Colab, a Software for Communities

What is Colab?

Application that integrates existing systems to represent the contributions of the members through:

• The amendments to the Wiki trac system.
• Changes to the trac system code.
• Discussions at the mailman list.
• And other systems in the community.

Features

• Developerd by Interlegis Communities http://colab.interlegis.leg.br/
• Writed with Python http://python.org/
• Build in Django Web Framework https://www.djangoproject.com/
• Search engine with Solr https://lucene.apache.org/solr/

Colab and Solr

This software uses Apache Solr as search platform based on Apache Lucene.

With Solr generates the REST style API with which you can make HTTP requests to get results: natively in XML or JSON, PHP, Ruby and Python and then treatment.

Installation

Installation instructions for Ubuntu 10.04

• Install Apache2 with WSGI support:

  sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi

• Install dependencies to compile psycopg2:

  sudo apt-get build-dep python-psycopg2

• Install Python PIP and update it:

  sudo apt-get install python-pip
  sudo pip install -U pip

• Install python virtualenv:

  sudo pip install virtualenv

• Create a virtualenv for the deploy

  sudo mkdir /usr/local/django/
  sudo virtualenv /usr/local/django/colab/

• Download the colab src code:

  sudo hg clone https://bitbucket.org/seocam/atu-colab /usr/local/src/colab/

• Install the django site:

  sudo pip install /usr/local/src/colab -E /usr/local/django/colab/

• Configure your database settings in /usr/local/django/colab/lib/python2.6/site-packages/settings_local.py

• Enable the colab site on apache and reload it:

  sudo ln -s /usr/local/django/colab/apache-site/colab /etc/apache2/sites-available
  sudo a2ensite colab
  sudo service apache2 restart

Configuring server to send emails

• Install postfix and mailutils:

  sudo apt-get install mailutils postfix

• Update the file /etc/aliases adding users that should receive root's messages and run the update command:

  sudo newaliases

Cron job to import emails

• Install sshfs:

  sudo apt-get install sshfs autofs

• Create SSH keys. You should use a password but this tutorial won't cover it (if you use you will need to install and configure keychain process to be able to proceed):

  sudo ssh-keygen

• Copy the content of your key (/root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to the file /root/.ssh/authorized_keys on the mailinglist server.

• Append the following content to /etc/auto.master file:

  sudo /usr/local/django/colab/mnt /usr/local/django/colab/autofs/listas --timeout=600,--ghost

• Restart autofs:

  service autofs restart

• Link cron script into /etc/cron.d/ folder:

  ln -s /usr/local/django/colab/etc/cron.d/colab_import_emails /etc/cron.d/

• From now on the emails should be imported every minute

Cron job to reindex Solr

• Install wget:

  sudo apt-get install wget

• Link cron script into /etc/cron.d/ folder:

  sudo ln -s /usr/local/django/colab/etc/cron.d/colab_solr_reindex /etc/cron.d/

• From now on delta reindex should run every 10 minutes and full reindex once a day.

Updating an installed version

• Update the source code:

  sudo cd /usr/local/src/colab/
  sudo hg pull
  sudo hg up
  sudo pip install /usr/local/src/colab/ -E /usr/local/django/colab/ -U
  sudo service apache2 restart