Leanote QA English

Here is a list of FAQ regarding the installation/configuration of leanote. For user manual please go to Leanote usage manual.

If you encounter any issues during the installation or usage of leanote, please don't hesitate to contact me at leanote@leanote.com.

We also greatly appreciate your support by submitting issues or helping refine the documentation of leanote.

Table of Content:

1. Error on runtime: "no reachable server"

Double check that the mongodb database is running, if so, try changing db.host=localhost to db.host=127.0.0.1 in the conf/app.conf file. Then re-run leanote.

2. Error on runtime: "panic: auth fails"

If you encounter the following error:

Go to /@tests to run the tests.
panic: auth fails

goroutine 1 [running]:
github.com/leanote/leanote/app/db.Init()
	/home/life/gopackage1/src/github.com/leanote/leanote/app/db/Mgo.go:64 +0x356

It is very likely that something went wrong with the database. Please check:

Is the database running?
If the database was launched in auth mode (by append the --auth option), check the conf/app.conf has the correct db.username and db.password settings.

Below is the default conf/app.conf settings. Note that by default db.dbname=leanote, db.username and db.password are both blank.

# mongdb
db.host=localhost
db.port=27017
db.dbname=leanote # required
db.username= # if not exists, please leave it blank
db.password= # if not exists, please leave it blank
# or you can set the mongdb url for more complex needs the format is:
# mongodb://myuser:mypass@localhost:40001,otherhost:40001/mydb
# db.url=mongodb://root:root123@localhost:27017/leanote
db.urlEnv=${MONGODB_URL} # set url from env

3. Leanote is running but I cannot log on

The database is not running. Please restart database and then leanote.

4. How to change Leanote's port

Suppose you want to change the port number to 8080. Edit conf/app.conf:

http.port=8080
site.url=http://localhost:8080

Then restart leanote, use the new port for access: http://localhost:8080.

5. How to bind a domain?

Suppose you want to use the domain a.com to access your leanote service, you need to change leanote's port to 80: edit the conf/app.conf as shown below:

http.port=80
site.url=http://a.com

Then restart leanote. Of course you will need to bind the domain to the IP address of the leanote server. What if there is already another service using the 80 port on the server? Then please google "use nginx to forward to different ports".

6. How to add new users to mongodb database?

Mongodb by default doesn't create any account, which is considered insecure. Therefore, after you have imported the initial data, you need to add a new user to the leanote database, just like the root account in mysql. Note that the "account" here is distinct from the "user" in the "user" table: it is the account used to connect to leanote database.

The "add user" command in mongodb v2 and mongodb v3 are different:

For mongodb v2:

$> mongo
> use leanote;
# add a new user, root, password is abc123
> db.addUser("root", "abc123");
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("53688d1950cc1813efb9564c (Wtf is this developer!?)"),
    "user" : "root",
    "readOnly" : false,
    "pwd" : "e014bfea4a9c3c27ab34e50bd1ef0955 (Wtf is this developer!?)"
}
# test if correct
> db.auth("root", "abc123");
1 #return 1 means success

For mongodb v3:

$> mongo
> use leanote;
# # add a new user, root, password is abc123
> db.createUser({
    user: 'root',
    pwd: 'abc123',
    roles: [{role: 'dbOwner', db: 'leanote'}]
});
# test if correct
> db.auth("root", "abc123");
1 #return 1 means success

You also need to modify db.username and db.password in the configuration file of mongodb.

Edit the file /home/user1/gopackage/src/github.com/leanote/leanote/conf/app.conf:

# mongdb
db.host=localhost
db.port=27017
db.dbname=leanote # required
db.username=root # if not exists, please leave blank
db.password=abc123 # if not exists, please leave blank

After you have added a root user, you can re-run mongod with authentication. (Use Ctrl+c to exit mongodb.)

