karmaworld

KarmaWorld

Description: A django application for sharing and uploading class notes.

Copyright: FinalsClub, a 501c3 non-profit organization

License: GPLv3 except where otherwise noted

Contact: info@karmanotes.org

v3.0 of the karmanotes.org website from the FinalsClub Foundation

Purpose

KarmaNotes is an online database of college lecture notes. KarmaNotes empowers college students to participate in the free exchange of knowledge.

Pre-Installation

Code

Before doing anything, you'll need the code. Grab it from github.

Clone the project from the central repo using your github account:

git clone git@github.com:FinalsClub/karmaworld.git

If you aren't using a system setup for github, then grab the project with this command instead:

git clone https://github.com/FinalsClub/karmaworld.git

Generally speaking, this will create a subdirectory called karmaworld under the directory where the git command was run. This git repository directory will be referred to herein as {project_root}.

There might be some confusion as the git repository's directory will likely be called karmaworld (this is {project_root}), but there is also a karmaworld directory underneath that ({project_root}/karmaworld) alongside files like fabfile.py ({project_root}/fabfile.py) and README.md ({project_root}/README.md).

External Service Dependencies

Notice: This software makes use of external third party services which require accounts to access the service APIs. Without these third parties available, this software may require considerable overhaul.

Filepicker

This software uses Filepicker.io for uploading files. This requires an account with Filepicker.

Filepicker requires an additional third party file hosting site where it may send uploaded files. For this project, we have used Amazon S3.

Filepicker will provide an API key. This is needed by the software.

Amazon S3

for Filepicker

This software uses Amazon S3 as a third party file hosting site. The primary use case is a destination for Filepicker files. The software won't directly need any S3 information for this use case; it will be provided directly to Filepicker.

for Static File hosting

A secondary use case for S3 is hosting static files. The software will need to update static files on the S3 bucket. In this case, the software will need the S3 bucket name, access key, and secret key.

The code assumes S3 is used for static files in a production environment. To obviate the need for hosting static files through S3 (noting that it still might be necessary for Filepicker), a workaround was explained in this Github ticket.

That workaround is repeated here. Make the following changes to {project_root}/karmaworld/settings/prod.py:

1. comment out everything about static_s3 from imports
2. comment out storages from the INSTALLED_APPS
3. change STATIC_URL to '/assets/'
4. comment out the entire storages section (save for part of INSTALLED_APPS and STATIC_URL)

5. add this to the nginx config:

   location /assets/ {

   root /var/www/karmaworld/karmaworld/;
   

   }

IndexDen

KarmaNotes uses IndexDen to create a searchable index of all the notes in the system. Create an free IndexDen account at their homepage. You will be given a private URL that accesses your IndexDen account. Create a file at karmaworld/secret/indexden.py, and enter your private URL, and the name of the index you want KarmaNotes to use. The index will be created automatically when KarmaNotes is run if it doesn't already exist. For example,

PRIVATE_URL = 'http://:secretsecret@secret.api.indexden.com'
INDEX = 'karmanotes_something_something'

Google Drive

This software uses Google Drive to convert documents to and from various file formats.

A Google Drive service account with access to the Google Drive is required. Thismay be done with a Google Apps account with administrative privileges, or ask your business sysadmin.

These are the instructions to create a Google Drive service account: https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation

When completed, you'll have a file called client_secrets.json and a p12 file which is the key to access the service account. Both are needed by the software.

Twitter

Twitter is used to post updates about new courses. Access to the Twitter API will be required for this task.

If this Twitter feature is desired, the consumer key and secret as well as the access token key and secret are needed by the software.

If the required files are not found, then no errors will occur.

To set this up, create a new Twitter application at https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new. Make sure this application has read/write access. Generate an access token. Go to your OAuth settings, and grab the "Consumer key", "Consumer secret", "Access token", and "Access token secret".

Create a file at karmaworld/secret/twitter.py, and enter these tokens. For example,

CONSUMER_KEY = '???'
CONSUMER_SECRET = '???'
ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY = '???'
ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET = '???'

