Manual Installation

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This page describes to process you need to follow if Aegir doesn't have packages for your distribution. We currently provide Debian packages and others should be coming, if you help! This manual assumes you are fairly familiar with the UNIX commandline interface, but should be possible to follow through if you copy and paste faithfully all steps of the procedure.

A note on supported systems

These instructions provide example commands for a Debian-like distribution, but should be fairly easy to adapt to other environments. This document is meant as a canonical reference that should work on every supported platform. It can also be used for people porting Aegir to new platforms or installing on alien platform for which Aegir is not yet packaged.

It currently contains special recommendations for CentOS, RHEL 6, Arch Linux and Solaris. Users of those platforms are also strongly encouraged to review the common installation problems that occur on those platforms. Aegir is also known to be installable (and was developed partly on) Mac OS X, but that process is so obtuse that it has a separate page for the first part of the manual (up to Install Aegir components).

Installing Aegir may seem daunting at first (which is why we provide automated installs through packages), but once you get around it, it's fairly simple. It follows those steps:

Note that these instructions setup a complete Aegir system. If you want to only setup a new remote web/db server, it should be sufficient to install the system requirements (step 1), configure them (step 2) and follow the Remote server how-to.

1. Review System Requirements

A system capable of running Drupal
The Aegir system is entirely Drupal based, and has the same base requirements that Drupal does (with the exception that it won't run on Windows). See more notes on Unix and LAMP/LEMP requirements below.
Your own server
The low level of access required to be able to configure and run this system is very far beyond what is commonly available to users with shared hosting. A VPS from any popular provider such as Linode, Rackspace, Slicehost, Amazon EC, etc. will do fine. You will need root access to the server and the server needs to be dedicated to Aegir.
A Unix-based operating system
Aegir must run on some flavour of UNIX, because the majority of functionality in this system occurs in the back-end, through command line scripting. There are also several features (such as symlinks), that are not available to users on Windows. There are no plans currently to add Windows support.
Web server
You will need at least one dedicated web server, running Apache. We generally work with Apache 2 but we should be compatible with the 1.x series. Aegir also supports the Nginx web server, but requires at least version 0.7.27 or newer. Since Nginx doesn't provide php-cgi or php-fpm (recommended) modules, you will need to install and run php-fpm server separately. You can find useful examples and tips in the third party Barracuda installer available at the barracuda project page.

N.B.: This third party installer is not supported by the core Aegir developers, but you can find helpful community support at the boa group.

PHP 5.2 and 5.3
Aegir depends on Drush, which requires PHP 5.2 or higher. You also need to have the command-line version of PHP to run Drush properly, and the MySQL extensions for PHP.

Given that PHP 5.2 has been deprecated since July 2010, we suggest using PHP 5.3 if possible. Note that while Drupal 6.x and above support PHP 5.3, some contributed third-party modules may still have problems with this version. Most often these cause warnings that can be safely ignored. Aegir and Drush themselves have no known outstanding PHP 5.3 compatibility issues, although you could have a lot of warnings in Drupal 6 due to ereg deprecation, see this issue for details. If you need to host Drupal 5.x sites, note that Drupal 5.x is not compatible with PHP 5.3 and above, and most likely never will be. See http://drupal.org/node/360605 (amongst other issues) for details.

Database server
You will require a database server, obviously. Aegir currently only supports MySQL and MariaDB. It is preferable to use a dedicated (not shared-hosting) server since Aegir will create database users and will require the use of a MySQL root user.
Mail transfer agent
Aegir requires an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) installed on your webserver in order to be able to install new sites to your new platform. If you don't have an MTA, the site installation will fail with message like "could not send email". Additional messages will show that site has been removed because of this problem. To remedy the situation simply install an MTA like sendmail, postfix, or exim and do the minimal configuration.
Other utilities: sudo, rsync, git and unzip
Aegir installs itself via a Drush Make makefile that downloads via git if you want the bleeding edge code, or via wget if you want the latest official release. If you want the latest development version, and don't have the git program you will need to install it on the server.

The jQueryUI library is used in the Aegir UI, unzip is required to extract it. Sudo is required to allow the aegir user the limited privilege to restart the webserver when required. Rsync is used to sync files to remote servers.

No conflicting Control Panels
Other popular control panels such as Plesk, cPanel etc, are designed to manage all aspects of Apache configuration and other areas that Aegir also is intended to be used for.

Running Aegir alongside such control panels is not supported and very likely may cause you problems or difficulties installing or running Aegir. Filing bug reports that are caused by interference by another control panel will likely be closed unless the problem can be fixed without causing problems for other Aegir users. Proceed at your own risk!

System requirements of popular Drupal distributions
Some Drupal distributions, such as OpenAtrium, are specialized products that may contain unique prerequisites for optimal performance. Such examples may include raising the php-cli program's memory_limit to something higher than 64M.

Please note that this is not a requirement of Aegir but of the distribution you are trying to install a site on. Thus the Aegir documentation may not officially 'require' such performance settings, but be aware that Aegir may report errors if the system was under-resourced to complete such a task.

