Setup Utilities and Components

The following components are optional. It is recommended that you install all these components to achieve satisfactory performance of the system.

Install documentation and help

Documentation is a part of the project and is written in reStructured text. This is published via sphinx-doc.

Please open a ssh terminal to the server and execute the following commands to install pip and sphinx-doc.

$ sudo apt-get install python-pip
$ sudo pip install Sphinx

Compile the source documentation to html. First create a folder for html output.

$ cd /opt/coreERP     #Or you can select any target folder
$ sudo mkdir coredocs

Move to the source directory and build output.

$ cd /opt/coreERP/docs
$ sphinx-build -b html . /opt/coreERP/coredocs/

Now create a linked folder in apache and publish the documentation.

$ cd /var/www/html
$ sudo ln -s /opt/coreERP/coredocs docs
Tests:Open a browser from your local node and browse at http://<remote-ip>/docs

Install Mail Sender Utility

All automated mails in coreERP are dispatched by the Mail Sender utility. This utility is installed as an Ubuntu Service that starts automatically upon machine start. In Ubuntu 14.04 LTS this is handled by a utility called Upstart.

Open a ssh terminal to the server and type the following

$ sudo nano /etc/init/coreERP-mailer.conf

Copy the following code into the .conf file with changes to /path/to/coreERP (ensure that this reflects the proper path that you used for download of source)

description "CoreERP auto mailer service"
author "coreERP"

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on shutdown

respawn

script

    sudo php /path/to/coreERP/CoreWebApp/yii mailer/mail/sendmail
    sleep 30s

end script

Rember to change the /path/to/coreERP to reflect the proper path of coreERP installed on the local drive. Save and close (ctrl+o), (ctrl+x).

This script would ensure that everytime your server is restarted, the script would automatically start.

To ensure that it starts automatically with every reboot

$ sudo initctl start coreERP-mailer

If you run into any problems, look into the log file situated in /var/log/upstart/coreERP-mailer.log.

In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS this is handled by a utility called Systemd.

Open a ssh terminal to the server and type the following

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/coreERP-mailer.service

Copy the following code into the .conf file with changes to /path/to/coreERP (ensure that this reflects the proper path that you used for download of source)

[Unit]
Description=CoreERP auto mailer service

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/php /path/to/coreERP/CoreWebApp/yii mailer/mail/sendmail
User=root
Restart=always
RestartSec=30


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Rember to change the /path/to/coreERP to reflect the proper path of coreERP installed on the local drive. Save and close (ctrl+o), (ctrl+x).

This script would ensure that everytime your server is restarted, the script would automatically start.

To ensure that it starts automatically with every reboot

$ sudo systemctl enable coreERP-mailer
    $ sudo systemctl start coreERP-mailer

To verify the status, type

$ sudo service coreERP-mailer status

If you run into any problems, look into the log file situated in /var/log/syslog

Install Backup Utility

All CoreERP data is stored in postgreSQL databases. It is very important to take backup of these databases and store them securely. In case of any data loss caused due to a hardware failure or for reasons unknown, the database backup is the only assured mode of retreiving data with minimalistic loss.

CoreERP has a console based utility that can be setup to automate the tasks of database backup. This utility can be scheduled in pgAgent. Let us first install pgAgent

Installing pgAdmin and pgAgent

On your Ubuntu node, you can install pgAdmin III via the Ubuntu Software Center. Open the software center and search for pgAdmin. Click on install.

After successful installation, start pgAdmin from the desktop. Click on the plug icon to connect to a new server. Fill the properties as required. Mention your server hostname/ip and the authentication infromation for user postgres. If successful, it should connect to the server and display postgres database.

  • Select the postgres database in the Databases node and click on SQL icon. It will open a new sql window.
  • Click on Open File and select pgagent.sql file in /usr/share/pgadmin3
  • Click on Execute Query to create the pgagent objects on the server

Open a ssh terminal to the server and type the following command to install pgAgent

$ sudo apt-get install pgagent

Let us start the pgAgent deamon. Follow the steps carefully.

