Appliance:Fogawi

From rPath Wiki

Appliance Homepage: fogawi.rpath.org

Current Version: Not yet released

Description: Currently in development, fogwai is a concept that combines three types of web applications and their supporting pieces into a single appliance that can readily serve as a personal webserver. Fogawi is a word assembled from the first two letters of each web application: forum, gallery, and wiki. The current goal is to provide the three applications with the option to enable or disable each as needed. The three applications use Apache, PHP5, and MySQL, all included on the appliance, and appliance administrators can also access the appliance by secure shell (ssh) access at a command line as an extra option for adding web pages or other web-accessible content to the appliance. The appliance provides the rPath Appliance Platform Agent (rAPA) to cover typical configuration and maintenance needs. When the appliance is released, the rAPA web interface should include a single interface for the configuration of the three software applications. All applications are enabled by default, but can be disabled and re-enabled as needed.

The chosen brands of each application are:

• forum: Simple Machines Forum, available as an appliance at smf.rpath.com
• gallery: Gallery photo album organizer, available as an appliance at gallery.rpath.org
• wiki: MediaWiki, available as an appliance at mediawiki.rpath.org

Developer Notes

The appliance is assembled, and the three pieces of software on the appliance are working fine. To take the installed system from being a random Linux system with three separate applications to being a true appliance, the following tasks remain:

1. Create and package a fogawi main page for the Apache root of the appliance (<hostname)
2. Package an Apache configuration for ensuring <hostname>/gallery can be used in place of <hostname>/gallery2
3. Package a configuration for MySQL that includes changing the MySQL root password and pre-configures the databases needed for fogawi applications ...skipping this
4. Ensure ssh is accessible, but ssh access is not required to initially configure the appliance
5. Develop the fogawi configuration plugin for rAPA:
   1. Three tabs in a single plugin interface: "Forum," "Gallery," and "Wiki"
   2. Each tab has an enable checkbox that moves application roots from the Apache root to an unaccessible directory when disabled, and moves the same application root back when enabled after being disabled (ensure Conary updates do not change this configuration)
   3. Each application must use its pre-configured database and use the MySQL password to set up its tables
   4. Adapt the MediaWiki plugin provided from the MediaWiki appliance
   5. Check out and examine the Gallery configuration scripts and evaluate whether to include as a script or as a plugin
   6. Adapt forum configuration into a plugin interface, too, and consider applying this to the SMF appliance
6. Decide what to do with sendmail and dovecot, mainly whether they need a rAPA interface for configuration

Because things seem to be working fine prior to meeting these goals, I'm going to finish getting this working with PHP 5, a new feature in rPath Linux, and release a beta prior to achieving the goals listed above. I'm anxious to deploy this on my personal VPS. --Stef 22:13, 12 June 2007 (EDT)