SSL Certificate

If you wish to host your system publicly, you'll need an SSL certificate signed by a proper authority.

If you are working on local system for development, a self signed certificate will suffice. There are plenty of resources available for learning how to create one, so that will not be detailed here. Note that the Vagrant file will automatically generated a self signed certificate within the virtual machine.

The certificate should be installed using nginx.

Development Install

If you need to setup the project for development, it is highly recommend that you grab create a development virtual machine or (if available) grab one that has already been created for your site.

The host machine is the system which runs e.g. VirtualBox, while the virtual machine refers to the system running inside e.g. VirtualBox.

Creating a Virtual Machine by hand

Create a virtual machine with your favorite VM software. Configure the virtual machine for production with the steps shown in the Production Install section.

Creating a Virtual Machine with Vagrant

Vagrant supports a variety of virtual machine software and there is additional support for Vagrant to deploy to a wider variety. However, for these instructions, it is assumed Vagrant will be deployed to VirtualBox.

1. Configure external dependencies on the host machine:

   • Under {project_root}/karmaworld/secret/:
     1. Copy files with the example extension to the corresponding filename without the example extension (e.g. cp filepicker.py.example filepicker.py)
     2. Modify those files, but ignore db_settings.py (Vagrant takes care of that one)
     3. Copy the Google Drive service account p12 file to drive.p12 (this filename and location may be changed in drive.py)
     4. Ensure *.py in secret/ are never added to the git repo. (.gitignore should help warn against taking this action)

2. Install VirtualBox

3. Install vagrant 1.3 or higher

4. Use Vagrant to create the virtual machine.

   • While in cd {project_root}, type vagrant up

5. Connect to the virtual machine with vagrant ssh

Note: Port 443 of the virtual machine will be configured as port 6659 on the host system. While on the host system, fire up your favorite browser and point it at https://localhost:6659/. This connects to your host system on port 6659, which forwards to your virtual machine's web site using SSL.

Port 80 of the virtual machine will be configured as port 16659 on the host system. While on the host system, fire up your favorite browser and point it at http://localhost:16659/. This connects to your host system on port 16659, which forwards to your virtual machine's web site using plain text.

Completing the Virtual Machine with Fabric

Notice Fabric might not run properly if you presently in a virtualenv. deactivate prior to running fab commands.

From the Host Machine

If Fabric is available on the host machine, you should be able to run Fabric commands directly on the host machine, pointed at the virtual machine. If Fabric is not available on the Host Machine, see the next section.

To setup the host machine properly, see the section about accessing the VM via fabric and then return to this section.

Assuming those steps were followed with the alias, the following instructions should complete the virtual machine setup:

1. cd {project_root} on the host machine.

2. type vmfab first_deploy.

From within the Virtual Machine

If Fabric is not available on the host machine, or just for funsies, you may run the Fabric commands within the virtual machine.

1. Connect to the virtual machine with vagrant ssh.

2. On the virtual machine, type cd karmanotes to get into the code repository.

3. In the code repo of the VM, type fab -H 127.0.0.1 first_deploy

During this process, you will be queried to create a Django site admin. Provide information. You will be asked to remove duplicate schools. Respond with yes.

Production Install

These steps are taken care of by automatic utilities. Vagrant performs the first subsection of these instructions and Fabric performs the second subsection. These instructions are detailed here for good measure, but should not generally be needed.

1. Ensure the following are installed:
   • git
   • 7zip (for unzipping US Department of Education files)
   • PostgreSQL (server and client)
   • nginx
   • libxslt and libxml2 (used by some Python libraries)
   • RabbitMQ (server)
   • memcached
   • Python
   • PIP
   • virtualenv
   • virtualenvwrapper (might not be needed anymore)
   • pdf2htmlEX