  1. Create a script file in /etc/systemd/system as follows

    $ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/pgagent.service

Copy the following contents into that script file. The hostaddr and PGPASSWORD are two important variables. Please set the values based on the server you want to connect and the postgres password that was set while installing postgreSQL.

[Unit]
Description=pgAgent Service
Requires=postgresql.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
Environment=PGPASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD
ExecStart=/usr/bin/pgagent hostaddr=127.0.0.1 dbname=postgres user=postgres
RemainAfterExit=on

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Remember to change YOUR_PASSWORD in the file before save. Save (ctrl+o), Enter, Exit(ctrl+X)

  1. Reload systemctl

    $ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

  2. Start the service

    $ sudo systemctl start pgagent.service

This should start the pgAgent as a deamon. To autostart after every reboot, run the following:

$ sudo systemctl enable pgagent.service

Creating and scheduling Backup

Return to your node and reconnect/refresh pgAdmin. It will now display a new jobs node.

  • Click on the jobs node and create a new job. Refer pgAgent Jobs Help on how to create a new pgAgent job.

  • The job step must be a Batch step with the following definition

    php /opt/coreERP/CoreWebApp/yii utils/dbutil/backup

  • To ceanup and discard old files, you can create the following additional step

    php /opt/coreERP/CoreWebApp/yii utils/dbutil/agefile

Your cwfconfig.php script should include the following items:

'dbBackup' => [
    'compress' => 'singleFile',
    'path' => '/path/to/dbbackup/'
],

The compress attribute accepts one of the following options:

  • none - each database backup would be stored as sql file without any compression in a subfolder named by the database.
  • singleFile - all backups would be compressed (using Gzip) into a single tar.gz file within the backup folder
  • multiFile - each database backup would be compressed seperately using Gzip and stored in a subfolder named by the database.

Modify the /path/to/ a folder on the server with appropriate access previleges and sufficient space for storage. This should preferably be a seperate drive mounted on the server or a network path via nfs.

CoreERP Session Management

Session management and cleanup of cached user files can be managed via a service in pgAgent. This utility is installed by default as part of the main system.

To install pgAgent, follow the steps mentioned in Installing pgAdmin and pgAgent. If you have already installed and configured pgAgent, proceed with the following steps.

  • Create a new job in pgAgent using pgAdmin. Refer pgAgent Jobs Help on how to create a new pgAgent job.

  • Schedule the job for every minute or every 5 minutes.

  • In job step, select Batch and enter the following definition

    php /opt/coreERP/CoreWebApp/yii utils/session/killexpired '/path/to/cwf.xconfig'
Note:If you have installed CoreERP in a virtual path, then mention the appropriate source path that leads to CoreWebApp and cwf.xconfig.

The default setting is to invalidate a session without activity for 20 minutes. All cached files are also removed upon session logout by this service. The service requires access to the files and folders on the server inside web/reportcache. Hence, it would run under higher previlege account used by pgAgent.

Install ClamAV (Antivirus)

Linux system are not usually prone to viruses. However, any system that allows for file uploads could possibly act as a intermediary to transfer infected files from one user to another. It is therefore recommended to use a Antivirus package on the server.

We recommend using ClamAV as it is Open Source and under active development. It does not repair infected files and does not conduct realtime file scans. Hence, there is minimum overhead on the server.

$ sudo apt-get install clamav clamav-daemon
$ sudo freshclam                            -- This will get the latest virus definitions
$ sudo service clamav-daemon start          -- This will start the daemon

In the cwfconfig of the application, you can enable fileAVScan

'fileAVScan' => [
    'class' => 'app\cwf\vsla\utils\ClamScan',
    'tmpPath' => '/opt/scan/'  //Ensure that daemon or www-data has access to this folder. also include user: clamav in the daemon/www-data group
],

Install ImageMagick (for Captcha)

Certain forms in the application use Captcha for additional security. This helps bots/scripts from hitting the server. A dependency of captcha is ImageMagick. To install php libraries for ImageMagick,

$ sudo apt-get install php-imagick
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Generate phpinfo() output and verify that it displays imagick module.

Reset admin password

To reset the admin password, run the following command

php yii installer/install/changesu

This command will change the admin password to the one mentioned in the cwfconfig file.