2. Install system requirements

To install the required components, run the following command as root:

apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-cli php5-gd php5-mysql postfix sudo rsync git-core unzip

2.1. CentOS-specific configuration

yum install httpd php php-mysql php-cli php-gd php-process sudo rsync git postfix

For versions of CentOS previous to 6.0, you will need to upgrade to PHP 5.3 using those instructions.

2.2. RHEL 6 specific configuration

RHEL 6 Server needs an additional PHP package to enable POSIX support. To find the package php-process you must enable the RHEL Server Optional channel. Once enabled, download and install the php-process-5.3.2-6.el6_0.1.i686.rpm.

You will also need to install the php-xml package if you are planning to use Aegir to manage Drupal 7 sites.

2.3. Solaris specific configuration

Solaris has this way of dealing with third party software that is... far from ideal. You will need to find the best way to install the following packages: apache2, git, sudo, mysql, PHP 5.2 and wget. unzip and sendmail should be part of the base Solaris install. The other applications should be available on the companion CDs or on sunfreeware.com.

In particular, git can be compiled easily by exporting the following environment::

export CFLAGS="-I/usr/sfw/include -I/opt/sfw/include"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/sfw/lib:/opt/sfw/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

Then the compile instructions bundled with git should just be followed directly. I had trouble installing the binaries, as git expects ginstall to be available in the $PATH. I ended up adding the source directory in the $PATH, which works fine for most uses.

2.4. Arch Linux specific configuration

To install the required components, run the following command as root:

pacman -S apache php php-apache php-gd mysql postfix sudo rsync unzip git

Although all of the necessary apache modules and php extensions are installed at this stage, further configuration is required to enable and tweak certain features. Critically, virtual hosts are not enabled. It is worth examining the Arch Linux wiki page on LAMP server set up and verifying that more than one named virtual host functions properly.

If setting up for standalone development, see this useful wiki page to configuring postfix for local mail only.

3. Configure system requirements

3.1. Create the Aegir user

The provision framework of Aegir requires that the scripts run as a non-root system account, to ensure that it can correctly set the file permissions on the hosted files.

Also to ensure that the file permissions of the hosted sites are always as safe as can be, and especially to make sure that the web server does not have the ability to modify the code of the site, the configured system account needs to be a member of the web server group, in order to be able to correctly set the file permissions.

While you can choose another username, most aegir documentation assumes the Aegir user is aegir, its home directory is /var/aegir and the webserver group is www-data.

Shell commands as root:

adduser --system --group --home /var/aegir aegir
adduser aegir www-data    #make aegir a user of group www-data

3.1.1. CentOS specific configuration

CentOS requires special commands to create the user, use those instead:

useradd --home-dir /var/aegir aegir
gpasswd -a aegir apache
chmod -R 755 /var/aegir

3.1.2. Solaris specific configuration

groupadd aegir
useradd -g aegir -G webservd -d /var/aegir -s /bin/bash -c "Aegir sandbox" aegir
chown aegir:aegir /var/aegir

3.1.3. Arch Linux specific configuration

useradd --system --groups http --home /var/aegir --create-home aegir
chmod -R 755 /var/aegir

3.2. Webserver configuration

Aegir supports two popular web servers, Apache and Nginx.

3.2.1. Apache configuration

Aegir assumes a few Apache modules are available on the server, and generates its own configuration files. The way we enable this is by symlinking a single file which contains all the configuration necessary. In Debian-based systems, you should symlink this file inside /etc/apache2/conf.d that will be parsed on startup or alternatively you can place include that file in your apache.conf/httpd.conf. We prefer the former. In other systems there are similar ways to accomplish this. Consult your OS's documentation if unsure.

If you are on a Debian-based system, you will also need to enable the mod_rewrite module manually.

Run the following shell commands as root. First, configure Apache to enable RewriteEngine:

a2enmod rewrite

Finally, create a symlink from an apache configuration file to a folder within the /var/aegir/:

ln -s /var/aegir/config/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/aegir.conf

Do not reload/restart Apache if prompted to after running these commands, it will fail.

3.2.1.1. CentOS specific Apache configuration

On CentOS, mod_rewrite is enabled by default and you can create the following symlink:

ln -s /var/aegir/config/apache.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/aegir.conf

3.2.1.2. Arch Linux specific Apache configuration

On Arch Linux, mod_rewrite is also enabled by default. Add the aegir apache configuration include file to the httpd.conf file:

echo "Include /var/aegir/config/apache.conf" >> /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

3.2.1.3. Other systems' Apache configuration

In other systems that do not have a conf.d directory, this could also work:

echo "Include /var/aegir/config/apache.conf" >> /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

N.B.:

  • A standard umask of 022 is assumed. This is the default on most systems.
  • For more information, see the common installation errors.
  • For all OSes, the installer script creates the configuration file referenced by the newly created symlink/or file referenced in the Apache config file.

3.2.2. Nginx configuration

(If you just succeeded in installing Apache, please skip this section.)

Aegir assumes standard Nginx configuration is available on the server, and generates its own configuration files. The way we enable this is by symlinking a single file which contains all the configuration necessary. In Debian-based systems, you should symlink this file inside /etc/nginx/conf.d that will be parsed on startup.

Shell command as root::

ln -s /var/aegir/config/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/aegir.conf

Do not reload/restart Nginx after running these commands, it will fail.