On a Debian system supporting Apt, this can be done with:

    sudo apt-get install python-pip postgresql python-virtualenv nginx \
    virtualenvwrapper git libxml2-dev p7zip-full libffi-dev \
    postgresql-server-dev-9.1 libxslt1-dev \
    libmemcached-dev python-dev rabbitmq-server \
    cmake libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libgtk2.0-dev \
    pkg-config libfontconfig1-dev autoconf libtool

    wget http://poppler.freedesktop.org/poppler-0.24.4.tar.xz
    tar xf poppler-0.24.4.tar.xz
    cd poppler-0.24.4
    ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-xpdf-headers
    make
    sudo make install
    cd ~/

    git clone https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge.git
    cd fontforge
    ./bootstrap
    ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make
    sudo make install
    cd ~/

    git clone https://github.com/charlesconnell/pdf2htmlEX.git
    cd pdf2htmlEX
    cmake .
    make
    sudo make install

1. Generate a PostgreSQL database and a role with read/write permissions.

   • For Debian, these instructions are helpful: https://wiki.debian.org/PostgreSql

2. Modify configuration files.

   • There are settings in {project_root}/karmaworld/settings/prod.py
     • Most of the setting should work fine by default.
   • There are additional configuration options for external dependencies under {project_root}/karmaworld/secret/.
     1. Copy files with the example extension to the corresponding filename without the example extension (e.g. cp filepicker.py.example filepicker.py)
     2. Modify those files.
        • Ensure PROD_DB_USERNAME, PROD_DB_PASSWORD, and PROD_DB_NAME inside db_settings.py match the role, password, and database generated in the previous step.
     3. Copy the Google Drive service account p12 file to drive.p12 (this filename and location may be changed in drive.py)
     4. Ensure *.py in secret/ are never added to the git repo. (.gitignore should help warn against taking this action)

3. Make sure that /var/www exists, is owned by the www-data group, and that the desired user is a member of the www-data group.

4. Configure nginx with a proxy_pass to port 8000 (or whatever port gunicorn will be running the site on) and any virtual hosting that is desired. Here is an example server file to put into /etc/nginx/sites-available/

   server {
       listen 80;
       server_name localhost;
       return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
   }
   
   server {
       listen 443;
       ssl on;
       server_name localhost;
       client_max_body_size 20M;
   
       location / {
           # pass traffic through to gunicorn
           proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
           # pass HTTP(S) status through to Django
           proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-SSL $https;
           proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Protocol $scheme;
           proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
           # pass nginx site back to Django
           proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
       }
   }
   

5. Configure the system to start supervisor on boot. An init script for supervisor is in the repo at {project_root}/karmaworld/confs/supervisor. update-rc.d supervisor defaults is the Debian command to load the init script into the correct directories.

6. Make sure {project_root)/var/log and {project_root}/var/run exist and may be written to, or else put the desired logging and run file paths into {project_root}/confs/prod/supervisord.conf

7. Create a virtualenv under /var/www/karmaworld/venv

8. Change into the virtualenv with . /var/www/karmaworld/venv/bin/activate. Within the virtualenv:

   1. Update the Python depenencies with pip -i {project_root}/reqs/prod.txt

      • If you want debugging on a production-like system:
        1. run pip -i {project_root}/reqs/vmdev.txt
        2. change {project_root}/manage.py to point at vmdev.py instead of prod.py
        3. ensure firefox is installed on the system (such as by sudo apt-get install firefox)
           

   2. Setup the database with python {project_root}/manage.py syncdb --migrate

   3. Collect static resources and put them in the static hosting location with python {project_root}/manage.py collect_static

9. The database needs to be populated with schools. A list of accredited schools may be found on the US Department of Education website: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/GetDownloadFile.aspx

Alternatively, use the built-in scripts while in the virtualenv:

1. Fetch USDE schools with python {project_root}/manage.py fetch_usde_csv ./schools.csv

2. Upload the schools into the database with python {project_root}/manage.py import_usde _csv ./schools.csv

3. Clean up redundant information with python {project_root}/manage.py sanitize_usde_schools

4. Startup supervisor, which will run celery and gunicorn. This may be done from within the virtualenv by typing python {project_root}/manage.py start_supervisord

5. If everything went well, gunicorn should be running the website on port 8000 and nginx should be serving gunicorn on port 80.

Update a deployed system

Once code has been updated, the running web service will need to be updated to stay in sync with the code.

