesn't hit all of the scripts that need to be modified and
is likely to be forgotten during upgrades)

One benefit to the project of making the install documentation for
Debian and Ubuntu consistent would be that it would help keep the
configuration of the various systems "in the wild" relatively similar
so that it would simplify our attempts to troubleshoot problems.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University