This guide will walk you through the process of setting up Steelmesh on a RHEL based server (6.x). This guide is based on the guide available at:
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/06/install-couch-db/
NOTE: This installation guide assumes you are completing steps as the root user on the machine. If this is not the case, then you may need to use sudo to have particular commands complete successfully.
Install standard packages required for compilation of Erlang (and CouchDB):
yum install make gcc gcc-c++ libtool libicu-devel openssl-devel xulrunner-devel pcre-devel
CouchDB is written using Erlang and thus Erlang is required to compile CouchDB from source.
Download the latest stable version of Erlang R15:
cd /usr/src
wget http://www.erlang.org/download/otp_src_R15B03-1.tar.gz
tar xzf otp_src_R15B03-1.tar.gz
cd /usr/src/otp_src_R15B03
Mark Erlang Libraries that are not required:
touch lib/odbc/SKIP lib/wx/SKIP
Configure:
./configure --prefix=/opt/couchdb/erlang --without-termcap --without-javac --enable-smp-support --disable-hipe
Make:
make
make install
The default version of cURL that is available in the OS packages is not sufficient for compiling or running CouchDB. As such a more up-to-date version needs to be downloaded and installed from source.
Download the latest stable version of cURL:
cd /usr/src
wget http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.30.0.tar.gz
tar xzf curl-7.30.0.tar.gz
cd curl-7.30.0Configure:
./configure --prefix=/opt/couchdb/curlMake and install:
make
make installDownload the 1.85 version of Mozilla's JS interpreter, SpiderMonkey:
cd /usr/src
wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/js185-1.0.0.tar.gz
tar xfz js185-1.0.0.tar.gz
cd js-1.8.5/js/srcConfigure:
./configure
Make and Install:
make
make install
Download the CouchDB 1.3.0 source from the Apache releases:
cd /usr/src
wget http://apache.mirror.uber.com.au/couchdb/source/1.3.0/apache-couchdb-1.3.0.tar.gz
tar xfz apache-couchdb-1.3.0.tar.gz
cd apache-couchdb-1.3.0
Prepare ENV variables:
export ERL=/opt/couchdb/erlang/bin/erl
export ERLC=/opt/couchdb/erlang/bin/erlc
export CURL_CONFIG=/opt/couchdb/curl/bin/curl-config
export LDFLAGS=-L/opt/couchdb/curl/lib
Configure:
./configure --prefix=/opt/couchdb/couchdb --with-erlang=/opt/couchdb/erlang/lib/erlang/usr/include/ --with-js-include=/usr/src/js-1.8.5/js/src --enable-js-trunk
Make and Install:
make
make install
Next we will need to create the couchdb user:
adduser couchdb
Then, update the ownership of the couchdb var directory:
chown -R couchdb:couchdb /opt/couchdb/couchdb/var/
chown couchdb:couchdb /opt/couchdb/couchdb/etc/couchdb/local.ini
By default, the CouchDB server only listens on the localhost address of 127.0.0.1. This can be overriden in the local.ini file which can be found in the following location:
/opt/couchdb/couchdb/etc/couchdb/local.ini
Simply change the section marked httpd to match the following:
[httpd]
;port = 5984
bind_address = 0.0.0.0Additionally, add an admin user to take the installation out of "Admin Party" mode. Look for the section marked [admins] and add an admin username and password. By default, we give the admin user a password of steelmesh but it's recommended that you choose something different:
[admins]
admin = steelmesh
While you provide the password in plaintext, the CouchDB server will automatically replace the server with a hashed equivalent once it starts.
