Here is a fairly complete HOWTO for installing
PythonCommunityServer. If you follow these instructions, please drop me a line to tell me how accurate / useful they were. Don't hesitate to mail me if you have any trouble; I'm happy to help you out.
- -- PhillipPearson
First, create the user that will run PyCS. Log in as this user. You will probably have to do something like this:
- adduser www-pycs
- su - www-pycs
(Note: you want to do the rest of these instructions as the www-pycs user. If you do them as root, you will end up with a copy of PyCS that runs as root, and lives inside /root, which probably isn't what you want.)
Now, create a directory to hold all the code for things we are about
to compile.
- mkdir ~/src
Now, get Python (the latest version) from http://www.python.org/download/ ...
- cd ~/src
- wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.2.3/Python-2.2.3.tgz
- tar -vzxf Python-2.2.3.tgz
And compile it:
- cd Python-2.2.3
- ./configure --prefix=$HOME/pycs && make && make install
(This makes a private copy of Python, just for your community server).
Now, get the PyXML source from http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/ - this isn't really
needed if you only have small changes on your system, but improves performance
drastically if you have larger upstreams, as the XML parser in Python is written in
Python and this package contains a parser based on expat (a parser written in C).
- cd ~/src
- wget http://optusnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pyxml/PyXML-0.8.3.tar.gz
- tar xvfz PyXML-0.8.3.tar.gz
And now compile and install it:
- cd PyXML-0.8.3
- $HOME/pycs/bin/python setup.py build
- $HOME/pycs/bin/python setup.py install
Now, get MetaKit from http://www.equi4.com/pub/mk/ and compile it:
- cd ~/src
- wget http://www.equi4.com/pub/mk/older/metakit-2.4.9.2.tar.gz
- tar -vzxf metakit-2.4.9.2.tar.gz
- cd metakit-2.4.9.2
- cd unix
- ./configure --prefix=$HOME/pycs --with-python=$HOME/pycs && make && make install && make install-python
(Now we have a copy of MetaKit installed, with the Python extension
enabled).
Now, get the PyCS code:
- cd ~/src
- cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pycs login
(the password is blank - just hit enter)
- cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pycs co pycs
Download Medusa:
- cd ~/src
- wget http://www.amk.ca/files/python/medusa-0.5.4.tar.gz
- cd pycs
- tar -vzxf ../medusa-0.5.4.tar.gz
- mv medusa-0.5.4 medusa
Now install PyCS:
- make install PREFIX=$HOME/pycs USER=$USER ROOT=$USER
NB: this is a GNU-style Makefile, so if you are on a platform that doesn't use GNU Make by default, e.g. FreeBSD?, you probably want to say gmake install ... instead of make install ....
Now edit $HOME/pycs/etc/pycs/pycs.conf:
- Change the serverurl variable to be the URL of your server. (This is important - if you don't, the style sheets won't show up on the rankings and updates pages! If you're installing on port 5445, put :5445 at the end of the URL.)
- Change the servermailto variable to be an email address where bounces and status reports for feedback mails should go to.
- Change maxusernum to a reasonable value. If you set it to 1, you will only be able to create one user on the server (do this if you have a private server like LouisGerbarg). Set it to 100 to allow 100 people to create blogs there.
Phew! I think that's it ;-)
Test it to make sure it goes:
- $HOME/pycs/bin/python $HOME/pycs/usr/lib/pycs/bin/pycs.py
- tail -f $HOME/pycs/var/log/pycs/etc.log
You should see some startup notes. If everything looks good, go to http://yourserver:5445/ and make sure the front page shows up.
Congratulations - you now have a working PythonCommunityServer!
Note that the server is running on port 5445, but the URLs it will pass out to users will be for port 80; PyCS assumes that it will be running on a machine which already has a web server (configured as a front-end proxy) on port 80. As such, you need to do one of the following:
- If you want to run PyCS as the only web server on your machine, you need to make it run on port 80. Edit $HOME/pycs/etc/pycs/pycs.conf and change the serverport variable from 5445 to 80 (and restart the server).
- If you want to run PyCS alongside another web server, but not via a proxy, you need to tell it to form relative URLs with the port in the name (otherwise all local user links will break). Edit $HOME/pycs/etc/pycs/pycs.conf and change the serverhostname variable from yourhostname to yourhostname:5445 (and restart the server).
- If you want to run PyCS behind another web server, configure that server to pass on requests for the community server. For Apache, you can do this with mod_rewrite. Put the following inside the relevant <VirtualHost> block in your httpd.conf:
- RewriteEngine On
- RewriteRule (.+) http://localhost:5445/~~vhost~~/%{HTTP_HOST}$1 [P,L]
If you use manila-style addresses, you should put in an equivalent ServerAlias directive, for example like:
- ServerAlias *.pycs.net
And don't forget to set up an * A record in your domain to point to your webserver.
- Now run apachectl restart to force Apache to understand the new rules.
More configuration
Front page
If you don't like the default login page (and you aren't expected to like it), copy $HOME/src/pycs/www/index.html to local_index.html, edit that, and run make install again (as above) to copy it into the right place.
Friendly URLs
To find out how to give people friendly URLs (like http://www.pycs.net/devlog/ rather than http://www.pycs.net/users/0105568/), look at the instructions in the file $HOME/pycs/etc/rewrite.conf.
Password authentication
If you want to password-protect some blogs or your whole server, create a file called $HOME/pycs/etc/pycs/users.conf and put in one line per user you want to create. Read authorizer.py for more information on the format. Basically it's:
username:md5 hash of password:comma separated list of things the user can get at
To make some of the server public, make a user with no name and password. To allow everyone to get at the front page and updates, for example, put in the following line:
::public
Getting it to run from init.d
- cp ~/src/pycs/init_pycs /etc/init.d/pycs
- chmod +x /etc/init.d/pycs
Edit /etc/init.d/pycs and change ROOTDIR to point to your root dir (/home/www-pycs/pycs if you followed the instructions above for installation).
Now you need to set up your rc*.d symlinks. On Debian, you can do it like this:
- update-rc.d pycs defaults
Future stuff - running with PostgreSQL
This doesn't work yet, but when it does, you'll want to install pyPgSQL and mxDateTime like this:
1. install mxDateTime from http://starship.python.net/~lemburg/mxDateTime.html
- cd $HOME/src
- wget http://www.egenix.com/files/python/egenix-mx-base-2.0.5.tar.gz
- tar -vzxf egenix-mx-base-2.0.5.tar.gz
- cd egenix-mx-base-2.0.5
- $HOME/pycs/bin/python setup.py install
2. install pyPgSQL from http://pypgsql.sourceforge.net/
- cd $HOME/src
- wget http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pypgsql/pyPgSQL-2.4.tar.gz
- tar -vzxf pyPgSQL-2.4.tar.gz
- cd pypgsql
- $HOME/pycs/bin/python setup.py install
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