Provisioning

Provisioning is the process of configuring a server with the software required to run Open Food Network.

The provision.yml playbook installs packages such as curl and git, then installs:

• rbenv
• Ruby
• Postgresql
• Nginx
• Unicorn

Setup an Ubuntu Precise 64 box

You will need to set up an instance of Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" x64 server (a.k.a. an Ubuntu Precise 64 box), though this may work on other Debian based systems too. See current Server Specifications to get an idea of what you need.

The DigitalOcean Ubuntu precise 64 image is solidly tested, and Amazon Ubuntu precise 64 images have also worked.

If you are going through this process the first time, you probably want to test it on your local machine first. Jump to Using Vagrant to create a local virtual machine and run the provisioning on that. You will have a real installation of the Open Food Network app on that virtual machine and will be able to test everything first.

Define the inventory

This is for a staging server:

• Create a file called staging. Add the text below:

# file: staging

[ofn_servers]
staging.openfoodnetwork.org ansible_ssh_host=<your IP here>

Change the URL as appropriate for a production or test server. This is not needed for Vagrant.

Note: ansible-playbook commands need to include -i staging to use this inventory file.

Set up a default user

Ansible needs at least one user created on the system so that it can run and install software as that user. You specify the user name and password user in your vars.yml file. (On Ubuntu systems, it is standard practice to create a user named ubuntu for this purpose.)

On DigitalOcean servers and any system where there is no default user set up, you will need to run the user.yml playbook.

ansible-playbook user.yml -i staging

On standard Amazon (AWS) Ubuntu images that block root login, the user.yml playbook won't run, and doesn't need to.

Run the install playbook

Run the provisioning and the first deploy with the install playbook:

ansible-playbook install.yml -i staging
# ansible-playbook install.yml -i staging -vvvv   # for full debug output

This step can take a long time. And you might need to tweak your SSH configuration to prevent timeouts.

Continue with the Administration of your application server.