The CouchDB installation comes prepackaged with an init script for CouchDB, we simply need to create a symbolic link for that file:
ln -s /opt/couchdb/couchdb/etc/rc.d/couchdb /etc/init.d/couchdb
Once completed, we should be able to start the couchdb service:
service couchdb start
To validate that it is working correctly, curl the server:
curl http://localhost:5984/
If working, this should yield the following JSON output:
{"couchdb":"Welcome","uuid":"b4dfec2b1ebfc53b7d7df92b089d09c8","version":"1.3.0","vendor":{"version":"1.3.0","name":"The Apache Software Foundation"}}Steelmesh 1.0 is designed to work with Node.js 0.6.x stable releases, so we will install the latest stable release from the 0.6.x release tree:
cd /usr/src/
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.21/node-v0.6.21.tar.gz
tar xzf node-v0.6.21.tar.gz
cd node-v0.6.21
Configure:
./configure --prefix=/opt/node
Make and Install:
make
make install
ln -s /opt/node/bin/node /usr/bin/node
ln -s /opt/node/bin/npm /usr/bin/npm
Redis is a lightweight cache and pubsub message bus. Follow the following instructions to install from source:
cd /usr/src
wget http://redis.googlecode.com/files/redis-2.6.13.tar.gz
tar xzf redis-2.6.13.tar.gz
cd redis-2.6.13
Make Redis:
PREFIX=/opt/redis make install
Install default redis.conf file:
curl https://raw.github.com/steelmesh/steelmesh/master/config/redis/redis.conf > /opt/redis/redis.conf
A default redis service configuration has been provided in the steelmesh source repository, and can be installed using the following commands:
curl https://raw.github.com/steelmesh/steelmesh/master/config/rhel/init.d/redis > /etc/init.d/redis
chmod u+x /etc/init.d/redis
Installing Steelmesh requires no compilation as it is a Node.js application. Download the latest version of Steelmesh to the /opt folder:
cd /opt
curl https://codeload.github.com/steelmesh/steelmesh/tar.gz/v0.9.8 | tar xz
ln -s steelmesh-0.9.8 steelmesh
We now need to create a user that will own the steelmesh process:
adduser steelmesh -d /opt/steelmesh
Change ownership of the steelmesh folder to the steelmesh user:
chown -R steelmesh:steelmesh /opt/steelmesh-0.9.8
chown -R steelmesh:steelmesh /opt/steelmesh
We now need to install dependencies for the steelmesh application. This is best done as the steelmesh user so let's log in as that user now:
su -l steelmesh
As the home directory for the user was set to /opt/steelmesh we should be in the correct directory to install dependencies:
npm install
Finally, create the required directories for steelmesh to run correctly:
mkdir /opt/steelmesh/logs
Exit from the steelmesh user's shell process, back to the root user prompt:
exit
We are now ready to install the /etc/init.d script for the steelmesh service. A template configuration file can be download from the steelmesh source repository:
curl https://raw.github.com/steelmesh/steelmesh/master/config/rhel/init.d/steelmesh > /etc/init.d/steelmesh
chmod u+x /etc/init.d/steelmesh
To have the appropriate services start on system start, symbolic links need to be added to the appropriate runlevel directories. In this case, we will be adding them to the /etc/rc3.d but you can configure them as you see fit (I'm assuming you might know more than I about system administration):
ln -s /etc/init.d/couchdb /etc/rc3.d/S70couchdb
ln -s /etc/init.d/redis /etc/rc3.d/S71redis
ln -s /etc/init.d/steelmesh /etc/rc3.d/S75steelmesh
Nginx is a lightweight, robust web server that is used in the Steelmesh stack to handle all incoming requests. Requests are then passed onto the underlying node server.
To install nginx from source, do the following:
cd /usr/src
wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.4.1.tar.gz
tar xzf nginx-1.4.1.tar.gz
cd nginx-1.4.1
Configure:
./configure --with-pcre --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_spdy_module --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_stub_status_module --prefix=/opt/nginx
Make and Install:
make
make install
To ensure nginx is started on machine start, you will need to create an nginx entry in /etc/init.d. If you have used the paths as described in this installation guide you can use the one stored in the steelmesh repository:
curl https://raw.github.com/steelmesh/steelmesh/master/config/rhel/init.d/nginx > /etc/init.d/nginx
chmod u+x /etc/init.d/nginx
Now, download the boilerplate nginx configuration file onto the machine:
wget -o /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf https://raw.github.com/steelmesh/steelmesh/master/config/nginx.conf
With the configuration downloaded, and the init.d script active you should now be able to start the service:
service nginx start
If this has worked ok, then you should be able to retrieve a document from steelmesh via nginx. For example, if you have the test application installed, then you should be able to execute the following command and get a valid response from the server:
~ curl http://localhost/app-test/time
{"time":"2013-06-10T22:26:10.337Z"}If your CentOS / RHEL installation has iptables installed and activated by default, you will need to make some modifications to the firewall rules to allow traffic to access the local services on the box. If you do not have iptables installed (i.e. you are using dedicated firewalls on your network) then you can skip this step.
NOTE: The instructions below use the iptables --insert command (-I) as it is assuming that a default iptables configuration is already in place. It may be more appropriate to review your existing configuration iptables -L -n and then craft the rules using the --append (-A) command...
Firstly, we need to allow CouchDB to accept connections on port 5984:
iptables -I INPUT 5 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5984 -j ACCEPT
Next we should let traffic through to the Steelmesh ports (6633 primary, 3274 dashboard):
iptables -I INPUT 6 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 6633 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT 7 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 3274 -j ACCEPT
Finally, if you installed nginx in front of the steelmesh node server, you will also want to allow traffic through on port 80:
iptables -I INPUT 8 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
Review your firewall configuration:
iptables -L -n
If everything looks to be in order, then save the configuration and restart the service:
iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables
service iptables restart