Setting up a Lino production server¶

Here is a set of conventions we suggest to use as a site maintainer when setting up a Lino production server.

Configure the domain name
Configure the default umask
Set up a master environment
Activate the master environment
Check /etc/aliases
Install your first site
Some useful additions to your shell

Configure the domain name ¶

If your customers want to access their Lino from outside of their intranet, then you need to setup a domain name. See How to get a public domain name.

Configure the default umask ¶

All maintainers must have a umask 002 or 007 (not 022 or 077 as is the default value).

Edit the file /etc/bash.bashrc (site-wide for all users):

# nano /etc/bash.bashrc

And add the following line at the end:

umask 002

The umask command is used to mask (disable) certain file permissions from any new file created by a given user. See The umask command for more detailed information.

To activate the new umask or for yourself, hit Ctrl+D to end this session and start a new session

Set up a master environment ¶

If you are the first site maintainer on this server, you must set up the master environment:

$ sudo su
# apt-get install pip virtualenv git
# mkdir -p /usr/local/lino/shared/env
# cd /usr/local/lino/shared/env
# chown root:www-data .
# chmod g+ws .
# virtualenv -p python3 master
# . /usr/local/lino/shared/env/master/bin/activate

Edit your /root/.bashrc file and add the following line at the end so that the master environment is activated also in future root sessions on this server:

# . /usr/local/lino/shared/env/master/bin/activate

Install the wheel python package, wheel is an installation tools for the pip packages, there are many other installation tools, but most pip packages uses wheel to install the package into your python environment, some pip packages might fail to install if wheel is NOT already installed:

# pip install wheel

Install getlino into the master environment:

# pip install getlino

Run getlino configure as root:

# getlino configure --no-clone --appy --web-server nginx --https

The --web-server option can be either nginx or apache. Your choice. You might want to provide some extra arguments, for example, some database related arguments are –db-engine, –db-host, –db-port, –db-user, –db-password, to see all the available options see: getlino configure.

The --https option causes getlino configure to (1) install certbot and (2) have it request a new certificate for every getlino startsite.

When at least one Lino site of a server uses lino_xl.lib.appypod, then the server must have a LibreOffice service running so that the users of your site can print documents using the appypdf, appydoc or appyrtf methods (the appyodt method does not require a LO service). You say this using the getlino configure --appy option. For background information see Running a LibreOffice server.

For details see the documentation about getlino.

Activate the master environment ¶

For every new maintainer of a production site, add the following line to your .bashrc in order to have the master environment activated each time you connect to the server:

. /usr/local/lino/shared/env/master/bin/activate

master environment¶: A virtualenv to be used as default virtualenv for all site maintainers on this production server. It mainly contains getlino. It is usually located in /usr/local/lino/shared/env.

Check `/etc/aliases`¶

Every production server should be able to send emails to its maintainers, e.g. to notify them when a cron job fails.

# apt install sendmail
# nano /etc/aliases   # add your email address
# newaliases

Install your first site ¶

You will do the following for every new site on your server:

# getlino startsite <application_name> <site_name>

Where:

application_name is one of the Lino applications known by getlino (noi, cosi, avanti, voga…)
site_name is a unique internal name of your site on this server.

For example:

# getlino startsite cosi first

And then point your browser to http://first.localhost

Some useful additions to your shell ¶

We suggest that you add the following to your system-wide /etc/bash.bashrc:

alias ll='ls -al'
alias a='. env/bin/activate'

function pywhich() {
  python -c "import $1; print($1.__file__)"
}

# find another name if your team also uses golang
function go() {
    for BASE in /usr/local/lino/lino_local
    do
      if [ -d $BASE/$1 ] ; then
        cd $BASE/$1;
        return;
      fi
    done
    echo Oops: no project $1
    return -1
}

If you want Logging all bash commands to syslog, then add also this:

# copied from http://backdrift.org/logging-bash-history-to-syslog-using-traps
function log2syslog
{
   declare COMMAND
   COMMAND=$(fc -ln -0)
   logger -p local1.notice -t bash -i -- "${USER}:${COMMAND}"
}
trap log2syslog DEBUG

After these changes you must close and reopen your terminal to activate them.

You can now do the following to quickly go to a project directory and activate its Python environment:

$ go prj1
$ a

To activate a hourly health check:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/healthcheck.sh /etc/cron.hourly/