Note These are instructions tested on Ubuntu 9.04/9.10/10.04/10.10/12.04. There might be slight variations on other distributions. We would appreciate your contribution in refining these instructions with distribution specific changes.

If you wish to create a virtual machine for installing ConVirt, use instructions here and then follow instructions below.

Installing and setting up ConVirt Management Server (CMS)

• Log in as a user account in which you wish to setup ConVirt management server. Lets call this CMS account. It is recommended not to use the root account for CMS installation.

• Install wget

 sudo apt-get install wget sudo

• Setup Proxy : If your organization has a proxy server to access internet, then make sure that you set the http_proxy variable as follows at the time of ConVirt installation and setup.

   export http_proxy="http://company-proxy-server:80" 
 
   NOTE The proxy port may be different. In this example, 80 is assumed. 
     

• Download the packages from the Convirture website.

 wget --no-cache http://www.convirture.com/downloads/convirt/2.5/convirt-install-2.5.tar.gz
 wget --no-cache http://www.convirture.com/downloads/convirt/2.5/convirt-2.5.tar.gz
 wget --no-cache http://www.convirture.com/downloads/convirture-tools/2.5/convirture-tools-2.5.tar.gz

• Untar in the home directory. You will see the directory containing scripts to create TurboGerars2 (tg2) environment and ConVirt management server in the home directory.

 tar -xzf convirt-install-2.5.tar.gz

• IMPORTANT INSTALL RELATED PATCH/CHANGE Due to change in some of the dependencies, we need to install specific version of virtualenv. To do so, please make the following change.

  In the following two files
    convirt-install/install/cms/common/functions 
    convirt/install/cms/common/functions 

  Change the line 
    $SUDO easy_install virtualenv 
  To
    $SUDO easy_install virtualenv==1.11.6

   NOTE  Two equal-to signs before the version number.

• Install dependencies either as root user or using sudo.

 sudo ./convirt-install/install/cms/scripts/install_dependencies 
 
 NOTE When prompted for mysql credentials for root, enter "convirt" (you can change this later.)
 NOTE On 10.04 (lucid) you have to run:
    sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python2.6-dev python-setuptools

    Update : Recently due to change in json library, users run in to the following error. 

error: SandboxViolation: chmod('/home/convirt/convirt-enterprise/.python-eggs/simplejson-2.0.8-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg-tmp/simplejson/tmpBaN0BU.$extract', 493) {}

 To workaround this, please follow the steps given below.
 cd convirt
 source ./tg2_env/bin/activate
 easy_install -U simplejson 
 deactivate
  
 Now run the setup_convirt again.
 ./convirt-install/install/cms/scripts/setup_convirt}

• Setup innodb buffer and memory pool.

 In the mysql configuration file /etc/my.cnf under [mysqld] section. Please add the following two lines
   innodb_buffer_pool_size=1G
   innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=20M

 Restart mysqld
   /etc/init.d/mysqld restart

• Install ConVirt. For this, log in as CMS user account.

* If required, setup Proxy again, as now you are logged in as CMS user account.

   export http_proxy="http://company-proxy-server:80"
 

• By default the CMS will get installed in the home directory like ~/convirt. If you wish it to be at any other location, please update CONVIRT_BASE varialbe in install/cms/scripts/install_config file.

   For example, change 

   CONVIRT_BASE=~ 

   To 

   CONVIRT_BASE=~/cms 

   Now CMS will get installed under ~/cms/convirt

• Untar the CMS tarball.

  source convirt-install/install/cms/scripts/install_config
  tar -xzf ./convirt-2.5.tar.gz -C $CONVIRT_BASE

* Setup TurboGears

   ./convirt-install/install/cms/scripts/setup_tg2

* Setup ConVirt

Modify sqlalchemy.url in src/convirt/web/convirt/development.ini to reflect user and password for the mysql database.

  For example in the following url, username = root, password = convirt, server=localhost, database port = 3306 
  and database name is convirt (the one before '?' in the url)
  
  sqlalchemy.url=mysql://root:convirt@localhost:3306/convirt?charset=utf8

and then execute :

     ./convirt-install/install/cms/scripts/setup_convirt

     NOTE You would be prompted for password/passphrase for SSH identity for CMS server. You will be required to enter 
     the password/passphrase every time you start the ConVirt Management Server (CMS). You can choose to leave it blank.

Validating the CMS Setup

• Start ConVirt Management Server

 cd ~/convirt  
 ./convirt-ctl start

NOTE You would be prompted for passphrase. Enter the same passphrase that you gave at the time of setting up ConVirt

• If the firewall is enabled, configure it to allow TCP access to port 8081

 iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 8081 -j ACCEPT

• Find the IP address of the machine using,

 ifconfig eth0 

• Point your browser at CMS : http://ip-address:8081/. The default credentials are admin/admin.

• Stop server once you are done.

 cd ~/convirt
 ./convirt-ctl stop

Continue

Continue with rest of the setup procedure here .