The installer script creates the configuration file referenced by the newly created symlink.

3.3. PHP configuration

Some complex installation profiles or distributions require a PHP memory limit that is higher than the default. To avoid common errors when installing sites on some distributions, the PHP command line tool should be configured to use 192Mb of RAM.

Change the memory_limit directive in /etc/php5/cli/php.ini to read:

memory_limit = 192M      ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (192MB)

Most modern Drupal sites require around 96M or even 128M of RAM for certain operations. This is far more than what is provided by the default PHP configuration.

Change the memory_limit directive in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini to read:

memory_limit = 128M      ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (128MB)

If your distributions require more memory than these limits, then use some common sense and update it as appropriate to suit your individual needs.

3.3.1. RHEL 6 specific configuration

The default php.ini configuration beyond the above changes also requires that the timezone be set for your location. Otherwise, you get fun errors and warnings during the host-master install step.

  1. 1. sudo vi /etc/php.ini
  2. 2. enter your password
  3. 3. /zone (this will bring you to the date specific timezone module area
  4. 4. Remove the semi colon in front of date.timezone and enter your specific timezone.
    [Date]
      ; Defines the default timezone used by the date functions
      ; http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.configuration.php#ini.date.timezone
      date.timezone = Your Time Zone Goes Here
  5. 5. Restart apache to compile these changes. sudo httpd -k graceful

3.3.2. Arch Linux specific configuration

Make the following changes to the php.ini file (/etc/php/php.ini):

Add :/var/aegir/ to the open_basedir directive:

open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/var/aegir/

Add date.timezone value as per PHP's runtime configuration instructions - this is an example:

date.timezone = Europe/London

Modify the memory_limit directive:

memory_limit = 192M

Uncomment

extension=posix.so
extension=mysqli.so

3.4. Sudo configuration

Next, we need to give the aegir user permission to execute the Apache2 command to restart the web server without entering a password.

For those using Apache, shell command as root::

visudo

This command opens an editor (which one depends on your OS flavor) to allow you to edit the /etc/sudoers file. Add the following to the end of the file (specific directions cannot be given since this depends on what editor you're using):

Defaults:aegir  !requiretty
aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apache2ctl

Note - the path to your apache2ctl program may differ from this example. On some systems it may also be called 'apachectl' instead of apache2ctl. Adjust to suit your own requirements.

For CentOS apache2ctl is apachectl and you should use this instead:

Defaults:aegir  !requiretty
aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

For those using Nginx, set the sudoers line as follows

Defaults:aegir  !requiretty
aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/nginx

Note - the !requiretty bit is to make aegir able to run sudo even though it's not attached to a terminal. By default CentOS enforces requiretty so this exception is necessary.

3.4.1. Arch Linux specific sudo configuration

Arch Linux users can ignore the above instructions. Instead create a file at /etc/sudoers.d/aegir and add the following:

Defaults:aegir  !requiretty
aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

After saving, change the permissions on the file:

chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/aegir

3.5. DNS configuration

Aegir requires a properly configured "FQDN" (Fully Qualified Domain Name) be assigned to the machine. In practice, this means that the hostname returned by the hostname and uname -n shell commands should resolve to the IP address for this server, and vice versa.

If you only intend to use Aegir on a single server, it is acceptable for the resolved IP address to be the '127.0.0.1' loopback address.

If you intend to manage multiple servers using Aegir, you will need to make sure that the IP address is the public IP of this server.

You can add multiple entries to your /etc/hosts file for testing purposes, for example:

127.0.0.1 aegir.example.com example.com test1.example.com test2.example.com test3.example.com

Then you can use test1.example.com to create your first site.

3.6. Database configuration

Aegir supports MySQL right now. It is best to install the MySQL server using your Linux distribution's package manager.

Shell commands as root::

apt-get install mysql-server

To make sure that the Aegir backend, and all the possible web servers can reach your database server, you need to configure mysql to listen on all the public IP addresses available to it.

Again, as root, edit the MySQL configuration file /etc/mysql/my.cnf configuration line to comment out by placing a # at the beginning of the line on which the following instruction appears::

bind-address    = 127.0.0.1

Without this line commented out, MySQL will listen only on localhost for database connection requests.

Now you need to restart mysql, to clear any caches.

Shell command as root:

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

The installer will prompt you for your MySQL root user password. The root user will be used to make administrative tasks such as creating new databases, and granting and revoking access to those databases for sites.

Even though MySQL is now listening on all IP's, it will not allow invalid users to connect to the databases, without the correct user accounts configured.

If you are concerned about MySQL being accessible in this way, you can also configure your firewall to only allow incoming connections from certain addresses. This is outside the scope of this document however.

Note that Aegir will ask you for your MySQL root password. If you do not want to use your regular root password for Aegir, you will need to create another root account for Aegir using a MySQL command like:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'aegir_root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;

3.6.1. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS specific configuration

NOTE: If you are running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, you should still install MySQL in the same way as above:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

However, once done, you must now run 'sudo mysql_secure_installation', in order to remove the anonymous, passwordless login that Ubuntu creates by default. Otherwise, Aegir will fail to install and work at all. See this FAQ entry.

