dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi
>
> 2010/1/28 Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>> Thanks Bob,
>>
>> I don't know how many people are currently interested in running DHIS2 on
>> Ubuntu, but I don't think it is negligible, and I would like to see it
>> increase. The reason this came up now, is that I have been trying to guide
>> people in Malawi over IM, not an efficient process. Installation needs to be
>> made as easy as possible - preferably also in "standalone" conditions, i.e.
>> where you bring a USB stick or CD to a computer with no or sloooow internet
>> connection. We should not require end users to have to touch the command
>> line or know about config files.
>>
>
> This is exactly what dhis2-live does using h2.  Unpack and run.  And its
> platform neutral.
>
>
I get that, but it is of little help when you have a Postgres .backup file
with loads of data. Of course, if we did have complete import/export with
DXF, we could suggest that most people use DHIS Lite. In fact, it may be
that we should promote the use of H2 instead of Mysql/Postgres. This has
been mentioned before, but we haven't really committed to such a
recommendation. If that's what we think, we should state it clearly and
prominently - and we should have clear instructions on backup etc.

Of course Pg and Mysql would still be fully available to more advanced users
who don't need pre-packaged stuff.



>  There are several approaches, and we could offer more than one:
>>
>> 0) Write out the steps (including for Postgres and Mysql) in a clear and
>> easy to follow manner, prominently displayed on dhis2.org
>>
>
> OK. I can do that.
>
>>
>> 1) An installer that basically just unzips everything you need. This was
>> done already 3-4 years ago in Kerala by Øystein, using BitRock (he also made
>> a CD image that installed DHIS2 and Mysql on Windows, then created a
>> partition for Linux, installed the very lightweight http://wolvix.org/ distro
>> with Tomcat and pointed it to the same Mysql database on the Windows
>> partition).
>>
>> 2) A more conventional installer using IzPack that does what is required
>>
>> 3) "meta-debs" as you suggest
>>
>
> You can yourself just go into dhis2/tools/dhis2deb and modify the
> hibernate.properties to connect to a postgres database instead.  And add
> postgres to dependencies.  Then make to create a dhis2-postgres.deb
> version.  Its still a bit complicated because you'd have to also create the
> dhis2 database in postgres as part of the installation.  (That's also what
> is nice about h2 :-)
>

Yes. All of this should be taken care of behind the scenes if we want to
continue to recommend Postgres to "non-expert" users.


> Ideally IMHO we might have a super-admin view of dhis without the database
> connection with a set of simple web steps to setup the connection rather
> than fiddling manually with hibernate.properties.
>

That is interesting - and would potentially allow for "hot-swap" of
databases, though we would need to re-run all the startup routines.

Knut


> Not unlike the openmrs installer.  A puzzle to solve is that we use the
> same database for user authentication that we use for data.  So without
> connection you can't log in ... and without login you can't set up
> connections ... etc.  Would be nice one day to separate these.
>
> Cheers
> Bob
>
>>
>> 4) Provide downloadable Ubuntu virtual machines images with everything
>> nicely set up
>>
>> My take is that I could do 0) right now, 3) could follow when you have
>> some time, and 4) perhaps longer term.
>>
>> Knut
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>>
>>> The deb package as it is currently is set up with dependencies on java
>>> and tomcat (so they will be triggered to install if necessary).  By default
>>> it will just run out of the box using an h2 database in /opt/dhis2/database.
>>>
>>> I held off on the postgres dependency because I know there are also mysql
>>> users out there so it didn't seem right to make it a dependency.  So
>>> currently you would be required to:
>>>
>>> 1.  install dhis2 from deb
>>> 2.  install postgres (apt-get install )
>>> 3.  configure hibernate.properties manually
>>>
>>> I guess what would be useful hand-holding would be to have a
>>> dhis2-postgres meta package which does the above three, though I'm not sure
>>> entirely how to handle dependencies where dhis2 is not yet available from
>>> ubuntu repositories.  Basically this would just contain just the
>>> hibernate.properties and the dependency information.  A dhis2-mysql package
>>> would look very similar.
>>>
>>> One solution would be to host the debs in a repository on dhis2.org.
>>> Then it would just be a case of getting users to add http://dhis2.org to
>>> their software sources.
>>>
>>> A simpler (and much uglier) solution is to create dhis2-postgres as an
>>> alternative version of dhis2 package with the exception that this has the
>>> webapp as well as the postgres dependency and hibernate.properties
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Bob
>>>
>>> PS.  How real is the use case.  ie is it worth putting effort into this?
>>> I didn't get the sense that there was too much interest in the deb.  It
>>> seems to be a useful little curiosity.
>>>
>>> 2010/1/28 Ola Hodne Titlestad <olatitle@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I think it would be really useful to have a .deb package that is set up
>>>> to use postgres out of the box.
>>>>
>>>> Ideally the DHIS deb install process should trigger installs of any
>>>> other needed packages, like java, tomcat, postgres. Would that be possible?
>>>>
>>>> Ola
>>>> ----------
>>>>
>>>> 2010/1/28 Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>>
>>>>>  There is some good info at
>>>>> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs-core/dhis2/trunk/annotate/head:/tools/dhis2deb/Readme.txt<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Edhis2-devs-core/dhis2/trunk/annotate/head:/tools/dhis2deb/Readme.txt>
>>>>>
>>>>> But it is hidden away in an obscure place and not complete enough to be
>>>>> truly helpful for an installation - unlike the DHIS2 Live or  IzPack
>>>>> installers we have for Windows.
>>>>>
>>>>> k
>>>>>
>>>>> 2010/1/28 Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> See dhis2/tools/dhis2deb/Readme.txt in the repo.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Knut Staring
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>> Knut Staring
>>
>
>


-- 
Cheers,
Knut Staring