dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anyone care to add this to the documentation or did I just volunteer
myself? :) there are some good tips here.



On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Ola Hodne Titlestad <olatitle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 28 January 2010 14:28, 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.
>>
> Yes, so we need something almost as simple for postgres and mysql. There are
> many standalone ubuntu installs with postgres in Sierra Leone, and more to
> come in other countries I am sure.
>
>>>
>>> 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 :-)
>>
>
> There are lots of config stuff that needs to be done after a default
> postgres/tomcat/java install on any platform, and the dhis installer should
> take care of these.
>
> Here are some steps that I can think of now:
> - set the postgres password (for the postgres user)
> - open postgres to remote connections
> - configure the pg_hba.conf correctly (e.g. to allow all on local network to
> connect, or all IP)
> - create a dhis user in postgres
> - create an empty dhis database in postgres owned by dhis user
> - make tomcat user own all files in tomcat/ and make this user start the
> tomcat process
> - create a tomcat startup script that is run at reboot
> - create a dhis directory and an envir variable for this
> - increase memory allocation with JAVA_OPTS (with user input?)
> ....and I am sure there are more little steps that we could take care of to
> make it a better user/admin experience
>
>
>>
>> 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.  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.
>>
> I like the way openmrs is taking care of db stuff at webapp startup in web
> UI. The tool they use for this was mentioned here on the list some months
> back, can't remember the name now.
>
>>
>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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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>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>>>> Post to     : dhis2-devs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>>>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Cheers,
>>> Knut Staring
>>
>
>
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