3.6.2. RHEL 6 specific configuration

In Red Hat you must move a default configuration file from /usr/share/mysql/ to /etc/my.cnf to view any of the settings mentioned above. It is also very important to remove the anonymous user from the default mysql install. If you do not, you will not be able to install hostmaster.

  1. mysql -uroot -p
  2. enter password
  3. use mysql;
  4. DELETE FROM user WHERE user = ' ';
  5. FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

3.6.3. Arch Linux specific configuration

mysql was installed at the beginning, so now it's time to run:

mysql_secure_installation

The root user has no password, so set one at this stage. The default selections are sensible as you step through the rest of the mysql_secure_installation script.

4. Stop! Now become the Aegir user!

The remaining of this manual assumes you are running as the Aegir user. Things will go very wrong if you do not change your shell credentials to become that user. You can do this by running the following command as root:

su -s /bin/bash - aegir

If this fails because /bin/bash doesn't exist, try using /bin/sh.

5. Install Aegir components

Next step is to install the Aegir software components themselves: drush, provision and hostmaster.

5.1. Install drush

Before installing Aegir proper, you first need to install Drush. This can be done through your operating system's package manager (Drush is shipped with Debian and Ubuntu currently) or by following the Drush README.txt file which has all the information for installing and using drush.

This should be something like:

DRUSH_VERSION=7.x-4.5
cd $HOME
wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drush-$DRUSH_VERSION.tar.gz 
gunzip -c drush-$DRUSH_VERSION.tar.gz | tar -xf -
rm drush-$DRUSH_VERSION.tar.gz

Note: you should use Drush version 4. Aegir does not support Drush 5 yet.

Drush is usually installed in /var/aegir/drush/drush.php in manual installs, but you can install it anywhere. If it's in your $PATH, Aegir will pick it up and use the absolute path to call it.

Another workaround if you have manually installed Drush into /var/aegir, is to symlink with

ln -s /var/aegir/drush/drush /usr/local/bin/drush

A good practice is to make sure drush is in your $PATH, however. Modifying your $PATH is outside the scope of this document.

5.1.1. Arch Linux specific configuration

Log out from the aegir user's shell and install Drush as root using pear:

pear channel-discover pear.drush.org
pear install drush/drush-4.5.0
drush help

It's important that you type drush help as this will install a required file from another pear library (Console_Table to be precise).

Then, log back in as the aegir user:

su -s /bin/bash - aegir

Next, prepare aegir's environment for smooth running of Drush:

mkdir /var/aegir/.drush
cp /etc/php/php.ini /var/aegir/.drush/

Edit /var/aegir/.drush/php.ini to remove the values after open_basedir =, as this will any open_basedir values are likely to cause Drush to fail.

5.2. Install provision

Once Drush is installed you should be able to install the latest recommended Provision release using the following drush command:

drush dl --destination=/var/aegir/.drush provision-6.x

To download a different version of provision, use this:

drush dl --destination=/var/aegir/.drush provision-6.x-1.0-rc7

5.3. Running hostmaster-install

Once you have downloaded drush and provision, you can just install provision in the commands directory of Drush (either ~aegir/.drush or /usr/share/drush/commands), if that's not already done. Once provision is properly installed, you can install all other aegir components using the hostmaster-install command:

drush hostmaster-install

You will be prompted for the required information if not provided on the commandline. See the inline help for the available options:

drush help hostmaster-install

For example, to install the frontend on Nginx, use:

drush hostmaster-install --http_service_type=nginx

It is imperative that you provide a valid FQDN to the installer. This is used for database GRANTs. Remote web servers depend on the FQDN being resolvable in order to connect back to your Aegir master server if it is used as your database server for managed sites.

Upon completion of the installation, the traditional Drupal 'Welcome' e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address specified by --client_email=(your e-mail) or if not provided as a command line switch, the address prompted by the installer process. This e-mail address will also be used as the default e-mail address of the first user and client in Aegir, but can be changed later.

5.3.1. Arch Linux specific configuration

drush hostmaster-install --web_group=http

6. Checkpoint / Finished!

At this point, you have checked out all the code and setup your basic Drupal system (Drupal core, hosting, hostmaster and eldir) that will be the Aegir frontend and the backend system (provision and drush). Your filesystem layout should look something like this:

 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/modules/admin_menu/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/modules/hosting/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/modules/install_profile_api/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/modules/jquery_ui/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/modules/modalframe/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/profiles/hostmaster/themes/eldir/
 /var/aegir/hostmaster-1.x/sites/aegir.example.com/
 /var/aegir/config/server_master/apache.conf
 /var/aegir/config/server_master/apache/conf.d/
 /var/aegir/config/server_master/apache/vhost.d/
 /var/aegir/config/server_master/apache/platform.d/
 /var/aegir/backups/
 /var/aegir/drush/drush.php
 /var/aegir/.drush/drush_make/
 /var/aegir/.drush/provision/

Variations on this are acceptable (for example, the Drush Debian package works out of /usr/bin/drush and that's fine), but you are better to stick with the defaults if you really want to get through this.

The installation will provide you with a one-time login URL to stdout or via an e-mail. Use this link to login to your new Aegir site for the first time.

