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SparkleShare Dashboard

How to install

Dependencies

You need:

• nodejs 0.6.4
• redis 2.2.x

There might be packages for your operating system/distribution.

Gentoo

You must keyword nodejs: Edit file /etc/portage/package.keywords (create directory and file if they do not exist) and append:

For 64-bit system:

>=net-libs/nodejs-0.6.4 ~amd64

or

For 32-bit system:

>=net-libs/nodejs-0.6.4 ~x86

$ emerge -va net-libs/nodejs dev-db/redis

Note: If you're currently configured to use python-3.1 or later, you'll need to select python-2.6, like this:

$ eselect python list
Available Python interpreters:
  [1]   python2.7
  [2]   python3.1 *
  [3]   python3.2

$ eselect python set 1
$ eselect python list
Available Python interpreters:
  [1]   python2.7 *
  [2]   python3.1
  [3]   python3.2

After you've compiled nodejs using python2.x you may switch back to python3.1 for your default python environment.

Next, you'll need to start the redis service, otherwise running the dashboard (later on this page) will receive a connection refused. It is also beneficial to add the redis init script to the default runlevel of init.

$ /etc/init.d/redis start

$ rc-update add redis default

Ubuntu Oneiric

On Ubuntu Oneiric you may install them using sudo apt-get install redis-server nodejs npm.

Ubuntu Lucid

Recent versions of redis-server, and packages for node.js/npm may be obtained from Chris Lea's PPAs:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:chris-lea/redis-server
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install redis-server nodejs npm

Debian Squeeze

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add sources:

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable main

and edit pin preferences /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 650

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 600

Then run

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install build-essential
$ apt-get -t squeeze-backports install redis-server
$ apt-get -t unstable install nodejs

Until debian will have node 0.6.3 and newer, you need to install NPM manually:

$ curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

The Dashboard

Now fetch the dashboard code and change into this directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare-Dashboard.git
$ cd SparkleShare-Dashboard

Now initialize npm packages as normal user in SparkleShare Dashboard directory:

$ npm install -d

Fanout notification backend

For notification backend (replacement for IRC communication channel of desktop SparkleShare client) you need to pull also fanout module:

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

Now you can enable fanout in your config.js

Configuration

Edit config.js to match your needs. You mostly need to configure the exports.folders, but some other tweaks may be necessary.

exports.folders

1. Change name to whatever you would like it to show up as on the dashboard (and on linked android devices). Use single quotes around the names.
2. Change path to the filesystem location of your git repository's root, such as '/home/git/Backup' or similar. Make sure to use single quotes again, here.
3. Choose whether or not each export.folder is public or private with pub: true or pub: false.

exports.listen

If you are interested in linking Android devices, it may be necessary to bind the nodejs server to your physical server's local IP address, instead of 127.0.0.1 (which represents the loopback interface). If you are having trouble connecting with exports.listen[host]=127.0.0.1, try doing this. For example:

exports.listen = {
  port: 3000,
  host: '192.168.1.100'
};

Once this change is made, requests from your router will be acknowledged by the nodejs server, so long as you have also forwarded port 3000 of your router to the 'host' you just configured. Be aware that if your server uses DHCP, its local IP may easily change, so setting up a reserved IP address in your router for your server and/or configuring the network interface manually may be necessary.

exports.externalUrl

This variable is the text that will appear in actual href tags on the dashboard web site. In other words, it controls what is displayed above the QR code when linking a device, and is placed within all anchor tags linking to the dashboard web site. It doesn't really matter what you put here, the server will still work; however, clicking links on the page will not take you to the right URL. If configured properly, you should be able to make this value the value of your DNS hostname.

exports.basepath = '';
exports.externalUrl = 'http://site.host.com:3000';

exports.basepath can be ignored unless you are hosting the dashboard under Apache or nginx. See Config for more information.

Original config.js: [https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare-Dashboard/blob/master/config.js]

Start

You're now ready to launch SparkleShare-Dashboard with

$ make run

or if you do not have GNU Make

$ NODE_ENV=production node app.js

If you want more verbose error pages

$ make rundev

Note: Make sure the redis service is started, if applicable for your distribution. Otherwise, make run will offer an error: connection refused.

See ProxyServer for more information on setting running a genuine webserver like nginx or apache.

How to report bugs

Please read How-to-report-issues

Adding repositories

The folders you want to use must be specified in config.js under exports.folders. Note that these must be bare repositories. It's common practice to have the directory name end in .git, which 'git clone' does for you.

$ git clone --bare <url>

The repository should be fully initialized, e.g. have at least one commit. And should obviously be readable by the user running the dashboard.