kiwi.webarch.net / kiwi.transitionnetwork.org

This is the development server for ​The Transition Network, there is a ​static html front page for this server which lists the sites and applications which are running on it. The live server, quince.transitionnetwork.org is documented on the wiki:NewLiveServer page.

The development server has a development, ​http://dev.transitionnetwork.org/, and a testing, ​http://test.transitionnetwork.org/, version of the live server set-up. The test, dev and live code bases were kept in ​this subversion repository but have now been switched to the Trac svn repo, browser:www via ticket:92. To mirror LIVE's set up, there are Drupal multi-sites for the workspaces sub-site at ​http://workspaces.dev.transitionnetwork.org/ and ​http://workspaces.test.transitionnetwork.org/.

The development server is ​kiwi.transitionnetwork.org also available at ​kiwi.webarch.net, it's a encrypted 40G debian virtual machine with 1Gb of dedicated RAM. The encryption key can be shared with others if needs be, there is a ssh account on the physical machine that can be used to reboot and decrypt the machine. The physical server that virtual machine is running on has quad Intel Xeon 2.00GHz 64bit processors, 16Gb RAM, the host OS debian is running on a pair of mirrored 73Gb SAS disks and the virtual machines on a pair of mirrored 2Tb SATA disks. / There are ​remote munin stats for the server available. The stats are also ​available from the server itself and the server hosts ​munin stats for the live server, transitiontowns.gaiahost.coop.

The original documentation for this server was at ​http://atrium.transitiontoday.org/dev/development-server the parts that still seem relevant have been copied here and updated as necessary.

Network and DNS

The server has 3 IP addresses, but only one is currently needed, 81.95.52.78, 81.95.52.79, 81.95.52.80

SSH access

Which ever developers need ssh access can have it, contact chris@…. When adding a new account don't forget to add the user to the sudo group -- ssh access is limited to only users in the sudo group.

Users can be added and also put in the sudo group with one command:

kiwi:~# adduser -G sudo newusername

/etc/sudoers is set up so that people don't need to type their passwords when sudo'ing.

If you want to create a user and allow them to have ssh access but not sudo then they need to be in the sshaccess group:

kiwi:~# adduser -G sshaccess newusername

If users set up ssh keys then this means that people can use very long, essentially uncrackable, passwords but never actually need to remember or use them unless they lose their local ssh key or they need to login via the consol.

live2dev

This is a script, run as root, which will update either the ​http://dev.transitionnetwork.org.webarch.net/ or the ​http://test.transitionnetwork.org.webarch.net/ sites with the last MySQL dump from the live site and also copy across backups of the uploaded files.

The script can be run interactively or by telling it which site to update on the command line (dev or test), for example to update the dev site:

kiwi:~# live2dev dev
Have you run /usr/local/bin/backup2kiwi on quince.webarch.net? (y):

The script will update using the latest data synced from the live server, this sync is done using the wiki:NewLiveServer#backup2kiwi script on kiwi.

After the script has run you need to Flush all caches to avoid error messages, ideally the script would drop the appropriate tables to make this unnecessary.

This script was sorted out via ticket:124 and the email settings via ticket:136 and there is still the outstanding matter of the https cert / domain name mismatch, see ticket:166.

A copy of the live2dev script is attached attachment:live2dev​

Mediawiki

There is a development copy of the ​http://wiki.transitionnetwork.org/ site at ​http://wiki.dev.transitionnetwork.org/Main_Page which is running on kiwi.transitionnetwork.org it is installed in /web/wiki.dev.transitionnetwork.org/www and the apache VirtualHost is configured in /etc/apache2/sites-available/wiki.dev.transitionnetwork.org