For troubleshooting this process and resulting install, see the common installation problems page.

You may also want to read on with what you can do with Aegir now that it is installed.

6.0.1. Arch Linux launch daemons at boot

To ensure Apache and mysql start when the machine boots, enable the httpd and mysqld daemons by adding them to the /etc/rc.conf file:

DAEMONS=(... mysqld httpd ...)

Mac OS X installation instructions

Tagged:

Apache

For Apache based installation hints see Apache / mySQL / PHP / Aegir

Nginx

Nginx is more performant than Apache, if you are interested in setting Aegir up using nginx Brian Gilbert from Realityloop has created a script to install everything that you need on a clean Mac (not already running anything on port 80), see OSX Aegir Installer on github.

Apache / mySQL / PHP / Aegir

This is a helper file to the canonical manual install process. It is aimed at helping you install Aegir on Mac OS X. Since PHP and MySQL support on OS X is fairly limited and complicated, a separate documentation page was created for that part of the documentation. You should follow this page all the way through and then proceed with the regular install, step 4: becoming the aegir user.

1. Special software requirements

While Mac OS X comes with Apache & PHP (and even MySQL on the Server version), the version of PHP shipped with 10.6 Snow Leopard is 5.3.x and thus may not work with Aegir (as of the 0.4alpha-era) and various other software. If you're running 10.5 Leopard, it may work out of the box, but I haven't tested it.

There are several different ways to get Apache, PHP 5.2, and MySQL 5 onto a Mac OS X machine. I give detailed instructions for MacPorts below, but if that's a bit more than you're ready to bite off right now, feel free to use an alternative approach.

One such alternative is MAMP. There is a good but outdated HOWTO for installing Aegir on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) using MAMP located here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/30270

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and is the Mac equivalent of "LAMP". It is a self-contained package of all of these programs with a nice graphical installer and control panel. You can find it here: http://www.mamp.info/

MAMP is pretty straightforward, but it's also not very flexible (IMHO). While certainly not without its own headaches, MacPorts is a decently powerful way to sanely manage a healthy stack of open source UNIX software on your Mac. Since this is what I use, I'm going to assume MacPorts is in use for the rest of this HINTS file. I have also only tested this on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

If you don't yet have MacPorts installed, go here to get it: http://www.macports.org/install.php

Once it's installed, quit and re-launch your Terminal before continuing. Otherwise MacPorts won't yet be in your PATH.

The first two commands below are optional but recommended.

  sudo port selfupdate
  sudo port upgrade outdated
  sudo port install apache2 mysql5-server git-core unzip php52 php5-posix php5-gd php5-apc +mysql5

php5-apc is optional, but highly recommended as it will significantly increase PHP performance.

Watch the output of the last port command carefully, as there are usually some boring tasks for you to perform once the install is done. You'll be wishing you were running Ubuntu/Debian and apt-get by the time you're done.

2. Configure system requirements

Next we'll create the aegir user and add it to the _www group. This part is very different on Mac OS X than Linux or most other Unices. Must be a NeXTism. The command we will use he is "dscl", which is a short for Directory Service Command Line. In OSX 10.3 and earlier, that command is "nicl" (short for Net Info Command Line). It is also possible to create the user using the "Workgroup Manager" utility included with OS X Server. To obtain Workgroup Manager for the OS X Client, download the "Server Admin Tools" from Apple. For example, for Mac OS X 10.6, the admin tools can be found at:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/Server_Admin_Tools_10_6

  sudo dscl . -create /Users/aegir NFSHomeDirectory /var/aegir

Now you need to find the next spare UID to assign the user.

Here's how you find out on your system:

   sudo dsexport users.out /Local/Default dsRecTypeStandard:Users

Then open the file users.out in a text editor, search for the highest 5xx user ID and add 1 to it (in your brain, not in the file). So if you find 506 but no 507, use 507. When you're done, delete users.out to be safe.

   sudo rm users.out

Now assign this UID to the aegir user, replacing "5xx" with the UID.

   sudo dscl . -create /Users/aegir UniqueID 5xx

!! If you're running Mac OSX Lion, you also need to assign PrimaryGroupID to the aegir user.
   sudo dscl . -create /Users/aegir PrimaryGroupID XXX

Set a secure password for the aegir user, as it needs shell access.

sudo passwd aegir

Create the aegir home directory and set its permissions.

sudo mkdir /var/aegir
sudo chown aegir /var/aegir
sudo chgrp _www /var/aegir

Add the aegir user to the _www group. This is the group Apache runs as.

sudo dscl . -append /Groups/_www GroupMembership aegir

Give the aegir user the ability to restart Apache.

   sudo mv /usr/sbin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl-apple
   sudo ln -s /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl
   sudo visudo

Go to the last line of the file and add the following.

   aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

Save the file and exit your text editor.

Next configure Apache to include the Aegir config.

   echo "Include /var/aegir/config/apache.conf" >> /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

Configuring your MySQL database and user accounts is the same as in the INSTALL.txt file. But you probably want to add the path to its executables to your user's PATH and the aegir user's PATH.

   echo 'export PATH=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
   su - aegir
   Password: (the password you setup earlier)
   echo 'export PATH=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
   exit

nginx / MariaDB / PHP / Aegir (MEMPÆ)

The instructions that used to be here are now outdated, instead use the OSXAegirInstaller created by Brian Gilbert of Realityloop.

