System requirements

• Ruby on Rails v2.3.5 stack
• Either MySQL version 5.0 (or higher) or PostgreSQL version 8.3 (or higher) as database engine

Rails stack install

This section contains brief overview how to install Rails stack on Debian 4.0 (or later) Linux server. If you already have a working Rails environment, you can freely skip this section.

By using the instructions given here, most basic system is being set up containing:

• MySQL database server
• nginx web server with passenger module

This application will work on any decent Rails stack. Depending of the service provider, your mileage may vary.

apt-get update
apt-get install ssh gcc sudo make git-core build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline5-dev libopenssl-ruby
apt-get install mysql-server libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient15-dev

# Ruby install
cd /usr/src
curl -O http://files.rubyforge.vm.bytemark.co.uk/emm-ruby/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01.tar.gz
./ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/installer

ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/bin/gem /usr/local/bin/gem
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/bin/rake /usr/local/bin/rake
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin/ruby
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/bin/irb /usr/local/bin/irb
ln -s /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/bin/erb /usr/local/bin/erb

gem install mysql
/opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2010.01/bin/passenger-install-nginx-module

Application installation

Create application directory and get code from source repository

mkdir -p /var/rails
cd /var/rails
git clone http://github.com/emsl/Talgud.git talgud

Install application dependencies and create database

cd /var/rails/talgud
sudo rake gems:install
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:create db:migrate

Create configuration files from their respective templates

cp ./config/app_config.example.yml ./config/app_config.yml
cp ./config/database.example.yml ./config/database.yml

See Configuration section on how to configure application settings.

Next, generate initial records that are necessary for the system to start working:

rake talgud:account:create['My Account','mydomain.com','email@mydomain.com','my-password']

Here, account and initial administrator user will be created. Since the system supports multiple accounts, you need to provide it's name and an internet address this account will start serving. So if you're using mydomain.com as the address of your application, make sure it is pointed to the server where application is installed.

Configuration

General settings

Application settings are being configured in ./config/app_config.yml file as YAML format.

• flickr_api_key if you enable linking Flickr photo galleries to events, get API key from Flickr and add it here

Mailer settings

• mailer.from_name name to be set in from: message header
• mailer.from_address e-mail address to be set in from: message header
• mailer.manager_locale locale to be used to deliver messages for regional managers and administrators, set to 2-character locale code, such as en. Locale file must exist in ./config/locales/ directory.
• mailer.delivery_method set to smtp when you want to use SMTP protocol to deliver messages. In this case you need to set the following mailer.smtp_settings configuration values.
• mailer.smtp_settings.address hostname of the SMTP server. For GMail, set it to smtp.gmail.com
• mailer.smtp_settings.domain required by Google Apps, set it to your domain name (i.e. example.com)
• mailer.smtp_settings.user_name SMTP account username, in GMail, use your e-mail address (i.e. noreply@example.com)
• mailer.smtp_settings.password account password
• mailer.smtp_settings.port SMTP server port, use 587 for GMail
• mailer.smtp_settings.enable_starttls_auto set to true for GMail
• mailer.smtp_settings.authentication authentication method, set to :plain for GMail

Application maintenance cron tasks

There are maintenance tasks that should be run regularily, i.e. to close events that are filled with participants. You may want to create a hourly cron task to perform this action:

1 * * * * RAILS_ENV=production <YOUR_RAILS_PATH>/script/runner 'Account.all.each { |a| Account.current = a; Event.run_state_jobs}'