Etherpad-lite

Etherpad lite is a real time collaborative editor which allows multiple users to simultaneously work with the same document.

prerequisites

First we have to create the Etherpad user.

In terminal type:

sudo adduser --system --home=/opt/etherpad --group etherpad

This is a “system” user. It is there to own and run the application,gets a UID below 1000, has no shell and has logins disabled.

note:

sudo apt-get install gzip git-core curl python libssl-dev build-essential abiword python-software-properties

Install node.js and npm (easy way)

Node.js is a software system designed for writing highly scalable Internet applications, notably web servers. Programs are written in JavaScript, using event-driven, asynchronous I/O to minimize overhead and maximize scalability.

npm is a package manager for node. You can use it to install and publish your node programs.

In terminal type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nodejs

Install node.js and npm (from source)

Node.js

From http://nodejs.org find the latest stable release and change version accordingly.

In terminal type:

sudo su - etherpad -s /bin/bash 

mkdir ~/local

cd ~/local
                                                                                            
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.8.7/node-v0.8.7.tar.gz

tar -zxvf  node-v0.8.7.tar.gz

cd node-v0.8.7

./configure –-prefix=$HOME/local/node

make

Open a new terminal with out closing the other one and type:

cd /opt/etherpad/local/node-v0.8.7

make install

Close it and return to the first terminal and type:

echo ‘export PATH=$HOME/local/node/bin:$PATH’ >> ~/.profile

echo ‘export NODE_PATH=$HOME/local/node:$HOME/local/node/lib/node_modules’ >> ~/.profile

source ~/.profile

NPM

In terminal type:

curl -s https://npmjs.org/install.sh > npm-install-$$.sh
sudo bash npm-install-*.sh

Others

In terminal, type:

sudo npm install zeparser

Install and run Etherpad Lite

In new terminal type:

sudo su - etherpad -s /bin/bash 

mkdir -p ~/local/etherpad

cd ~/local/etherpad

git clone git://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git

cd etherpad-lite

bin/run.sh 

Without closing the terminal open your favorite browser in http://localhost:9001/ or http://0.0.0.0:9001/

You should be able to see this

Etherpad Lite as a service(upstart)

We need to get Etherpad Lite running as a service, so that it will be available when your server starts up.

In new terminal type:

sudo mkdir /var/log/etherpad-lite

sudo chown etherpad /var/log/etherpad-lite

sudo chown -R etherpad /var/log/etherpad-lite

sudo gedit /etc/init/etherpad-lite.conf

In the editor copy and paste the following.

description "etherpad-lite"


start on started networking
stop on runlevel [!2345]

env EPHOME=/opt/etherpad/local/etherpad/etherpad-lite
env EPLOGS=/var/log/etherpad-lite
env EPUSER=etherpad


pre-start script
    cd $EPHOME
    mkdir $EPLOGS                              ||true
    chown $EPUSER:admin $EPLOGS                ||true
    chmod 0755 $EPLOGS                         ||true
    chown -R $EPUSER:admin $EPHOME/var         ||true
    $EPHOME/bin/installDeps.sh >> $EPLOGS/error.log || { stop; exit 1; }
end script

script
  cd $EPHOME/
  exec su -s /bin/sh -c 'exec "$0" "$@"' $EPUSER -- node node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js \
                        >> $EPLOGS/access.log \
                        2>> $EPLOGS/error.log
end script

then save and close the editor

In terminal type:

sudo start etherpad-lite

Log rotation

Launch any text editor you like to create the config file for logrotate:

sudo gedit /etc/logrotate.d/etherpad-lite

Copy and paste the following, save then exit.

/var/log/etherpad-lite/*.log
{
        rotate 4
        weekly
        missingok
        notifempty
        compress
        delaycompress
        sharedscripts
        postrotate
                restart etherpad-lite >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
        endscript
}

You can check with:

logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/etherpad-lite

Plugins

There are many available plugins, you can check them in https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/wiki/Available-Plugins

Manually

In terminal type:

cd /opt/etherpad/local/etherpad/etherpad-lite/

in order to install a plugin type:

npm install ep_*name*

sudo restart etherpad-lite

in order to uninstall a plugin type:

npm uninstall ep_*name*

in order to update a plugin type:

npm install --upgrade ep_*name*

In terminal type:

sudo restart etherpad-lite

From browser

In order to configure this functionality we have to setup an admin user.

In terminal type:

sudo gedit /opt/etherpad/local/etherpad/etherpad-lite/settings.json

In the editor change

  /* Require authorization by a module, or a user with is_admin set, see below. */
  "requireAuthorization": false,

  /* Users for basic authentication. is_admin = true gives access to /admin.
     If you do not uncomment this, /admin will not be available! */
  /*
  "users": {
    "admin": {
      "password": "changeme1",
      "is_admin": true
    },
    "user": {
      "password": "changeme1",
      "is_admin": false
    }
  },
  */

with

  /* Require authorization by a module, or a user with is_admin set, see below. */
  "requireAuthorization": true,

  /* Users for basic authentication. is_admin = true gives access to /admin.
     If you do not uncomment this, /admin will not be available! */
  
 "users": {
    "admin": {
      "password": "yourpassword",
      "is_admin": true
    },
    "user": {
      "password": "yourpassword",
      "is_admin": true
    }
  },

then save and close the editor.

In terminal type:

sudo restart etherpad-lite

Now open your favorite browser in http://localhost:9001/admin/plugins

note:

File formats importing and exporting

Etherpad Lite depends on AbiWord to import and export different file formats such as PDF, ODF and MS Word.

sudo gedit /opt/etherpad/local/etherpad/etherpad-lite/settings.json

In the editor change

"abiword" : null,

with

"abiword" : "/usr/bin/abiword",

then save and close the editor

By default etherpad-lite use's "Dirty.db" to store records but it's not safe for a production enviroment so we need to use a dedicated database.

MySQL

In terminal type:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-common mysql-client

make sure to provide a root password then type:

mysql -u root -p

create database `etherpad-lite`;

grant all privileges on `etherpad-lite`.* to 'etherpad'@'localhost' identified by 'yourpassword';

exit

then

sudo gedit /opt/etherpad/local/etherpad/etherpad-lite/settings.json

in the editor change

//An Example of MySQL Configuration
  
  "dbType" : "dirty",
  //the database specific settings
  "dbSettings" : {
                   "filename" : "var/dirty.db"
                 },
                 
  /* An Example of MySQL Configuration
   "dbType" : "mysql",
   "dbSettings" : {
                    "user"    : "root", 
                    "host"    : "localhost", 
                    "password": "", 
                    "database": "store"
                  },
  */

with

 "dbType" : "mysql",
   "dbSettings" : {
                    "user"    : "etherpad", 
                    "host"    : "localhost", 
                    "password": "yourpassword", 
                    "database": "etherpad-lite"
                  },

save and close the editor. Open your favorite browser in http://localhost:9001/ in order to run etherpad-lite with our new settings and close it.

In terminal type:

mysql -u root -p

ALTER DATABASE `etherpad-lite` CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;

USE `etherpad-lite`;

ALTER TABLE `store` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;

exit

and that's it.

Useful links

http://etherpad.org/

https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite

for comments,questions,requests

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2045704