Centos 6.x Aegir Install Guide

There are 2 methods of installing AEgir on CentOS both are the same but one is scripted and the other is manual and is documented below.

Scripted

The script can be found at https://github.com/marafa/aegir/tree/master/version2

NB. There is preliminary work to fix selinux at https://github.com/marafa/aegir/blob/master/aegir_selinux.sh. Feedback is quite welcome as well as git pulls.

Explanation

Connect to the server via ssh as root user.

ssh root@000.000.000.000

Install system requirements

yum install httpd php php-mysql php-cli php-gd php-process php-pear php-mbstring php-xml php-soap sudo rsync git postfix tree wget cronie unzip mysql-server mlocate nmap samba samba-client samba-common vim

Note: The following packages are not required but are very useful to include git wget mlocate nmap samba samba-client samba-common vim

SElinux

Make sure Security-Enhanced Linux is disabled as it creates install problems.

vim /etc/selinux/config Make sure SELINUX=disabled

If was SELINUX=enabled then we need to restart.

shutdown -r now

Note: I am not sure if it can be enabled at the end I have never tried.

Create the Aegir user

The provision framework of Aegir requires that the scripts run as a non-root system account, to ensure that it can correctly set the file permissions on the hosted files.

Also to ensure that the file permissions of the hosted sites are always as safe as can be, and especially to make sure that the web server does not have the ability to modify the code of the site, the configured system account needs to be a member of the web server group, in order to be able to correctly set the file permissions.

While you can choose another username, most aegir documentation assumes the Aegir user is aegir, its home directory is /var/aegir and the webserver group is www-data.

useradd --home-dir /var/aegir aegir

gpasswd -a aegir apache

chmod -R 755 /var/aegir

Apache configuration

Start Apache

service httpd start

Make apache start automatically after reboot.

chkconfig httpd on

We need to create a symbolic link between aegir and apache.

ln -s /var/aegir/config/apache.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/aegir.conf

PHP configuration

vim /etc/php.ini

Increase the memory limit as complex installation profiles or distributions require a PHP memory limit that is higher than the default (128M)

memory_limit = 192M

Set Date Zone to your time zone see http://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.configuration.php#ini.date.timezone

date.timezone = “”

Sudo configuration

Next, we need to give the aegir user permission to execute the Apache2 command to restart the web server without entering a password.

visudo

Add to end of file

Defaults:aegir !requiretty

aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

DNS configuration

Aegir requires a properly configured "FQDN" (Fully Qualified Domain Name) be assigned to the machine. In practice, this means that the hostname returned by the hostname and uname -n shell commands should resolve to the IP address for this server, and vice versa.

If you only intend to use Aegir on a single server, it is acceptable for the resolved IP address to be the '127.0.0.1' loopback address.

If you intend to manage multiple servers using Aegir, you will need to make sure that the IP address is the public IP of this server.

You can add multiple entries to your /etc/hosts file for testing purposes, for example:#> >vim /etc/hosts Add your ip and hostname

000.000.000.000 hostname

Database configuration

Start mysql

service mysqld start

Make mysql start automatically after reboot.

chkconfig mysqld on

Configure Mysql

/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Recommended:

Set root Password

Remove anonymous users? y

Disallow root login remotely? y

Remove test database and access to it? y

Reload privilege tables now? y

Install drush

pear channel-discover pear.drush.org

pear install drush/drush-4.5.0

Check if drush works If you get PHP Fatal error: Class 'Console_Table' not found then

pear install Console_Table

Stop! Now become the Aegir user!

The remaining of this manual assumes you are running as the Aegir user. Things will go very wrong if you do not change your shell credentials to become that user.

su -s /bin/bash - aegir

Install provision

drush dl --destination=/var/aegir/.drush provision-6.x

Clear the drush cache

drush cache-clear drush

Run hostmaster-install

drush hostmaster-install

Manual install of a web cluster aegir using nginx

These are some really rough notes on how to go about creating a 4 server aegir installation (aegir, mysql, web1, web2).

Adapted from reading through the BOA project and my own experimentation.

** Note -- regarding the wildcard SSL, your sites will need some configuration in your settings.php or local.settings.php to check for the X-Forwarded-Proto headers. I can't recall if the wildcard SSL config.