Start mongodb with authorization:

$> mongod --dbpath /home/user1/data --auth

Restart leanote:

revel run github.com/leanote/leanote

7. How to add admin account to Leanote?

The default "super user" account of leanote is admin, which cannot change back once you altered it. In such cases you could edit the conf/app.conf file to change it: E.g. To assign user life as super user, change or add a line:

adminUsername=life

8. How to setup https access for leanote?

8.1. Generate SSL certificate

You can buy one certificate from online, or create one by yourself. Below is a shell script to auto-create a certificate:

#!/bin/sh

# create self-signed server certificate:

read -p "Enter your domain [www.example.com]: " DOMAIN

echo "Create server key..."

openssl genrsa -des3 -out $DOMAIN.key 1024

echo "Create server certificate signing request..."

SUBJECT="/C=US/ST=Mars/L=iTranswarp/O=iTranswarp/OU=iTranswarp/CN=$DOMAIN"

openssl req -new -subj $SUBJECT -key $DOMAIN.key -out $DOMAIN.csr

echo "Remove password..."

mv $DOMAIN.key $DOMAIN.origin.key
openssl rsa -in $DOMAIN.origin.key -out $DOMAIN.key

echo "Sign SSL certificate..."

openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in $DOMAIN.csr -signkey $DOMAIN.key -out $DOMAIN.crt

Suppose the script has created 2 files: a.com.crt and a.com.key.

8.2. Configure Nginx

Suppose leanote is running on port 9000, at domain a.com, then nginx.conf can be configured as follow. Note that the listing is incomplete and showing only the relevant lines.

# http (incomplete)
http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    
    upstream  a.com  {
        server   localhost:9000;
    }

    # http
    server
    {
        listen  80;
        server_name  a.com;
        
        # Force redirect to https
        # If you dont want https force redirect, comment out the rewrite line 
        rewrite ^/(.*) https://$server_name/$1 permanent;
        
        location / {
            proxy_pass        http://a.com;
            proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
            proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        }
    }
    
    # https
    server
    {
        listen  443 ssl;
        server_name  a.com;
        ssl_certificate     /root/a.com.crt; # Change this path to point a.com.crt, same below.
        ssl_certificate_key /root/a.com.key;
        location / {
            proxy_pass        http://a.com;
            proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
            proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        }
    }
}

Save your changes, then reload Nginx:

$> sudo nginx -s reload

Then restart leanote. Note that you might want to clear the caches of your browser first to see the changes take effect.

9. Import of `github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner` failed

Versions before 1.0 (beta version) may encounter this error. Version 1.0 uses revel-0.12 so should be immune to such problems.

Failed to load module.  Import of github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner failed: cannot find package "github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner" in any of:
	/Users/life/app/go1.4/src/github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner (from $GOROOT)
	/Users/life/Documents/Go/package_base/src/github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner (from $GOPATH)

revel 0.12 uses a different configuration, please change conf/app.conf as below:

module.static=github.com/revel/modules/static		 	
module.testrunner=github.com/revel/modules/testrunner

10. How to update the dev version of leanote?

You could use git pull to get the latest version of leanote. If you have made changes to leanote, you may fetch (recommended) the latest version to local machine, then merge with the local version. E.g.

git fetch origin master:tmp # Get the latest version from remote, name it tmp
git diff tmp # Diff tmp with local version
git merge tmp # Merge to local

If you have difficulties accessing via git, download from https://github.com/leanote/leanote.

First make of copy of the previous leanote folder in case something screwed up.
Replace your leanote with the newly downloaded one.
Copy these folders/file from your old version to the new install location:

    * /public/upload
    * /files
    * /conf/app.conf

Then restart leanote.

In case of issues like "cannot find package "github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery" in any of:...", that is because leanote has added some new dependencies, which can be obtained by the go get command. E.g. to get the new "github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery":

go get github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery

Alternatively you could download bundled dependencies with the source code from: https://github.com/leanote/leanote-all.

