Okay, for 1.8 I'd love to see a new easy installer for OpenNMS - sort of along the lines of what I get when I install SugarCRM or Wordpress.
After OpenNMS is installed (either via RPM, APT, other package, etc.) it should be able to be started without any other steps.
A user going to the webUI would see something like "Hey! You've got OpenNMS installed - just a few more steps to go before it is up and running".
Step 1) Set the admin password.
If the admin password is not set, the installer should ask the user to place a file with a particular, randomly generated name into the OpenNMS directory (either etc or the webroot - probably etc) to verify that they have access to the server and to prevent someone else from getting to the WebUI first. Once verified, the webUI should allow the user to set the admin password.
Step 2) Install/Update the database.
This is the big step. Currently, after OpenNMS is installed, the user must manually run
/opt/opennms/bin/install -dis
The webUI should run that command, hide the output and report any errors. The output should be available via a button, but we want to be sure not to confuse new users with lots of text.
First, the webUI should ask the user for the postgres database location (localhost, remote host, etc.), postgres username and password. It should also ask for the opennms username and password. Once it can validate access to the database, it should run the installer, break on errors, etc.
3) Verify iplike
Installing iplike is a very chicken and egg thing. If the installer detects that iplike is not installed, it should walk the user through the process and verify that it is installed and running. If this is a Windows machine, then iplike is not supported and this step should be skipped.
4) Reset the URL to be the normal screen
At this point in time, this new installer should reset the default context to be the main opennms login screen, so that the admin steps aren't displayed a second time.
5) Display final hints and tips and end
There should be some text about where to go to next (such as the Discovery admin page) etc. and then the web installer should offer to take the user to the main login page.
In addition, if this process is interrupted at any time the user should be able to go back to it and restart as long as they know their admin password (if that doesn't get set the installer should start over).
In short, a person should be able to do something like:
the initial version of this from eth's branch is merged to 1.6-testing, as of r15432.
Philippe Guillebert August 31, 2009 at 5:12 PM
just a thought : since install -dis can currently be quite long (several minutes with the new liquibase stuff) you can't do it synchronously while loading a webpage.
I'd go for web 2.0 : server-side, start the install process in background, but monitorable by the client ; client-side, load a webpage with a javascript callback that checks periodically for completion of the task
Okay, for 1.8 I'd love to see a new easy installer for OpenNMS - sort of along the lines of what I get when I install SugarCRM or Wordpress.
After OpenNMS is installed (either via RPM, APT, other package, etc.) it should be able to be started without any other steps.
A user going to the webUI would see something like "Hey! You've got OpenNMS installed - just a few more steps to go before it is up and running".
Step 1) Set the admin password.
If the admin password is not set, the installer should ask the user to place a file with a particular, randomly generated name into the OpenNMS directory (either etc or the webroot - probably etc) to verify that they have access to the server and to prevent someone else from getting to the WebUI first. Once verified, the webUI should allow the user to set the admin password.
Step 2) Install/Update the database.
This is the big step. Currently, after OpenNMS is installed, the user must manually run
/opt/opennms/bin/install -dis
The webUI should run that command, hide the output and report any errors. The output should be available via a button, but we want to be sure not to confuse new users with lots of text.
First, the webUI should ask the user for the postgres database location (localhost, remote host, etc.), postgres username and password. It should also ask for the opennms username and password. Once it can validate access to the database, it should run the installer, break on errors, etc.
3) Verify iplike
Installing iplike is a very chicken and egg thing. If the installer detects that iplike is not installed, it should walk the user through the process and verify that it is installed and running. If this is a Windows machine, then iplike is not supported and this step should be skipped.
4) Reset the URL to be the normal screen
At this point in time, this new installer should reset the default context to be the main opennms login screen, so that the admin steps aren't displayed a second time.
5) Display final hints and tips and end
There should be some text about where to go to next (such as the Discovery admin page) etc. and then the web installer should offer to take the user to the main login page.
In addition, if this process is interrupted at any time the user should be able to go back to it and restart as long as they know their admin password (if that doesn't get set the installer should start over).
In short, a person should be able to do something like:
yum install opennms
service opennms start
and then go to http://localhost:8980/opennms and get going.