These notes also assume the last Ubuntu LTS -- 10.04/Lucid.

aegirmysql:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install vim mysql-server


_USER="aegir"
_DOMAIN="aegir.domain.com"
_AEGIR_HOST="aegir.server.hostname"
_AEGIR_HOST_IP="123.456.789.01"
_AEGIR_PASSWORD="password"

#AEGIR_DB_USER=aegir_root
#AEGIR_DB_PASS=`echo $RANDOM:\`date\`:$AEGIR_HOST | openssl md5`

echo "[client]
user=root
password=password" >> .my.cnf

mysql -uroot mysql<<EOFMYSQL
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '$_USER'@'$_DOMAIN' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '$_USER'@'$_AEGIR_HOST' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '$_USER'@'$_AEGIR_HOST_IP' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '$_USER'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EOFMYSQL


========================

# https://launchpad.net/~brianmercer/+archive/nginx
# https://launchpad.net/~nginx/+archive/php5

aegircontrol:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/nginx-default

#php5-suhosin
CATHOSTDEBDEPS="git-core git-doc mysql-client-5.1 vim nginx-custom drush postfix php5-cli php5-mysql php5-fpm php5-gd rsync unzip bzr patch curl"
sudo apt-get -V install $CATHOSTDEBDEPS

#postfix config already sorted

sudo adduser --system --group --home /var/aegir aegir
sudo adduser aegir www-data
sudo chsh -s /bin/bash aegir

#patch drush, re: ereg()

#as root:
echo "aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/nginx" >> /etc/sudoers

ln -s /var/aegir/config/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/aegir.conf
#disable directives in nginx.conf:
#types_hash_max_size
#tcp_nopush
#error_log
invoke-rc.d nginx restart

#install SSL cert to:
/etc/ssl/private/domain.com.cert.pem
cd /etc/ssl/private/
ln -s domain.com.cert.pem nginx-wild-ssl.crt
ln -s domain.com.cert.pem nginx-wild-ssl.key

#install SSL config to:
/var/aegir/config/server_master/nginx/pre.d/nginx_wild_ssl.conf
#TODO: also install for /var/aegir/config/server_aegirweb{1,2}.host.name

#as aegir:
cd ~

mkdir .ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa

ln -s /usr/share/drush /var/aegir/drush
mkdir ~/.drush
cd ~/.drush
wget -c http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/provision-6.x-1.3.tar.gz
tar -zxf provision-6.x-1.3.tar.gz

#htaccess password bit
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
git clone --branch develop git://github.com/computerminds/aegir_http_basic.git
#must be develop branch to use crypt() and for nginx support
cp -r aegir_http_basic/provision ~/.drush/provision/aegir_http_basic
cp -r aegir_http_basic/hosting ~/hostmaster-6.x-1.3/profiles/hostmaster/modules/hosting/http_basic_auth
#set directory permissions? -- patch aegir/http_basic module to do so?

_DOMAIN="aegir.domain.com"
_USER="aegir"
#_AEGIR_HOST=`uname -n`
_AEGIR_HOST="aegir.server.hostname"
_AEGIR_HOME="$HOME"
_AEGIR_DB_PASS="password"
_AEGIR_DB_HOST="mysql.server.fqdn"
_AEGIR_VERSION="1.3"
#_AEGIR_ROOT="$_AEGIR_HOME/hostmaster-$_AEGIR_VERSION"
_ADM_EMAIL="admin@domain.com""
_WEBG=www-data
_USRG=users

#going vanilla
echo "drush hostmaster-install $_DOMAIN --aegir_host=$_AEGIR_HOST --aegir_db_user=$_USER --aegir_db_pass=$_AEGIR_DB_PASS --http_service_type=nginx --db_service_type=mysql --db_port=3306 --aegir_db_host=$_AEGIR_DB_HOST --client_email=$_ADM_EMAIL --script_user=$_USER --web_group=$_WEBG --profile=hostmaster -d -v"

drush hostmaster-install $_DOMAIN --aegir_host=$_AEGIR_HOST --aegir_db_user=$_USER --aegir_db_pass=$_AEGIR_DB_PASS --http_service_type=nginx --db_service_type=mysql --db_port=3306 --aegir_db_host=$_AEGIR_DB_HOST --client_email=$_ADM_EMAIL --script_user=$_USER --web_group=$_WEBG --profile=hostmaster -d -v

cd hostmaster-6.x-1.3
echo "alive" >> healthcheck

#enable aegir modules
drush @hostmaster en hosting_web_cluster
drush @hostmaster en hosting_alias
drush @hostmaster en hosting_http_basic_auth
#*** enable hosting client in features -- disabling client module cause WSOD on site add page

# setup aegirweb{1,2}
# test ssh to aegirweb{1,2}
# add to known_hosts

# NOTE: Aegir web clusters need to share the files, and private directories between web servers (also cache directory, if using boost module)
# Setup provision hook for NFS links
# http://drupal.org/node/1283738

mkdir -p /var/lib/sitedata/aegir
chown -R aegir:www-data /var/lib/sitedata/aegir

mkdir -p /var/lib/sitedata/aegir/cache
chown -R aegir:www-data /var/lib/sitedata/aegir/cache


# add web servers
# add web cluster
#TODO: Add DR web servers to cluster
#TODO: Add WR, re: DR web servers & firewall

# set date/time settings in Aegir

#TODO: Logrotate webserver logs

#TODO: Add an alias for the aegir user:
#aegir: "admin@domain.com""

========================

aegirweb{1,2}:
#TODO: Check puppeted stuff, fix, etc

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/nginx-default

CATWEBDEBDEPS="mysql-client-5.1 vim nginx-custom drush postfix php5-cli php5-mysql php5-fpm php5-gd rsync unzip patch"
sudo apt-get -V install $CATWEBDEBDEPS


sudo adduser --system --group --home /var/aegir aegir
sudo adduser aegir www-data
sudo chsh -s /bin/bash aegir

