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ianBMS Setup
This article will guide you through the steps required in order to deploy and run the ianBMS web application on a UNIX machine behind the Apache 2.x web server.
First, you need to get the ianBMS web application sources. If for some peculiar reason you weren't provided with a targz'ed source distro of the application, then you will probably need to get (or even make) it yourself. Go to the `ianbms subversion tags`__ for the latest stable release (lookup the webif subdirectory).
Dependencies
The ianBMS web app depends on a number of Python libraries either homegrown (developed at inAccess that is) or 3rd-party:
t3cl: The TEL3 configuration language library. Go to `t3cl subversion tags`__ of the TEL3 distro and get anything equal or greater than version 5.0.
logtools: A library (and set of tools) for creating, accessing and graphing IOB data. This library is a custom wrapper over the rrdtool, and has the following dependencies:
- python-dateutil version 1.3
- rrdtool 1.2.19 or greater
- py-rrdtool: Custom Python bindings for rrdtool (i.e. not the ones shipped in the rrdtool distribution).
CherryPy: The web application framework. Version should be 3.0.2 or higher. Chances are, your distro has not packaged a 3.x version of our (at least at the time of this writing) favourite webdev framework.
Cheetah: The template engine. Version should be 2.0.1 or higher. Both Debian and Ubuntu should provide such a package.
python-ldap: Python library for communicating with LDAP servers. Version should be 2.2.1 or higher. I bet you will find the required version in a package under Debian / Ubuntu.
scgi: The mod_csgi Apache 2.x module. You will be needing version 1.12 or higher. You will be able to find this library wrapped up in package under Debian or Ubuntu.
flup: A library providing a set of scgi servers. Version should be equal or greater that 1.0. Not sure if Debian or Ubuntu provides the required version of this package.
mod_csgi configuration
A sample config file for the scgi apache module:
/etc/apache2/mods-available/scgi.conf
<IfModule mod_scgi.c>
<Location "/ianbms">
# Enable SCGI delegation
SCGIHandler On
# Delegate requests in the "/ianbms" path to daemon on local
# server, port 4000
SCGIServer 127.0.0.1:4000
</Location>
</IfModule>
For more info take a look at this__.
ianBMS installation
I bet you know the drill: it's the usual python setup.py install stuff. Use the --prefix=INSTALL_DIR or --home=POSSIBLY_A_HOME_DIR to override the default installation path. Note that the init script that is automatically generated causes the web app server to chuid to the user that installed the app, unless of course it's root. For instance, if user "ianbms" installs the app, say in his home directory, then the init script will cause the daemon to chuid to "ianbms". The setup attempts to install this init script under "/etc/init.d/", and since user "ianbms" will probably not have write access to that directory, this will fail. So, the init script should be sudo-copied there. It can be found in the "scripts" directory of the app's source distro under the name "ianbms".
Configuring ianBMS
Look for the ianbms.conf file under the etc subdirectory of your root installation directory. This is a sample configuration file that will be used by default. If you want to put it in an another place, be user to update the /etc/init.d/ianbms init script accordingly.
Bringing the daemon to life
Simple as :
/etc/init.d/ianbms start
In order to shut it down:
/etc/init.d/ianbms stop
Testimonies
Deployment has already taken place on an Ubuntu machine running 7.04 Feisty Fawn; it worked like a charm. Debian Etch will get on your nerves because most of the packages needed don't play with Python 2.5. Moreover, you will definitely need the attached patch for compiling python-ldap for python 2.5!
Other useful stuff
You may read __`npat's notes on web development using Python`.
