Manual Install

This guide is intended to quickly march you through the steps of installing and running stackd.io and its dependencies. We’re not intending to be complete or provide you with everything needed for a production-ready install, we may make some assumptions you don’t agree with, and there may be things we missed. If you feel anything is out of the ordinary, a bit confusing, or just plain missing, please contact us.

1. A database

stackd.io needs a relational database to store internal information. Since it’s built on Django, it inherently supports many different database servers. It is preferred that you use postgres, as we make use of it’s json field type. However, you may use a different database like MySQL if you must, but it is beyond the scope of this guide to install it. For more information on Django’s database support, see: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/ref/databases/

The OS-specific prep of your choice (below) will walk you through installing postgres.

2. OS-specific preparation

Warning

You must follow the steps in one of the following prep guides for the OS you’re installing stackd.io in.

Follow one of the individual guides below to prepare your particular environment for stackd.io. Once you finish, come back here and continue on.

• Preparing Ubuntu for stackd.io installation
• Preparing CentOS for stackd.io installation

3. Create a virtualenv (Optional)

We recommend that you create a virtualenv to separate your stackd.io dependencies out into a separate environment, but it is completely optional. The following commands utilize virtualenvwrapper. If you’d like to use it, it’s documentation is found here: https://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Let’s create a virtualenv to install stackd.io into:

mkvirtualenv stackdio

The virtualenv should automatically activate when you create it. If you exit your current shell and come back later, you need to activate the virtualenv again. To do this, virtualenvwrapper gives you the workon command:

workon stackdio

4. Install stackd.io

Note

If you created a virtualenv, double-check that it is activated or else this will probably complain that you don’t have permissions to install (because it’s trying to install into the global python site-packages directory).

We recommend pulling the latest version from pypi with pip, like this:

workon stackdio  # Activate the virtualenv if you created one (optional)
pip install stackdio-server[production,postgres]

5. Configuration

After the install, you’ll have a stackdio command available to interact with much of the platform. First off, we need to configure stackd.io a bit. The stackdio init command will prompt you for several pieces of information. If you followed all steps above verbatim, then all defaults may be accepted, but if you deviated from the path you will need to provide the following information:

• an existing user on the system that will run everything (it will default to the stackdio user)
• an existing location where stackd.io can store its data (the default is $HOME/.stackdio/storage and will be created for you if permissions allow)
• a database URL that points to a running database you have access to (if you’re using the postgres install from above, the default postgresql://stackdio:password@localhost:5432/stackdio is appropriate)

stackdio init

Now, let’s populate the database with a schema:

stackdio manage.py migrate

6. stackd.io users

LDAP

stackd.io can easily integrate with an LDAP server. See our LDAP Guide for more information on configuring stackd.io to work with LDAP. If you choose to go the LDAP route, you can skip this entire section because users who successfully authenticate and are members of the right groups via LDAP will automatically be created in stackd.io.

Non-LDAP admin user

Admin users in stackd.io have less restriction to various pieces of the platform. For example, only admin users are allowed to create and modify cloud providers and profiles that other users can use to spin up their stacks.

Note

You will need at least one admin user to configure some key areas of the system.

stackdio manage.py createsuperuser

# and follow prompts...

Non-LDAP regular users

When not using LDAP, the easiest way to create new non-admin users is to use the built-in Django admin interface. First we need the server to be up and running so keep following the steps below and we’ll come back to adding users later.

7. Web server configuration

For this guide, we’ll use the stackdio command to generate the necessary configuration for Nginx to serve our static content as well as proxying the Python app through gunicorn.

To configure Nginx for CentOS:

# CENTOS ONLY

# add execute permissions to the user's home directory for static content to serve correctly
chmod +x ~/

stackdio config nginx | sudo tee /etc/nginx/conf.d/stackdio.conf > /dev/null

# rename the default server configuration (only files matching *.conf get picked up)
sudo mv /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf.bak

To configure Nginx for Ubuntu:

# UBUNTU ONLY
stackdio config nginx | sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/stackdio > /dev/null
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/stackdio /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

# remove the default configuration symlink
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

After this, generate the static content we’ll need to serve:

stackdio manage.py collectstatic --noinput

and finally, start Nginx:

sudo service nginx restart

8. Redis, celery, and salt

Start the redis server:

sudo service redis-server start

For celery and salt-master, we’ll be using supervisord. The required packages should already be installed, so we’ll just need to configure supervisor and start the services.

# generate supervisord configuration that controls gunicorn, celery, and salt-master and store it in the .stackdio directory.
stackdio config supervisord > ~/.stackdio/supervisord.conf

# launch supervisord and start the services
supervisord -c ~/.stackdio/supervisord.conf
supervisorctl -c ~/.stackdio/supervisord.conf start all

9. Try it out!

At this point, you should have everything configured and running, so fire up a web browser and point it to your hostname and you should see the stackd.io login page. If you’re using LDAP, try logging in with a user that is a member of the stackdio-admin and stackdio-user groups, or login with the admin user you created earlier.

10. Creating additional users

Note

If you’re using LDAP, you can skip this step.

The superuser we created earlier will give us admin access to stackd.io, however, you probably want at least one non-superuser. Point your browser to http://<hostname>/__private/admin and use the username and password for the superuser you created earlier. You should be presented with the Django admin interface. To create additional users, follow the steps below.

• click Users
• click Add user in the top right of the page
• set the username and password of the user and click save
• optionally provide first name, last name, and email address of the user and click save

The newly created users will now have access to stackd.io. Test this by logging out and signing in with one of the non-admin users.