To upgrade the site to the latest version of Mediawiki, from ​http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download you could follow the instructions from ​http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upgrade or use the mediawiki-upgrade script which takes the latest version of Mediawiki as an argument on the command line and then does everything for you:

kiwi:~# mediawiki-upgrade 1.16.0

wiki-live2dev

To sync the dev version of the wiki with a database dump and the latest uploaded files from wiki:NewLiveServer#Mediawiki run /usr/local/bin/wiki-live2dev on kiwi.transitionnetwork.org after you have run wiki:NewLiveServer#backup2kiwi on quince.transitionnetwork.org:

kiwi:~# wiki-live2dev
Have you run /usr/local/bin/backup2kiwi on quince.webarch.net? (y):

A copy of the wiki-live2dev script is attached attachment:wiki-live2dev​

Packages

The following packages and their dependencies have been installed using aptitude:

• rsync
• libapache2-mod-fastcgi
• mysql-server
• php5-imagick
• php5-mysql
• phpmyadmin
• php-pear
• subversion
• php5-suhosin
• php-apc
• php5-mcrypt
• php5-dev
• libmagic-dev
• make
• dnsutils
• whois
• munin
• libwww-perl
• lynx
• imagemagick
• trac

Apache

After making any changes to the Apache configuration best do a configtest first to make sure the configuration is OK:

sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl configtest

And then to restart the apache server:

sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl restart

phpMyAdmin

The phymyadmin debian package was installed and directives from /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf and /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl were copied into /etc/apache2/sites-available/phpmyadmin and then the VirtualServer was enabled, a2ensite phpmyadmin and apache restarted.

phpMyAdmin is available at: ​https://kiwi.transitionnetwork.org/phpmyadmin/

MySQL

There is a copy of the root passwd for MySQL in /root/.

The MySQL settings have been tweaked to increase memory usage, see /etc/mysql/my.cnf

MySQL users and databases were set up using the phpMyAdmin interface.

Postfix

Postfix has been installed for outgoing SMPT email, the only changes from the default configuration are related to enabling TLS and these changes are in /etc/postfix/main.cf.

Email to root is forwarded to chris@… via /root/.forward -- if anyone else needs to get a copy of the root emails then please add yourself to this file.

Backupninja

​Backupninja has been installed and set up -- it's set to backup files to another server in the same rack. The main configuration file is /etc/backupninja.conf and the files containing the list of things to be backed up are in /etc/backup.d/. 60 days worth of backups are saved. It is set to backup MySQL and the following directories:

include = /etc
include = /home
include = /var
include = /home
include = /usr
include = /srv
include = /web
 
exclude = /var/run

Mysql Backup

A MySQL Backup script from ​http://worldcommunitypress.com/opensource/mysql-backup is installed in /usr/local/bin and it's set to create backups in /var/backups/mysql/

It needs the libmime-lite-perl debian package to be installed.

To run it:

/usr/local/bin/mysql-backup

These lines have been changed from the original at ​http://worldcommunitypress.com/assets/files/opensource/utilities/mysql_backup.txt :

$admin_email_to              = 'chris@webarchitects.co.uk';
$admin_email_from            = 'root@kiwi.webarch.net';
$cnf_file                    = '/root/.my.cnf';
$site_name                   = 'kiwi.webarch.net';
$mysql_backup_dir            = '/var/backups/mysql';

DenyHosts

To prevent SSH brute force attacks ​DenyHosts has been installed -- if you make too many mistakes with your password you will be locked out! To whitelist IP addresses add them to /etc/hosts.allow -- blacklisted IP's are written to /etc/hosts.deny.

Munin

There are ​remote munin stats for the server available, they are also ​available from the server itself.

The munin client has been configured via /etc/munin/munin-node.conf

Note the ​missing iostat graph is caused by ​a debian munin xen bug.

Trac

This Trac site was installed via ticket:1 and it resides in /web/tech.transitionnetwork.org/trac and the linked Subversion repo is in /web/tech.transitionnetwork.org/svn and the XSLT to style web access to ​https://tech.transitionnetwork.org/svn/ is in /web/tech.transitionnetwork.org/www.

The install followed notes from ​Configuring Trac on Debian and ​Trac on Debian.

Further information and links to help pages can be found here: wiki:WikiStart#Trac