September Meeting - Thu, Sept 29

Hey guys,

Just wanted to let you know that I won't be able to attend this month's meeting. We're moving this weekend and have to continue packing. Hope all goes well. By the way, If we ever need a meeting space, I work at the Missouri History Museum and we have a great room right next to my office that has tables, a projector, whiteboard and a great view of the park. Let me know if we ever need to use it and I can set it up.

Sorry I can't attend tomorrow - I'm headed off to a conference in KC.

I have prepared the following guide for installing Aegir on an Amazon EC2 server. I will be going through this material tomorrow.

Quickstart guide to Amazon’s Cloud Services, Drupal, and Aegir

1. Terminology

   • AWS – Amazon Web Services, a set of cloud services
   • EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud, scalable pay-as-you-go compute capacity in the cloud
   • ECU – Elastic Compute Unit , equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor
   • AMI - Amazon Machine Image, a prepared system installation including operating system and software
   • SSH – Secure Shell, protocol for remote access to computers for issuing commands and transferring files
   • Key Pair – a cryptographic public-private key pair used to secure SSH
   • Putty – a Windows SSH Client
   • Filezilla – a Windows client for transferring files via FTP or SSH
   • Drush - a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal
   • Aegir – A Drupal based control panel for provisioning and maintaining Drupal websites

2. Amazon’s Price list

   • https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
   • Charged per hour for servers, per GB for bandwidth, per GB-month for storage

   • Servers very by CPU units and memory

     • Micro - 613 MB mem, up to 2 ECUs (bursting)
     • Small – 1.7 GB mem, 1 ECU
     • Large – 7.5 GB mem, 4 ECUs
     • Extra Large – 15 GB mem, 8 ECUs
     • High-memory, and cluster instances are available as well

   • AWS’s Free Usage Tier – Gives you mostly free access to a Micro instance for a year

   • Price Calculator: https://aws.amazon.com/calculator

3. Setup your Amazon Web Services account

   • https://aws.amazon.com/
   • Billing information is required

4. AWS Console is your friend

   • https://aws.amazon.com/console/

5. Create a Key Pair for EC2

   1. You use a private key instead of a password to log into your server
   2. AWS Console -> EC2 (Tab) -> Key Pairs -> Create Key Pair
   3. Name it and click Create
   4. Save the private key to your computer. Use it to SSH into the server you create.
      • If using Putty, using PuttyGen.exe to convert the .pem file to a .ppk file.

6. Launch a new EC2 instance

   1. AWS Console -> EC2 (Tab) -> Instances -> Launch Instance

   2. Select an image

      1. Community AMIs
      2. Search for “ami-06ad526f” (without quotes) for Ubuntu 11.04 32-bit on the east coast

   3. Select the Instance Type (size)

   4. Skip the Advanced Instance Options and Tags
   5. Choose your existing key pair
   6. Select the default Security Group (allows SSH on port 22)
   7. Review and Launch.
   8. Your instance is provisioned!

7. Assign an IP Address (Elastic IP)

   1. Your instance is only available via an assigned public DNS name until you assign an IP address.
   2. AWS Console -> EC2 (Tab) -> Elastic IPs -> Allocate New Address
   3. Select “EC2” and click “Yes, Allocate”
   4. Select the Address in the list and click the “Associate Address” button
   5. Select your instance from the drop down and click “Yes, Associate”

8. Log into your server

   • SSH to your server
   • address: your Elastic IP
   • username: ubuntu
   • no password, use the private key you created

9. Install packages

   1. Update Linux
      sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
   2. Install MySQL
      sudo apt-get install mysql-server
   3. Install Apache & PHP
      sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-cli php5-gd php5-mysql

10. Install Aegir

    1. Guides
       http://community.aegirproject.org/installing/manual
       http://peterjolson.com/blog/notes-installing-aegir-amazons-ec2
    2. Install prerequisites
       sudo apt-get install postfix sudo rsync git-core unzip
       Setup Postfix as: Internet Site
    3. Prepare Apache
       sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo ln -s /var/aegir/config/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/aegir.conf
sudo ln -s /var/aegir/drush/drush /usr/local/bin/drush
    4. Add “aegir” user
       sudo adduser --system --group --home /var/aegir aegir
sudo adduser aegir www-data
    5. Give aegir user sudo rights
       sudo visudo
       Add the following to the end of the file:
       aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apache2ctl
       exit and save
    6. Switch to the aegir user
       sudo su -s /bin/bash aegir
cd ~/
    7. Install Drush and Aegir (adjust url to the current version on drupal.org)
       curl http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drush-7.x-4.5.tar.gz | tar -xz
drush dl --destination=/var/aegir/.drush provision-6.x
drush hostmaster-install
    8. Visit the url displayed at the end of installation to log into your Aegir website.

following up on the meeting last evening
here's some code that might do nicely for that registration sign-up site:
http://drupal.org/sandbox/mariancalinro/1295672
rather than go to a site and click a link the CEO would only need to check his/her email inbox after the cutoff date/time

@ericthelast - Thanks for your generous offer to host a meeting at the Missouri History Museum! We discussed the possibility yesterday, and there was strong interest in meeting there sometime, maybe next month. We typically meet on the 4th Thursday of the month (so Thursday, October 27) at 7pm, but that doesn't have to be the case. Please reply here or message me to discuss the matter.

10/27 at 7pm, correct?

Okay, I've confirmed the meeting for next week. I'm going to get a map of the facility and send you the directions for entering the building and finding the room later today.