Fabric

Run the deploy fab command. For example: fab -H 127.0.0.1 deploy

By Hand

1. pull code in from the repo with git pull
2. If any Python requirements have changed, install/upgrade them: pip install -r --upgrade reqs/prod.txt
3. If the database has changed, update the database with: python manage.py syncdb --migrate
4. If any static files have changed, synchornize them with; python manage.py collectstatic
5. Django will probably need a restart.
   • For a dev system, ctrl-c the running process and restart it.
   • For a production system, there are two options.
     • python manage.py restart_supervisord if far reaching changes have been made (that might effect celery, beat, etc)
     • python manage.py restart_gunicorn if only minor Django changes have been made
     • If you are uncertain, best bet is to restart supervisord.

Accessing the Vagrant Virtual Machine

Accessing the VM via Fabric

If you have Fabric on the host machine, you can configure your host machine to run Fabric against the virtual machine.

You will need to setup the host machine with the proper SSH credentials to access the virtual machine. This is done by running vagrant ssh-config from {project_root} and copying the results into your SSH configuration file (usually found at ~/.ssh/config). This can be done more simply by typing this on the host machine:

    vagrant ssh-config --host karmavm >> ~/.ssh/config

The VM will, by default, route its SSH connection through localhost port 2222 on the host machine and the base user with be vagrant. Point Fabric there when running fab commands from {project_root}. So the command will look like this:

    fab -H karmavm <commands>

In unix, it might be convenient to create and use an alias like so:

    alias vmfab='fab -H karmavm'
    vmfab <commands>

Removing a unix alias is done with unalias.

Connecting to the VM via SSH

If you have installed a virtual machine using vagrant up, you can connect to it by running vagrant ssh from {project_root}.

Connecting to the development website on the VM

To access the website running on the VM, point your browser at http://localhost:6659/ using your host computer.

Port 6659 on your local machine is set to forward to the VM's port 80.

Fun fact: 6659 was chosen because of OM (sanskrit) and KW (KarmaWorld) on a phone: 66 59.

Updating the VM code repository

Once connected to the virtual machine by SSH, you will see karmaworld in the home directory. That is the {project_root} in the virtual machine.

cd karmaworld and then use git fetch; git merge and/or git pull origin as desired.

The virtual machine's code repository is set to use your host machine's local repository as the origin. So if you make changes locally and commit them, without pushing them anywhere, your VM can pull those changes in for testing.

This may seem like duplication. It is. The duplication allows your host machine to maintain git credentials and manage repository access control so that your virtual machine doesn't need sensitive information. Your virtual machine simply pulls from the local repository on your local file system without needing credentials, etc.

Deleting the Virtual Machine

If you want to start a fresh virtual machine or simply remove the virtual machine from your hard drive, Vagrant has a command for that. While in {project_root} of the host system, type vagrant destroy and confirm with y. This will remove the VM from your hard drive.

If you wanted a fresh VM, the next step is to run vagrant up, which will start a brand new VM (since the old one is gone).

Other Vagrant commands

Please see vagrant documentation for more information on how to use the vagrant CLI to manage your development VM.

Django Database management

South

We have setup Django to use south for migrations. When changing models, it is important to run python {project_root}/manage.py schemamigration which will create a migration to reflect the model changes into the database. These changes can be pulled into the database with python {project_root}/manage.py migrate.

Sometimes the database already has a migration performed on it, but that information wasn't told to south. There are subtleties to the process which require looking at the south docs. As a tip, start by looking at the --fake flag.

Assets from Third Parties

A number of assets have been added to the repository which come from external sources. It would be difficult to keep a complete list in this README and keep it up to date. Software which originally came from outside parties can generally be found in {project_root}/karmaworld/assets.

Additionally, all third party Python projects (downloaded and installed with pip) are listed in these files:

• {project_root}/reqs/common.txt
• {project_root}/reqs/dev.txt
• {project_root}/reqs/prod.txt
• {project_root}/reqs/vmdev.txt (just a combo of dev.txt and prod.txt)

Thanks

• KarmaNotes.org is a project of the FinalsClub Foundation with generous funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

• Also thanks to rdegges for the django-skel template