#install SSL cert to:
/etc/ssl/private/domain.com.cert.pem
cd /etc/ssl/private/
ln -s domain.com.cert.pem nginx-wild-ssl.crt
ln -s domain.com.cert.pem nginx-wild-ssl.key

#install SSL config to:
/var/aegir/config/server_master/nginx/pre.d/nginx_wild_ssl.conf
#TODO: also install for /var/aegir/config/server_aegirweb{1,2}.host.name

#as root:
echo "aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/nginx" >> /etc/sudoers

#as aegir:
mkdir /var/aegir/.ssh
cat aegir.aegircontrol.id_rsa.pub >> /var/aegir/.ssh/authorized_keys2


#TODO: Logrotate webserver logs

==========================

nginx / MariaDB / PHP-FPM Single Server Installation

Tagged:

Note: This installation process assumes that you're using a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 x64. If you use a lower version of Ubuntu, you may have trouble with this guide.

On most VPS providers, you'll be logged in as root initially. The installation process below assumes that you are logged in as root. Obviously, this is not a secure long-term solution, so once you're done with this guide, I suggest setting up public key authentication, turning off root login over SSH, and creating yourself a new unprivileged user. That's out of scope for this doc page, so you're probably on your own for that.

Finally, this document assumes that you're going to be installing aegir at aegir.example.com. Any time you see example.com, replace it with your domain.

1. Housekeeping

Make sure you're up to date:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

And that you have the the python-software-properties package (we'll need it later):

apt-get install python-software-properties

2. Install MariaDB

From mariadb.org:

MariaDB is a database server that offers drop-in replacement functionality for MySQL. 
MariaDB is built by some of the original authors of MySQL, with assistance from the
broader community of Free and open source software developers. In addition to the core
functionality of MySQL, MariaDB offers a rich set of feature enhancements including
alternate storage engines, server optimizations, and patches.

Install MariaDB:

apt-get install mariadb-server

You'll need to set your root password for the MariaDB server

3. Install Nginx

Next, install Nginx and PHP-FPM:

apt-get install nginx php5-cli php5-mysql php5-fpm php5-gd

Create the default docroot for Nginx as well:

mkdir -p /var/www/nginx-default

4. Install all the other stuff

apt-get install git-core git-doc vim drush postfix rsync unzip bzr patch curl

When prompted for Postfix configuration, select "Internet Site", then use "example.com" for the System mail name.

5. Create the Aegir user

Easy:

adduser --system --group --home /var/aegir aegir
adduser aegir www-data
chsh -s /bin/bash aegir

6. Misc Configuration

Make sure the Aegir user is allowed to restart Nginx:

echo "aegir ALL=NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/nginx" >> /etc/sudoers

Symlink Aegir's nginx configuration into place:

ln -s /var/aegir/config/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/aegir.conf

Disable duplicated directives in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf (the Aegir config specifies these values as well - if you do not disable them in the main nginx.conf, nginx will fail to restart). You can just remove (or comment them out with a "#") the lines that start with the following

types_hash_max_size
tcp_nopush
error_log

Then, restart Nginx:

service nginx restart

7. Install Aegir

IMPORTANT Switch to the Aegir user now: IMPORTANT

su - aegir
cd ~/

Download the latest Provision release:

mkdir ~/.drush
cd ~/.drush
wget -c http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/provision-6.x-2.1.tar.gz
tar -zxf provision-6.x-2.1.tar.gz
rm provision-6.x-2.1.tar.gz

Start the Aegir install process:

cd ~/
drush hostmaster-install aegir.example.com \
--aegir_host="aegir.example.com" \
--http_service_type="nginx" \
--aegir_db_user="root" \
--aegir_db_pass="[YOUR ROOT DATABASE PASSWORD]" \
--db_service_type="mysql" \
--db_port=3306 \
--aegir_db_host="localhost" \
--client_email="[YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS]" \
--script_user="aegir" \
--web_group="www-data" \
--profile=hostmaster

8. Optional Improvements

drupal.org/project/hosting_queue_runner

drupal.org/project/provision_boost

#1

A few points just on installing drush with RedHat 6 that I seem to run in to every time.

When I try to discover the pear channel as aegir user I get could not create lock file: fopen(/usr/share/pear/.lock): failed to open stream: Permission denied

I also get the following after I make the aegir user owner of the .lock file

pear channel-discover pear.drush.org
Discovering channel pear.drush.org over http:// failed with message: channel-add: adding Channel "pear.drush.org" to registry failed
Trying to discover channel pear.drush.org over https:// instead
Discovery of channel "pear.drush.org" failed (channel-add: Cannot open "https://pear.drush.org/channel.xml" (Connection to `pear.drush.org:443' failed: Connection refused))

I can add it with root user but when installing drush I get

pear install drush/drush-5.8.0
Cannot install, php_dir for channel "pear.drush.org" is not writeable by the current user

I always have to install drush as root and then modify ownership/permissions to aegir user. Is the documentation wrong, or am I missing something?

Also, for drush 5 it seems that 'http://download.pear.php.net/package/Console_Table-1.1.3.tgz' is a dependency!