FixMyStreet Install Script

If you have a new installation of Debian or Ubuntu, you can use an install script to set up a basic installation of FixMyStreet on your server.

Note that this is just one of many ways to install FixMyStreet.

Warning: installation changes your setup!

Warning: only use this script on a newly installed server – it will make significant changes to your server’s setup, including modifying your nginx setup, creating a user account, creating a database, installing new packages, and so on.

Running the script

The script to run is called install-site.sh, in our commonlib repository. That script’s usage is as follows:

Usage: ./install-site.sh [--default] <SITE-NAME> <UNIX-USER> [HOST]
HOST is only optional if you are running this on an EC2 instance.
--default means to install as the default site for this server,
rather than a virtualhost for HOST.

The <UNIX-USER> parameter is the name of the Unix user that you want to own and run the code. (This user will be created by the script.)

The HOST parameter is a hostname for the server that will be usable externally – a virtualhost for this name will be created by the script, unless you specified the --default option.. This parameter is optional if you are on an EC2 instance, in which case the hostname of that instance will be used.

For example, if you wish to use a new user called fms and the hostname fixmystreet.127.0.0.1.xip.io (xip.io is a very helpful service for development, allowing easy domain/wildcard domain usage without having to edit your hosts file), creating a virtualhost just for that hostname, you could download and run the script with:

curl -L -O https://github.com/mysociety/commonlib/raw/master/bin/install-site.sh
sudo sh install-site.sh fixmystreet fms fixmystreet.127.0.0.1.xip.io

Or, if you want to set this up as the default site on an EC2 instance, you could download the script, make it executable and then invoke it with:

sudo ./install-site.sh --default fixmystreet fms

Please be aware that the last part of the installation process, installing Perl modules, may take a long time to complete.

When the script has finished, you should have a working copy of the website, accessible via the hostname you supplied to the script.

By default, the admin part of the website (/admin) requires a user with superuser permission to log in. In order to use this interface, you will need to create a username and password for one or more superusers. To add such a user, you can use the createsuperuser command, as follows:

ubuntu@ip-10-58-66-208:~$ sudo su - fms
fms@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ cd fixmystreet
fms@ip-10-58-191-98:~/fixmystreet$ bin/createsuperuser fmsadmin@example.org password
fmsadmin@example.org is now a superuser.

The script will install postfix to allow outgoing email; you can change the SMTP_SMARTHOST and other SMTP variables in conf/general.yml to use a different SMTP server.

Please also see the instructions for updating your installation.