BeSDS

This is Bespoke I/O's Bespoke Software Deployment Service (BeSDS), a web service that builds customized .MSIs of Firefox and Thunderbird for internal deployment to Windows machines vial Microsoft's SMS or SCCM enterprise management tools.

It is available from:

http://github.com/mhoye/Bespoke_IO

under the Mozilla Public License.

There's some work to be done on cleaning up the text in the app that's ongoing, but the application will generate customized .MSIs as described.

Overview

BeSDS is a Firefox & Thunderbird customization and deployment tool, derived from Mozilla's BYOB project. It is a fairly complex, multistack application, with a number of moving parts. The following information will guide you through a typical installation on a Fedora 16-based machine.

Installation

Generally speaking:

• Prerequisites are:

  • MySQL 5.0+
  • PHP 5.3, with at least the following modules
    • curl, gd, mcrypt, mysql, mysqli
  • WiX 3.0 or better
  • A recent Wine
  • A recent version of Python

• Filesystem must have:

  • Ensure the following directories exist and are writable by the web server:
    • application/cache
    • application/logs
    • downloads
    • workspace
  • BeSDS expects to be in the root folder of the web server wherever it's running, ( http://server/, not http://server/sub/ ). It will not work in a subfolder.

• MySQL requirements are:

  • Create a new database using the current schema:
    • application/config/schema-mysql/current.sql
  • Though current.sql should always contain the latest schema, changes to the list of supported products are also mirrored in the modify-products.sql and modify-products-thunderbird.sql files, for ease of updating.

• Application config is:

  • All under application/config
  • Copy config-local.php-dist to config-local.php and edit to make installation-specific changes.
    • The database.local structure should be given the MySQL credentials to access the database created in the previous step.
    • The database.shadow structure should be given the same MySQL credentials as database.local, or configured to point at a read-only replica of database.local.
    • Change the recaptcha settings to reflect the domain, public key, and private key data acquired from recaptcha.net
    • Change the email.* settings to reflect local email environment.
      • Set email.driver to 'native' if PHP itself is setup to send email
      • Set email.driver to 'smtp' and update email.options if an external SMTP server is to be used.
    • Set core.display_errors to FALSE to prevent verbose error messages
    • Set core.log_threshold to 0 to disable logging to application/logs
    • Change core.site_domain to the domain name of the web host, deleting the code to guess the domain name for dev servers.
  • Copy repacks.php-dist to repacks.php and edit to make installation-specific changes.
    • In particular, the locations of the downloads and workspace directories can be changed.

• Create the admin user as follows:

  • At the command line, execute this command from the application directory:
    • php index.php util/createlogin admin someone@somewhere.com admin
      • Replace someaddress@somewhere.com with a real email address
    • You should see output like the following:
      • Profile ID 1 created for 'admin' with role 'admin'
      • Password: mnm518x
    • The last line is the temporary password for the admin account - someone should use it and change it immediately.

Specifically, installation on a Fedora box goes as follows:

1. Using the Fedora 16 DVD image (not the LiveCD iso) on an appropriately-sized box. 4GB disk and 1GB RAM is a reasonable minimum size.

2. Through the Fedora installer, select a "minimal install" and finish the installation.

3. On fedora: # yum install git / httpd mysql-server / php php-gd php-mcrypt php-mysql php-getext php-xml php-pear p7* / wine

   Note that BeSDS currently requires on PHP 5.3. A small amount of code relies on a deprecated behavior that has been dropped in 5.4. This will be fixed shortly.

4. Install the editor of your choice, emacs, vim or nano.

5. If you installed nano in step four, hang your head; you have brought shame to your family and dishonor to your clan. Sack up, put your unix boots on and learn one of the other two.

6. git clone http://github.com/mhoye/Bespoke_IO/

7. In Bespoke_IO/application/config/mysql-schema/ you can use a script called database_setup.sh to quickly install and preconfigure the the appropriate user and permissions. This will also install a curtailed list of the available versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, the most current mainline and extended support versions of each.

8. Again in the Bespoke_IO folder execute the following script:

   ./bin/setup_script.sh

   This will set some paths and permissions appropriately. It also installs some RPMs, so if you're not using Fedora or some other RPM-based distribution, you'll need to identify which packages are on that list, and how to obtain and install them yourself.

9. Move the entire contents of the newly created Bespoke_IO folder to root folder of your web server, usually /var/www/html/ - if you intend to pull directly from the git repo into production, make sure to copy over the .git folder as well. Future releases will have alternative branches for development and production, but at the moment they do not so this approach is not recommended.

10. Outside of Bespoke I/O's code, you will need to configure PHP (in /etc/php.ini) to use short tags and set the time zone correctly.

    You will need to modify your Apache configuration (httpd.conf) to "AllowOverride All" in the appropriate place. Be advised that the risks involved in doing so are your responsibility to understand and accept before deployment. Likewise, on some systems your default firewall configuration will need to be modified or disabled.

    Again, the consequences of not knowing what you're doing here are your responsibility.

11. In in applications/config, copy the config-local.php-dist file to config-local.php and open it up in the editor you picked that wasn't nano. You will need to change the line that references the core.site_domain (line 3) to be whatever you have named the box, or at a minimum whatever its IP address is, for it to work. If you decide to activate mail notifications, by setting that option to TRUE, you also need to configure the email.options section correctly.

12. Finally, in the root folder of your web server, in a terminal, do this:

    php index.php util/createlogin admin person@companyname.com admin

    ... replacing person@companyname.com with your own address.

    This will create an "admin" user on the web service, with the appropriate permissions, and give you that account's password. You can log in and change this at your earliest convenience.

At this point, you should be able to log into BeSDS as a web service, using the username "admin" and the password provided in step 10.

On a personal note, I'd like to thank Mozilla and Seneca/CDOT for the opportunity to work with some excellent people. It's been an honour and a great privilege.

    - Mike Hoye, August 2012.