Overview

Concerto 2 consists of a CMS server written in Ruby on Rails, which runs on Linux, and one or (usually) more players, which can be the dedicated Concerto Player or just a small PC running a web browser; the latter can run on any convenient OS. How small the PC can be depends on what limitations you're willing to live with, and how much work you want to do.

Concerto was created by students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York in 2008. in PHP, and rewritten in Ruby in 2012; that's the version that's recommended for new installs -- and if you're running a Concerto 1 install, you should seriously consider upgrading, both for new features, and because there's effectively nobody around anymore who can support you in keeping it running, should you need such help.

Setting up a Concerto 2 system is much easier if you have even a little background in Linux system administration, but we'll try to incorporate in this manual all the tips I recently had to discover to get it working, so you don't have to search for them too.

In this manual, we'll go through each necessary step, one by one, with explanations of what you're doing, so that if it comes off the rails on you (heh; sorry), it'll be easier to get it back on. In addition to Linux background, a little Ruby experience will help you out, but again, you can get by without it, if you try.