Installing Cito Plugin Server

The following guide shows installation steps on Ubuntu 12.04 x86_64. Theoretically application dependencies can be fulfilled on any linux distribution viz. Redhat, ArchLinux, etc. In future, we will try to include installation steps for other distributions as well. Python module dependencies are installed using pip rather than system installer, this gives us more control towards using modules of specific versions. The following steps assume that you will be installing in /opt/cito_plugin_server directory.

Installation

Install dependencies

# Installing MySQL and Python development packages
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev python-pip
sudo pip install virtualenv

MySQL Installation and Configuration

# Install mysql server
sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

# Setup mysql root password
sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.5
# Create a new database 'cito_plugin_server'
sudo mysqladmin -uroot -p create cito_plugin_server
# Create a new mysql user
/usr/bin/mysql -uroot -p -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON cito_plugin_server.* TO 'cito_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MINISTRYOFSILLYWALKS' with GRANT OPTION"

Setup python virtualenv

We recommend you use virtualenv for running cito engine, this will help you keep manage the dependencies better. Download the latest build

cd /opt/
git clone https://github.com/CitoEngine/cito_plugin_server /opt/cito_plugin_server

sudo mkdir -p /opt/virtualenvs && sudo chown $USER /opt/virtualenvs/ && cd /opt/virtualenvs
virtualenv --no-site-packages /opt/virtualenvs/citopluginvenv
source /opt/virtualenvs/citopluginvenv/bin/activate
pip install -q --upgrade setuptools
pip install -r /opt/cito_plugin_server/requirements.txt

Edit default settings: /opt/cito_plugin_server/cito_plugin_server/settings/production.py

#Database config
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',   # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
        'NAME': 'cito_plugin_server',                         # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
        'USER': '',                             # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': '',                         # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '',                             # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',                             # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
        'OPTIONS': {
            'init_command': 'SET SESSION TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED'
        }
    }
}

PLUGIN_RUNNER_CONFIG = {
    'timeout': 5
}

PLUGIN_DIR = '/opt/plugins/'

Note

Avoid editting /opt/cito_plugin_server/cito_plugin_server/settings/base.py unless you know what you are doing.

Initializing the tables and creating an admin account.

cd /opt/cito_plugin_server

# Populate the database
python manage.py syncdb --noinput --migrate

# Update django secret (for csrf)
# If you are using the webapp on multiple nodes behind a load balancer,
# make sure th secret_key.py file is same on all nodes.
sudo sh -c '/opt/cito_plugin_server/bin/create-django-secret.py > /opt/cito_plugin_server/cito_plugin_server/settings/secret_key.py'

# Create your first superuser!
python manage.py createsuperuser

That’s it, you are done!

Note

You can always validate your installation using the command python manage.py validate

Starting the services

You can either run the helper scripts in the /opt/cito_plugin_server/bin directory, or you can run the using manage.py <command>

Start CitoEngine Plugin Server

We would recommended that you execute it with lower privileges. Have a look at bin/cito-webapp.sh for more information.

/opt/cito_plugin_server/bin/cito-plugin-server.sh

Open your browser and access http://<host>:8000 to login to CitoEngine Plugin Server with the admin account you created earlier.