Review Board Creating a Review Board Site

Creating a Review Board Site

Once Review Board is installed, a site must be created. Each site maps toa domain, subdomain, or directory installation.

To create a site, you will use the

rb-site
install

command.

You will need to decide on a place to install the site. In the exampleshere, we will use

/var/www/reviews.example.com

. The directoryshould not exist yet.
rb-site will create it.

Creating the Database

Before you create the Review Board site, you’ll need to create a database. Theparticular steps for this depend on the database server software that youintend to use.

SQLite should only be used for test installations.
While useful and portable, SQLite does not handle large loads with manyconcurrent users very well. We strongly recommend using MySQL orPostgreSQL for a real deployment.

We don’t officially support converting a database from SQLite to otherdatabases, so it’s important that you choose something that will workfor you long-term.

MySQL

In MySQL, before creating your database, make sure that your server isconfigured to use the UTF-8 encoding for text. In the file

my.cnf

, addthe following settings:

[client]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysqld]
character-set-server=utf8

After making these changes, restart your MySQL server.

Next, start up the mysql command prompt as your root user, and create a newdatabase and user (replacing

myuser

and

myspassword

with your desiredusername and password, respectively):

$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE reviewboard CHARACTER SET utf8;
mysql> CREATE USER 'myuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON reviewboard.* to 'myuser'@'localhost';

PostgreSQL

To create a Postgres database, you’ll need to run several commands as the

postgres

user. Start by running the following command (the particularusername may depend on your choice of operating system):

$ sudo su - postgres

Next, as the postgres user, create a database and a user to access it:

$ createdb reviewboard
$ createuser -P

The second of these commands will ask you several questions. For the last threequestions (relating to permissions), reply ‘n’.

Finally, grant permissions for this user to your new database:

$ psql
=> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE reviewboard to myuser

Beginning Installation

Begin installation by running the following command:

$ rb-site install /var/www/reviews.example.com

You will now be asked a series of questions about your site setup. It isexpected that you will know the answers to these questions. If not, you’llhave to decide what software you want to use for your services and refer totheir documentation on how to set
them up and configure them.

We recommend mod_wsgi and memcached
If you’re using Apache, we highly recommend using mod_wsgi. fastcgihas been known to have several issues (including memory leaks and problemswhen using the LDAP authentication backend), and mod_python is no longerdeveloped or shipped with Apache.

We also strongly recommend installing and using memcached. This willgreatly improve performance of your Review Board installation. Ifpossible, put this on a server with a lot of RAM.

Apache should use the Prefork MPM
The Worker MPM uses multiple threads, which can cause numerous problemswith Review Board’s dashboard and extensions implementations. In order forReview Board to work correctly, it should use the single-threaded PreforkMPM.

Once you have answered all the questions and completed the installation,you’ll need to change some directory permissions and install your web serverconfiguration files.

Changing Permissions

Review Board expects to be able to write to

sitedir/htdocs/media/uploaded

and

sitedir/data

andtheir subdirectories.

Since Review Board is run by your web server, these directories and allsubdirectories and files must be writable by the user your web server runsas.

This user varies by operating system, distribution and web server, so you mayneed to look it up. If your web server is currently running, you can look atwhat user it’s running as.

Once you’ve figured this out, go ahead and change the permissions on thedirectories. For example, in Linux/UNIX/MacOS X with a

www-data

user:

$ chown -R www-data /var/www/reviews.example.com/htdocs/media/uploaded
$ chown -R www-data /var/www/reviews.example.com/data

If you’re using SQLite as your database, you will also need to change theownership of the site’s

db

directory to match the web server’suser. Otherwise, you may receive an Internal Server Error when accessingthe site.

Web Server Configuration

rb-site provides sample web server configuration files in the newlycreated

conf/

directory under your new site directory. In many installs,these files will work out of the box, but they may require modificationdepending on the rest of your web server configuration.

The configuration file will be based on the web server type and Python loaderyou’ve specified. For example, if you used Apache and wsgi, you woulduse

apache-wsgi.conf

.

Installing these files is also dependent on the web server and operatingsystem/distribution.

Apache

There are two possible Apache configuration files that will be generated,depending on whether you selected

mod_wsgi

,

mod_python

or

fastcgi

during
rb-site install.

If you selected

mod_wsgi

, your configuration file will be

conf/apache-wsgi.conf

.

If you selected

mod_python

, your configuration file will be

conf/apache-modpython.conf

.

If you selected

fastcgi

, your configuration file will be

conf/apache-fastcgi.conf

.

Depending on your operating system or Linux distribution, the configurationfile can be installed in a couple different ways.

If you have a

sites-available

directory in your Apacheconfiguration directory (for example,

/etc/apache2/sites-available

,then you should rename your configuration file to match your site(e.g.,

reviews.example.com.conf

) and put it in that directory. Thencreate a symbolic link from that file to the

sites-enabled

directory. This is the most common setup on Debian or Ubuntu-baseddistributions. So for example:

$ cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
$ cp /var/www/reviews.example.com/conf/apache-wsgi.conf reviews.example.com.conf
$ cd ../sites-enabled
$ ln -s ../sites-available/reviews.example.com.conf .

If you do not have a

sites-available

or

sites-enabled

directory, you’ll need to embed the configuration file in your globalApache configuration file (usually

/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

or

/etc/httpd/apache2.conf

).

Note
On Fedora, you can do$ ln -s /path/to/apache-wsgi.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/reviewboard-sitename.conf

Of course, the configuration file can be placed anywhere so long as it’sat some point included by your main Apache configuration file.

Once you’ve installed the configuration file, restart Apache and thentry going to your site.

Note
Some Apache installations (such as the default installs on Debianand Ubuntu) by default define a global virtual host that shares

/var/www

as the document root. This may lead to problemswith
your install. If you access your site and see nothing buta directory listing, then you’re affected by this problem.

The solution is to remove the “default” site from your

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled

directory. This may becalled something like

default

or

000-default

.

Note
On Fedora and Red Hat-derived systems, the following commandsshould be run (as root) to avoid SELinux denials::$ setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail 1$ setsebool -P httpd_can_network_memcache 1

lighttpd

The generated configuration file for lighttpd will be saved as

conf/lighttpd.conf

.

You should either add the contents of this file to your

/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

, or include it directly from

lighttpd.conf

using the

include

directive. See thelighttpd documentation for more information.