Can't figure out how to run Matomo from the package.

[Dreamsorcerer]

Accessing the site is giving me:

An error occurred
Matomo couldn't write to some directories .
Try to Execute the following commands on your server, to allow Write access on these directories:
chown -R root:root /usr/share/matomo
chmod -R 0755 /usr/share/matomo/tmp
chmod -R 0755 /usr/share/matomo/tmp/assets/
chmod -R 0755 /usr/share/matomo/tmp/cache/
chmod -R 0755 /usr/share/matomo/tmp/logs/
chmod -R 0755 /usr/share/matomo/tmp/tcpdf/
chmod -R 0755 /usr/share/matomo/tmp/templates_c/

Obviously, the server is not running as root, so it cannot write to these directories. But, I don't want it to write to /usr/share/ anyway.

Looking at index.php, it appears to define the paths with no way for me to customise them. Presumably, I need to set PIWIK_DOCUMENT_ROOT to /var/www/mysite/ and PIWIK_INCLUDE_PATH to /usr/share/matomo/.

Is there something I'm missing that would allow me to change these paths?
I'm using nginx if it makes a difference.

[Dreamsorcerer]

OK, I've now tried hacking the index.php file to get something working temporarily, and set PIWIK_DOCUMENT_ROOT to /var/www/mysite, PIWIK_INCLUDE_PATH to /usr/share/matomo, and PIWIK_USER_PATH to /etc/matomo.

However, I now get this error:

Matomo encoutered an error: An exception has been thrown during the rendering of a template ("The ui asset with 'href' = /var/www/mysite/plugins/Morpheus/stylesheets/base/bootstrap.css is not readable"). (which lead to: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user ''@'localhost' (using password: NO))

So, I still can't figure out any way to get this application to run...

[aureq]

@Dreamsorcerer

• Don't hack index.php. I mean, that's not going to help you in any way.
• Could you provide more details on how you are trying to install Matomo
• Could you provide more information about your environment
• Could you provide your nginx configuration related to Matomo

Guessing what could be wrong without the above is going to be really hard for anyone.

Thanks

[Dreamsorcerer]

Well, I was more looking for a general idea of how someone is supposed to run/install it. Based on the instructions, I have installed the package, and then setup a database. From there, I can't seem to find any clear instructions on how this is supposed to be configured/run (obviously there is an Apache config in the package, but that doesn't seem to be helping me figure it out).

Here's one version of my nginx conf (I've tried a couple of different approaches):

server {
	listen 443 ssl http2;
	listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

	server_name mysite;
	root /usr/share/matomo;

	include fastcgi.conf;

	location / {
		try_files $uri @var;
	}

	location @var {
		root /var/www/mysite;
		try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string;
	}

	location = /index.php {
		fastcgi_pass php;
	}
}

For comparison, to understand what I am expecting to do, if you install the wordpress package, it comes with a custom config.php which automatically loads individual site configs from /etc/wordpress/, and then in that site config, you would define WP_CONTENT_DIR as /var/www/mysite/. That way, everything just works by getting nginx to run WordPress from /usr/share/wordpress/ and WordPress automatically loads plugins/themes etc. through the /var directory.

Literally everything I've tried seems to result in Matomo wanting me to allow it write access to /usr/share/matomo/ and to run everything from there.

[Dreamsorcerer]

So, for the record, instructions that I've been following: http://debian.piwik.org/
After installing the package, it says 'Check the configuration files in /etc/matomo/'.
No information on what I should be checking or what I might want to change. And, that's the end of those instructions, so I have no information on how I might run the project.

Finding these instructions in the README: https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo-package/blob/master/debian/README.Debian
That asks me to setup a database.
Then adds an Apache config.
But, as far as I can tell that config is just telling it to run through /usr/share/matomo/ which is what I've tried, and keeps giving me errors because it's not writeable.

[Dreamsorcerer]

I'm still rather lost, any hints on how it's supposed to work would be great. The only way I can imagine at this point is using some kind of overlayfs setup, using /usr/share/matomo as a read-only layer and then having a writeable layer on top of that.

Other than that, I'm completely lost as to how someone is supposed to run Matomo from this package...

[florianjacob]

Small hints hoping they could be useful: The canonical way to change stuff like PIWIK_USER_PATH is a bootstrap.php file, see https://matomo.org/docs/include-piwik-in-your-project/#bootstrap-php-execute-custom-code-before-matomo-runs for more info. That way, you don't have to modify index.php.

e.g. something like this:

<?php
// set PIWIK_USER_PATH to a writable location
define('PIWIK_USER_PATH', '/var/www/mysite');

(adapted from the NixOS package I maintain, so I can't give you specific info on this Debian package)

Also, the @var location should be removed, as none of the files in PIWIK_USER_PATH are intended to be served to users through the web server, they're only config and tmp files, read / writte by the php scripts in the /usr location.

[Dreamsorcerer]

Thanks so much @florianjacob, that gets it working.

@aureq Looking at how the package installs, I'm guessing the Debian package intends everything to be run out of /etc/matomo, rather than a /var/www/ site. However, without me adding the bootstrap.php file, it will only try to run from /usr/share/matomo. Obviously, manually adding bootstrap.php is another hack, so it seems to me that the package is missing this file, which should be hardcoded to /etc/matomo (if that's how the Debian package is meant to be run), or otherwise include a file from /etc/matomo/ to allow the user to customise the path.

[Dreamsorcerer]

Another error now, when downloading the geoip2 databases; it wants to save them to /usr/share/matomo/misc/. So, either Matomo should be tweaked to download them somewhere under the user_path, or if it must use that location, then that directory should be a symlink to somewhere in the user_path.

[mattab]

Thanks for your patience, let's continue the discussion in this other issue for now, where we're looking for a new maintainer for the debian package: #131