VM

From Sit

[edit] The VMware Image

VM console showing the man page

The VMware image is created for easy access to try out and evaluate SiT!

Meaning, when you have the VM up and running all you need to do is point your browser to the VM's ip address, and you are running.

[edit] Requirements

• Computer with minimum VMware Player, VMware Server 2.x or VMware Workstation 6.x installed.
• 384MB free memory to run the VM image.
• 2GB + Storage (the virtual disk is 15GB + 60GB but not fully allocated, for full functionality you are required 75GB free diskspace).

Get the Player or Server for free here : VMware

[edit] Help

We've made some help files inside the image to make the testing as easy as possible for you. Use the following commands from the shell:

• sithelp - Brings up the help screen with info of IP address etc.
• sitreset - This scratches everything and starts from scratch; when going to the sit page you'll get a choice to create the Database with or without sample data.
• sitsecure - If you update SiT! manually, you can use this script for easy securing the config.inc.php. It'll chmod 444 the file.
• situpdate - Try out the bleeding edge version of SiT!. This will update the installation to SVN. If you don't know what SVN is, you shouldn't use this.
• sitaddplugin - This will help you download a plugin from the SVN see the Plugins_Directory for which you can download
• sitproduction - This will turn your VM into a production ready server. It'll reset the passwords and ask you to enter new ones, change IP etc.

Finally we've added a small man page, just type man sit in the shell.

To shutdown the VM image nicely, logon to the box, and type in sudo shutdown -h now.

[edit] Credentials

• The username and password for shell access is Username: sit, Password: sit.
• For accessing the SiT! web page go to http://<your ip>/, Username: admin, Password: sit.
• Access to phpmyadmin, Username: root, Password: sit.

[edit] Tools

• We've added phpMyAdmin so you are able to access the database.
• Access to the phpMyAdmin, go to http://<your ip>/phpmyadmin, you can find the IP address of the VM by typing into the shell sithelp after having logged on.
• For remote access we've added OpenSSH to the server. You can use the free tool PuTTY to access the box.

[edit] Notes

• The VM image is a fully installed Ubuntu Server 10.04 with PHP, MySQL and Apache.
• As a default on Ubuntu the root user is not active, so you have to type in sudo before any administrative command, and type in the sit users password which is sit. This is per design for security reasons, but you can activate the root user if you want, by typing sudo passwd root and give the root user a password.

Depending on release dates, the OS will be upgraded when a new version is out and a new version of SiT! is released.

[edit] Using VM as test platform

You can use the VM to make a testing environment for your production servers. This is written for the inexperienced linux user, if you know how to copy data between 2 computers, you can skip down to the section "implementing your backup"

[edit] Required Prerequisites

• A backup of your Sit Database and webfolder

[edit] Recommended Prerequisites

• For Windows : WinSCP or similar
• For Linux Desktop : krusader (on most Linux desktop dists this can be installed from its repository)

[edit] Copying your data to the VM

Krusader

Using krusader (Linux/Unix) select the window you want to have as the VM window (just click in either left or right), from the menu in the top, click Tools --> New net connection. Alternatively press CTRL-N. Select sftp from the protocol, enter into the address field the IP address of the VM server. Username = sit and password = sit, unless you've changed it.

WinSCP

After installing WinSCP on your Windows computer, which is almost clicking next, next, next. Enter in the first screen the IP address, username and password, if you want to save the setting, do so. click Login.

For the WinSCP the default local window is the left one, and the remote is the right one.

There is no default for which is which in the Krusader.

Find and mark your backed up files in the source/local window, start the copy by pressing F5, after a short time the backup is copied to the VM.

If you didn't change directoried on the remote computer, the backup is stored in the /home/sit folder on the VM

[edit] Restoring your data to the VM

• Copy the contents of your backed up webfolder into /var/www (you can use mc which is a Norton Commander clone), do this with root privileges

  sudo mc

  now you can copy from one window to the other, hint: you can select all files (files only) by pressing the * key on your numeric keypad, selecting files and folders otherwise, use the insert key.
• import the SQL database

  mysql -u sit -psit sit < yyyy-mm-dd-backup.sql

  replace yyyy-mm-dd-backup.sql with your sql database name. If you've changed the username and/or password for the sit database then replace those aswell.

now you are ready to do some testing :-)

[edit] Using VM as a production platform

The VM can run as a production server.

[edit] Configuring the production server

To turn the VM into a production server, all you need to do is run the shellscript

sitproduction

and answer the questions / fill out the blanks.

Some of the questions you'll be asked is to change the SQL servers root password, the sit users password, change IP etc.

[edit] Configuring the mailserver

During the process of making the VM into a production server you'll be asked to configure the mailserver, you'll be given some options you need to fill out, if you are in doubt you should ask your administrator.

if you don't want to use mail other than to send mails from SiT, or if you are in doubt you should set

General type of mail configuration: NONE

Or you could answer NO to configuring the mail

For more help, you can read from the Ubuntu site [here].

[edit] Configuring LOCALE

This step gives you the ability to change LOCALE and keyboard settings.

For the rest of the settings; if you don't have any specified needs or are in doubt, just hit enter.

[edit] Backup/Restore

or backup and restore 2 scripts exists, sitbackup and sitrestore you'll need to modify these to fit your settings. the sitrestore script is not compatible with the tms_backup plugin when you are going to move SiT from one server to the other, where paths are different, i.e. from FreeBSD to the VM.

It should work when you are using it on the same box. I'd suggest you read the previous section Vm#Recommended_Prerequisites

The scripts can run in a cronjob when configured, and the sitbackup file has rsync capabilities

[edit] Pros and Cons

Here I'll write some pro's and cons in using a barebone server compared to the VM Server

This article (or section) needs work. Please help us and our readers by clicking the edit link above and expanding/improving this text.

(^*) If implementing into a server that already runs other VM's

[edit] FAQ

[edit] How do I change the Keyboard settings

To reconfigure your keyboard settings to your own LOCALE

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

[edit] How do I change the TimeZone

Change TimeZone

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

[edit] Help, lost the root password for MySQL

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.1

[edit] How do I configure the mailserver

sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix

Follow the guide (you should probably choose "Internet" when asked)

[edit] Bugs

If you want to report bugs regarding the VM / Installation itself (not the SiT application), you can do so by going to our mantis bugtracker choose VM in the project pulldown menu.

and report a bug there.

[edit] Download

• Download SiT! VMware image v3.62 350MiB md5 (mirror md5) (Release notes)

Compressed using 7-zip for a smaller download.

• Download ubuntu source 10.04 DVD 2.6gb mirror Not required unless you want to compile the operating system source yourself!

[edit] See Also

• VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace listing