ISFDB:Personal Linux Website

Follow these instruction to create a version of the ISFDB to run on your home Linux system. These instruction do not include setting up the ISFDB wiki.

Setup the Web server

The ISFDB code relies on a web server. Apache is a good choice for this. The basic instructions are:

1. Download the software. For Linux this is generally a source distribution, found at http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi.
2. Following the build instructions. In general, you should expect to uncompress, untar, run configure, run make, and run make install.
3. Setup the system so that apache start automatically after a boot. First copy the startup/kill script from the apache installation to the standard Linux location:

   cd /usr/local/apache2/bin
   cp apachectl /etc/init.d/httpd

Next setup the Start and Kill scripts from runstate 3 by creating symbolic links:

   cd /etc/rc3.d
   ln -s ../init.d/httpd S85httpd
   ln -s ../init.d/httpd K85httpd

Next setup the Start and Kill scripts from runstate 5 by creating symbolic links:

   cd /etc/rc5.d
   ln -s ../init.d/httpd S85httpd
   ln -s ../init.d/httpd K85httpd

Finally, if you want to startup Apache without a reboot:

   cd /etc/init.d
   sh httpd start

You should now be able to point a browser at you machine's IP address and see something.

Setup the MySQL server

For this step, follow the Linux instructions found in ISFDB:MySQL Only Setup. This will load in the current version of the ISFDB data.

It is also possible to construct a blank version of the database, which can then be used to track the books in your library, or to create a different database altogether - like a database of Westerns, or Romance Novels. To follow this path:

1. Download http://www.isfdb.org/isfdb.sql.

2. Start up the mysql client and issue the following commands:

  mysql> drop database isfdb;
  mysql> create database isfdb;
  mysql> connect isfdb;
  mysql> source isfdb.sql;

Install Python

Install the latest version of python. You can download from python.org.

Install MySQLdb

MySQLdb is a python module that allows a python script to interface with the MySQL database. The module includes C code, so it requires the standard Linux development tools. It uses the MySQL libraries, so MySQL must be installed prior to this step. Finally, it is installed in the python modules area, so python must be installed prior to this step.

1. Install the development tools. This contains the C compiler, which is needed in order to compile and link elements of the MySQLdb module. You can test if the development tools are present by typing cc. If cc is present it will output:

  $ cc
  cc: no input files

If the tools are not present you will see:

  $ cc
  -bash: cc: command not found

2. Install python-devel. This module is required in order to install additional python packages, such as MySQLdb. Your version of python may already have this module installed.

3. Install the MySQLdb python module. This can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python. At this point python will be able to interact with MySQL.

Download the ISFDB Source

There are three ways to download the ISFDB source code.

Download from the ISFDB Website

The source code can be downloaded from isfdb2.tar.gz. This image will eventually be located at https://sourceforge.net/projects/isfdb in the Download section. This method requires building a tar image from the official CVS repository, and uploading it to the site. As such, it can sometimes be out of date. To extract:

  gunzip isfdb2.tar.gz
  tar -xvf isfdb2.tar

Anonymous CVS Download From SourceForge

If you have CVS tools installed, you can download a complete up to date version of the source with the following command:

  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@isfdb.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/isfdb co -P isfdb2

Developer CVS Download From SourceForge

If you are an ISFDB developer, you can check out views, make changes, and check in updates. Requests to be an ISFDB developer must be approved by an ISFDB administrator at SourceForge. Developer checkouts also require that you obtain a login at SourceForge, generate an SSH key on your home system, and record your public key on the SourceForge site. Once those steps are complete, you can extract a developer view via:

  export CVS_RSH=ssh
  export CVSROOT=login_name@isfdb.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/isfdb
  cvs -z3 -d:ext:login_name@isfdb.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/isfdb co -P isfdb2

Install the ISFDB

1. Edit isfdb2/common/localdefs.py:

  HTMLLOC         = "your_host_name"
  HTFAKE          = "/your_host_name/cgi-bin"
  DBASEHOST       = "localhost"
  HTMLHOST        = "your_host_name"
  COOKIEHOST      = "your_host_name"
  LOCALFILES      = "directory where files generated by the night job reside"
  USERNAME        = "root"
  PASSWORD        = ""
  DBASE           = "isfdb"
  UNICODE         = "iso-8859-1"
  DO_ANALYTICS    = 0

2. Then edit isfdb2/INSTALLDIRS:

  INSTALL_CGI     = Local CGI binary directory
  INSTALL_HTML    = Local HTML directory

3. Check the directory permissions on your INSTALL_CGI and INSTALL_HTML directories. You'll either need to do the install as a user that has permission to write there, or you'll need to modify the permissions on the directories.

4. Then execute:

  cd isfdb2
  make install

5. Place copies of isfdb2/INSTALLDIRS and isfdb2/common/localdefs.py somplace safe. If you do a cvs update on your source directory, and someone has checked in new versions of those files, you'll need to merge in your settings before installing again.

Configure Nightly Processing

Configure crontab to run nightly_update.py in the "nightly" subdirectory under INSTALL_HTML. This file will rotate the ISFDB banner at the top of each ISFDB page and will regenerate certain database statistics information.

Enable ISFDB Editing

The ISFDB relies on MediaWiki to register users. In the personal Linux setup without the Wiki, this is not possible. A script is provided to update the appropriate tables to allow editing permissions. After everything is installed and you are able to view pages in the isfdb, execute:

  isfdb2/scripts/create_user.py LoginName password

This will insert the login name and encrypted password into the correct tables.