experience: installing on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10)

["H.S." <..hidden..>]

Hello,

I am installing LedgerSMB, 1.2.15, on a machine running Ubuntu Gutsy
(7.10). I am no expert in databases and accounting. Given this, here is
what I experienced:

1. I first did what README.debian told me to do. That went okay.
Basically it asked me to install a bunch of debs and a few cpan modules.
BTW, while testing the build, it asked me install two additional
modules. So I guess this prerequisites file was missing them.

2. Then I installed postgresql 8.2, which is available in Ubuntu Gutsy
in addition to the newer version, 8.3. However, it appears ledgersmb
team is going to support 8.3 in the coming some weeks. Also, based on
what I experienced during the following steps, this change should be
made in /etc/postgresql/8.2/main/pg_hba.conf (replace 'ident sameuser'
with 'md5' in the lines near the end of file as shown here):
local   all         postgres                          md5
local   all         all                               md5

3. The first thing to do in Ubuntu when installing postgresql should be
to fix the password for postgresql user. It is given here in Basic
Server Setup: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostgreSQL

4. Then I started to follow the Manual Install in the INSTALL file.

5. In Step 5 of Manual Install, I created a different MYPASSWORD than
MYROLEPASSWORD. But I am not sure where to use MYPASSWORD for now.

6. While doing Apache configuration, I first had to 'chmod u+x
configure_apache.sh'. Then I ran this script as:
$> sudo ./configure_apache.sh

and answered the following questions (the answers can be different for
non-Debian based distros):
Q. Which user does your web server run as?
A. www-data
Where do we copy the ledgersmb-httpd.conf file to?
Q.Where do we copy the ledgersmb-httpd.conf file to?
A. /etc/apache2/conf.d

and restared Apache:
$> sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart


8. While checking dependencies I discovered I was missing a couple of
cpan modules. So I started cpan:
$> sudo cpan
and then installed the necessary modules:
cpan=> install module::name

9. Build test then went okay.

10. Before creating datasets, to avoid plpgsql language not found error,
create that language in postgresql. It created in PostgreSQL from the
superuser 'postgresql' (here is where the superuser's password was
helpful that I created earlier during installation of postgresql). The
command to create the language was:
createlang plpgsql template1

10. While following Create Datasets and Users, I frist logged in to
http://hostname/ledgersmb/admin.pl using MYPASSWORD. On the page that
followed by clicking on  'Pg Database Administration' asked for a 'user'
and its password and a 'superuser' and its password. I wasn't clear what
that 'superuser' is supposed to mean. Is it "postgresql", the first
superuser? If yes, then creating its password after installing
postgresql was necessary. In any case, using 'ledgersmb' and
MYROLEPASSWORD at both places worked. Any comments about this? If the
same username and password works, why two fields?

So where is "MYPASSWORD", created in Step 5, to be used other than at
the first login page of admin.pl?


11. After creating the dataset, I also created a user. It went fine.

So all in all, from a novice's perspective as far as accounting and SQL
databases are concerned, there were a few unclear steps but overall I
would say it went fine.

Now I am try to see who play around with the application and see if I
can create some test accounts and reports to see if report generation is
working.

Good job, admins!
Thanks a ton.