Installing Ushahidi on Ubuntu

The following instructions describe the process of setting up an Ushahidi instance on Ubuntu. The instructions are based on a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, so they include how to install all of the prerequisites that you will need.

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Note: There are a couple of points in this guide where the wiki host decided that the text being entered might be an attack on the server. Notably sudo commands that mentioned the apache path. Look out for the note _{Replace | with /} which indicates where a command can't just be copied and pasted into your command line.

Step 1 : Install pre-requisites

First there are a few packages that you need to install in order to follow the instructions below.

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You can now check out what you have just installed:
dpkg -l | grep php
dpkg -l | grep mysql

Step 2 : Configure your Git installation

Set up your global GitHub settings:
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "your.name@youremail.com"
git config --global github.user "your github name"
git config --global github.token "your github token here"
 
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your.name@youremail.com"Copy your new SSH key to the clipboard:
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | xclip -sel clipGo to github “Account Settings”. Under SSH public keys, paste the key you just sent to the clipboard.

At this point it would be a good idea to create your own GitHub fork of Ushahidi.

Step 3 : Configure Apache

The mod_rewrite Apache module must be enabled for the installation to work. This is enabled as follows:
sudo a2enmod rewrite

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sudo |etc|init.d|apache2 reload

Step 4: Create a fresh Ushahidi instance

Create a directory to hold the Ushahidi files.
sudo mkdir /var/www/ushahidi-dev
Saving the files here creates them as owned by your Ubuntu 'root' account. For convenience later, set the ownership of this directory to your Ubuntu user account. This is useful if you are the only developer, as it enables you to complete the rest of this process with minimal use of sudo. It also means that you will be able to modify files later in your text editor with minimal hassle. In a shared environment you should probably set up group permissions instead.
sudo chown your_user /var/www/ushahidi-dev
Enable your Ushahidi folder for source control using Git, and download all the files you need from the GitHub remote repository. This assumes that you have created your own branch of Ushahidi.
cd /var/www/ushahidi-dev/
git init
git remote add origin git@github.com:your_github_user/Ushahidi_Web.git
git pull origin master
After downloading, the Ushahidi files don't have sufficient privileges to run the installer, so you need to alter a number of files as follows.
chmod 777 application/config/config.php
chmod 777 application/config
chmod 777 application/cache
chmod 777 application/logs
chmod 777 media/uploads
chmod 777 .htaccess
Create a MySQL database to support your Ushahidi instance. You will be prompted to set up a root password.
sudo mysqladmin -u root --password create ushahidi-dev

Step 5 : Run the Ushahidi installer

All of the prerequisites are in place now, so you are ready to run the installer. If you are running on a virtual machine, now would be a good time to take a snapshot. It will make it much easier to start again if you missed something above.

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