11. How to update the binary version of leanote?

Download the new binary version of leanote, then copy these folders/files from the old version to the new install location:

* /public/upload
* /files
* /conf/app.conf

12. Why "site.url"?

site.url is the domain for public access. For instance you could set it to http://a.com, and set the port 9000 for leanote, then use Nginx to forward the traffic to 9000.

site.url is also used in generating paths for images/attachments in the notes.

If deploy your leanote by forwarding https traffic using nginx, then site.url needs to be set as https://a.com. Otherwise in the exported blog pages, css and js are shown as http links in html, which will be blocked by new versions of browsers like firefox, resulting erroneous page display. For more details see https://github.com/leanote/leanote/issues/228.

Cannot sync images

Please make sure that the site.url on conf/app.conf is same as the Host which set on desktop app.

13. Export as PDF configuration: wkhtmltopdf

leanote utilizes wkhtmltopdf to export PDFs, so it needs to be installed first. Then log in as admin user, setup up the path of wkhtmltopdf in the control panel.

Here is now to install wkhtmltopdf:

13.1 Compile the source

Compiling the source will set you free from dependency issues, as the compilation/installation script of wkhtmltopdf has packed up necessary info for needed dependencies. More details see the install.md file in wkhtmltopdf.

13.2 Binary install (recommended)

Download wkhtmltopdf, choose the correct version, then install it using:

rpm -ivh

You might see the lack of some dependencies. Install them:

yum install -y fontconfig libX11 libXext libXrender xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi libpng

Then re-run rpm -ivh.

13.3 Test `wkhtmltopdf`

Issue the command

wkhtmltopdf http://google.com google.pdf

to check the installation of wkhtmltopdf.

If still lacks dependencies, run ldd wkhtmltopdf to find out what is missing, then install them correspondingly.

In some systems it may give you a lack of libpng error. This could be the libpng library version is too high on your machine, while some versions of pre-compiled wkhtmltopdf depend on lower versions of libpng. In such cases, find out the right version using yum provides \*libpng12.so.0\*, then install it, e.g. `yum install libpng12-1.2.50-6.el7.x86_64.

13.4 Chinese problem

After successfully exporting the google page to PDF, try exporting a page with Chinese language, e.g. wkhtmltopdf www.ubuntu.org.cn. If it shows missing characters, it could be the linux system lacks proper Chinese font. You could copy some Chinese font from a Windows system (windows/fonts) to /usr/share/fonts to fix this.

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Leanote QA English

Table of Content:

1. Error on runtime: "no reachable server"

2. Error on runtime: "panic: auth fails"

3. Leanote is running but I cannot log on

4. How to change Leanote's port

5. How to bind a domain?

6. How to add new users to mongodb database?

7. How to add admin account to Leanote?

8. How to setup https access for leanote?

8.1. Generate SSL certificate

8.2. Configure Nginx

9. Import of `github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner` failed

10. How to update the dev version of leanote?

11. How to update the binary version of leanote?

12. Why "site.url"?

Cannot sync images

13. Export as PDF configuration: wkhtmltopdf

13.1 Compile the source

13.2 Binary install (recommended)

13.3 Test `wkhtmltopdf`

13.4 Chinese problem

Clone this wiki locally

Leanote QA English

Table of Content:

1. Error on runtime: "no reachable server"

2. Error on runtime: "panic: auth fails"

3. Leanote is running but I cannot log on

4. How to change Leanote's port

5. How to bind a domain?

6. How to add new users to mongodb database?

7. How to add admin account to Leanote?

8. How to setup https access for leanote?

8.1. Generate SSL certificate

8.2. Configure Nginx

9. Import of github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner failed

10. How to update the dev version of leanote?

11. How to update the binary version of leanote?

12. Why "site.url"?

Cannot sync images

13. Export as PDF configuration: wkhtmltopdf

13.1 Compile the source

13.2 Binary install (recommended)

13.3 Test wkhtmltopdf

13.4 Chinese problem

Clone this wiki locally

9. Import of `github.com/revel/revel/modules/testrunner` failed

13.3 Test `wkhtmltopdf`