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AMI for EC2 |
To help people to get started with the FixMyStreet platform, we have created an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) with a basic installation of FixMyStreet, which you can use to create a running server on an Amazon EC2 instance.
Note that this is just one of [four ways to install FixMyStreet]({{ site.baseurl }}install/).
If you don't have your own server, or simply prefer to use an external one, you can use Amazon Web Services (AWS) instead. They provide difference scale servers, called instances. The smallest instance, the Micro, will be free for a year.
The AMI we've prepared for you can be found in the EU West (Ireland)
region, with the ID ami-37b15e4e and name "FixMyStreet installation
2017-07-18". You can launch an instance based on that AMI with
this link.
When you create an EC2 instance based on that AMI, make sure that you choose Security Groups that allow at least inbound HTTP, HTTPS and SSH, and perhaps SMTP as well for email.
When your EC2 instance is launched, you will be able to log in as the
ubuntu user. This user can sudo freely to run commands as root.
However, the code is actually owned by (and runs as) the fms user.
After creating the instance, you may want to edit a configuration
file to set a couple of parameters. That configuration file is
/home/fms/fixmystreet/conf/general.yml, which can be edited with:
ubuntu@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ sudo su - fms
fms@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ cd fixmystreet
fms@ip-10-58-191-98:~/fixmystreet$ nano conf/general.yml
You should set
CONTACT_EMAIL
and
DO_NOT_REPLY_EMAIL
or whatever you wish to use. postfix is installed so that outgoing email will
work, but this may need further configuration.
Then you should restart the Catalyst FastCGI server with:
fms@ip-10-58-191-98:~/fixmystreet$ logout
ubuntu@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/fixmystreet restart
If you find the hostname of your EC2 instance from the AWS console, you should then be able to see the site at http://your-ec2-hostname.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com
By default, the admin part of the website (/admin) requires a user with
superuser permission to log in. In order to use this
interface, you will need to create a username and password for one or
more superusers. To add such a user, you can use the createsuperuser
command, as follows:
ubuntu@ip-10-58-66-208:~$ sudo su - fms
fms@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ bin/createsuperuser fmsadmin@example.org password
fmsadmin@example.org is now a superuser.
This basic installation uses the default cobrand, with a (deliberately) rather garish colour scheme.
You should then proceed to customise your installation.
Please also see the instructions for updating your installation.