Re: install sickness

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 5:22 AM, Pongrácz István <..hidden..> wrote:

Hi,

I strongly recommend to choose an LTS distribution and if possible, use a dedicated hardware or virtual machine for LedgerSMB.

I have good experiences with the latest Linuxmint Xfce 17 LTS (technically it is an Ubuntu 14.04LTS).
- New packages, long term support
- LedgerSMB 1.3 and 1.4 are working fine

If one have a recent (strong) workstation/laptop, it is easy to install the recommended distribution and get ledgersmb working.

Easy to install - - - - hmmmmmmmm - - - - 3 year old instruction list as the most up to date - - - - hmmmmmmmmmmmm - - - - working system - - - - not at all.

Technically, ledgersmb like any other web based softwares: drupal, joomla, wordpress or web based enterprise softwares. Sometimes they are not trivial to install, too, especially if you want to tune all the system, starting from the ground (hardware, storage, filesystem, tuning etc.).

Due to that, the user should change files of ledgersmb, a blind copy-over upgrade not a good idea, that is why I use direct github clone + patches.

I did the following, after installing Linuxmint 17 (quick version):

installing nginx+fcgiwrap
installing postgresql-9.3 and contrib, client
setup postgres password, modify pga_hba.conf
clone a fresh 1.3 from github
copy nginx config files from the clone to nginx
perl Makefile.PL
read the output, answering NO to install request
apt-cache search perl | grep "missing packages" -> read the result, select the righ one (or which seemd the right)
apt-get install packages found in step 8
go to step 6 until it suceed
(for 1.4 there were only one package needed cpan install)
copy the clone to the document root
login to the setup.pl etc.

Somehow I will disagree that LedgerSMB is easy to install. If you have done it a number of times - - - it may be. As a computer user installation requires the services of a specialist and that defeats the purpose of using OSS.

A simple computer user has no deep knowledge to manage any kind of computer systems safely. Some examples about the risks of no knowledge: phising, scam, viruses, trojan, download-install-click-click-click-surprise, missing backup and recovery strategy, moving a laptop while it uses hdd and it is powered on, trusting SSD/HDD, trusting mdraid or hardware raid, trusting btrfs, not using crypto on laptop or smartphone etc.

As my business does not need multi-user capabilities I will change to lurker mode and check back in about 4 to 5 years from now and see if the installation complexities have been changed. I just can't afford to have my financial data held hostage by outside companies.

I think nobody wants to hostage your financial data. Even my announced hardware ledgersmb appliance, which technically is a working, manageable, open system with regular backup to local and cloud.

With the steps I wrote above, using my other email, using Linuxmint xfce 17, you are able to install ledgersmb into a virtual computer, using virtualbox, kvm, whatever.
I think it is very useful to learn these steps and getting through, because you will have a valuable knowledge and an experience, how to solve these kind of problems.

If one would like to follow a step by step instruction, it is possible one will not understand what happens and why and if something goes wrong (the author of the article made a typo or forgot something) one will be not able to manage it.

Darald

As I can see, creating a package and get it into a distribution as a core package, not really easy and not only a technical issue, but political of the distribution.
Anyway, as I built my systems, I am completly distribution and package maintenancer independent: everything under my control.

I will post an other email with a question, soon.

Cheers,

István