paster.rst

Common CKAN Tasks

The majority of common CKAN administration tasks are carried out using the paster script.

Paster is run on the command line on the server running CKAN. This section covers:

• paster-understanding. Understanding paster syntax and getting help.
• paster-tasks. How to carry out common CKAN admin tasks using paster.

Understanding Paster

The basic paster format is:

paster --plugin=ckan <ckan commands> --config=<config file>

For example, to initialise a database:

paster --plugin=ckan db init --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

Getting Help on Paster

To get a full list of paster commands (i.e. including CKAN commands):

paster --plugin=ckan --help

And to get more detailed help on each command (e.g. on db):

paster --plugin=ckan --help db

Paster executable

It is essential to run the correct paster. The program may be installed globally on a server, but in nearly all cases, the one installed in the CKAN python virtual environment (pyenv) is the one that should be used instead. This can be done by either:

1. Activating the virtual environment:

   . pyenv/bin/activate

2. Giving the path to paster when you run it:

   pyenv/bin/paster ... 

Position of Paster Parameters

The position of paster parameters matters.

--plugin is a parameter to paster, so needs to come before the CKAN command. To do this, the first parameter to paster is normally --plugin=ckan.

Note

The default value for --plugin is setup.py in the current directory. If you are running paster from the directory where CKAN's setup.py file is located, you don't need to specify the plugin parameter..

Meanwhile, --config is a parameter to CKAN, so needs to come after the CKAN command. This specifies the CKAN config file for the instance you want to use, e.g. --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

Note

The default value for --config is development.ini in the current directory. If you are running a package install of CKAN (as described in install-from-package), you should explicitly specify std.ini.

The position of the CKAN command itself is less important, as longs as it follows --plugin. For example, both the following commands have the same effect::

paster --plugin=ckan db --config=development.ini init
paster --plugin=ckan db init --config=development.ini

Running a Paster Shell

If you want to run a "paster shell", which can be useful for development, then the plugin is pylons. e.g. paster --plugin=pylons shell.

Often you will want to run this as the same user as the web application, to ensure log files are written as the same user. And you'll also want to specify a config file (note that this is not specified using the --config parameter, but simply as the final argument). For example:

sudo -u www-data paster --plugin=pylons shell std.ini

Common Tasks Using Paster

The following tasks are supported by paster.

create-test-data	Create test data in the database.
db	Perform various tasks on the database.
ratings	Manage the ratings stored in the db
rights	Commands relating to per-object and system-wide access rights.
roles	Commands relating to roles and actions.
search-index	Creates a search index for all datasets
sysadmin	Gives sysadmin rights to a named user
user	Manage users

For the full list of tasks supported by paster, you can run:

paster --plugin=ckan --help

create-test-data: Create test data

As the name suggests, this command lets you load test data when first setting up CKAN. See create-test-data for details.

db: Manage databases

Lets you initialise, upgrade, and dump the CKAN database.

Initialisation

Before you can run CKAN for the first time, you need to run "db init" to create the tables in the database and the default authorization settings:

paster --plugin=ckan db init --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

If you forget to do this then CKAN won't serve requests and you will see errors such as this in the logs:

ProgrammingError: (ProgrammingError) relation "user" does not exist

Cleaning

You can delete everything in the CKAN database, including the tables, to start from scratch:

paster --plugin=ckan db clean --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

The next logical step from this point is to do a "db init" step before starting CKAN again.

Dumping and Loading databases to/from a file

You can 'dump' (save) the exact state of the database to a file on disk and at a later point 'load' (restore) it again, or load it on another machine.

To write the dump:

paster --plugin=ckan db dump --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini std.pg_dump

To load it in again, you first have to clean the database of existing data (be careful not to wipe valuable data), followed by the load:

paster --plugin=ckan db clean --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini std.pg_dump
paster --plugin=ckan db load --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini std.pg_dump

The pg_dump file notes which PostgreSQL user 'owns' the data on the server. Because the PostgreSQL user (by default) is identified as the current Linux user, and this is setup to be ckanINSTANCE where INSTANCE is the name of the CKAN instance. This means if you want to restore the pg_dump as another CKAN instance name (often needed if you move it to another server) then you will need to change the database owner - see editing_the_database_ownership.

Upgrade migration

When you upgrade CKAN software by any method other than the package update described in upgrade, before you restart it, you should run 'db upgrade', which will do any necessary migrations to the database tables:

paster --plugin=ckan db upgrade --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

Creating dump files

For information on using db to create dumpfiles, see database_dumps.

ratings: Manage dataset ratings

Manages the ratings stored in the database, and can be used to count ratings, remove all ratings, or remove only anonymous ratings.

For example, to remove anonymous ratings from the database:

paster --plugin=ckan ratings clean-anonymous --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

rights: Set user permissions

Sets the authorization roles of a specific user on a given object within the system.

For example, to give the user named 'bar' the 'admin' role on the dataset 'foo':

paster --plugin=ckan rights make bar admin package:foo  --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

To list all the rights currently specified:

paster --plugin=ckan rights list --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini 

For more information and examples, see authorization.

roles: Manage system-wide permissions

This important command gives you fine-grained control over CKAN permissions, by listing and modifying the assignment of actions to roles.

The roles command has its own section: see authorization.

search-index: Rebuild search index

Rebuilds the search index. This is useful to prevent search indexes from getting out of sync with the main database.

For example:

paster --plugin=ckan search-index --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

sysadmin: Give sysadmin rights

Gives sysadmin rights to a named user. This means the user can perform any action on any object.

For example, to make a user called 'admin' into a sysadmin:

paster --plugin=ckan sysadmin add admin --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

user: Create and manage users

Lets you create, remove, list and manage users.

For example, to create a new user called 'admin':

paster --plugin=ckan user add admin --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini

To delete the 'admin' user:

paster --plugin=ckan user remove admin --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini