Rik Goldman - Wed, 2010/05/05 - 17:21

Per previous discussion, Information Systems Management students at Chelsea School have completed a LimeSurvey patch for the TurnKey Linux LAMP (Hardy) appliance. The patch uses limesurvey187plus-build8518-20100323 and installs Hardy with LAMP and LimeSurvey to a pre-configured state.

Curtis Fawcett, Adrian Madison, Jerel Moses, Steven Robinson, Maurice Quarles, and David Walton configured the VMware appliance while I recorded the build notes.

Curtis Fawcett, Jerel Moses, Maurice Quarles, and David Walton created the patch with my support.

It looks at though the patch is greater than the 8 MB threshold a forum post attachment allows for. I've posted the patch to our website: to download directly, follow http://9while9.com/software/limesurvey.tar.gz . It's been pointed out by a user that this version has a bug.

The bug has been resolved. The LimeSurvey TKLPatch can be downloaded directly from here (http://9while9.com/software/limesurvey-b.tar.gz) or by navigating the project website at  http://9while9.com. Update:Rename the compressed tarball to reflect the name of the patch it contains.

mv limesurvey-b.tar.gz limesurvey.tar.gz

Account Information

Ubuntu Root Account

Username: root

Password: blank (or root)

MySQL Root Account

Username: Root

Password: root (until installation)

LimeSurvey MySQL Account

Username: limesurvey

Password limesurvey

LimeSurvey Administrator Account

Username: admin

Password admin

As usual, your feedback, comments, suggestions, and critiques are encouraged. If any bugs are found, we will revise this post.

Forum: 
General
Liraz Siri's picture

Liraz Siri - Thu, 2010/05/06 - 15:06
I applied the patch to TurnKey LAMP, and successfully installed the appliance to a VM.

I wasn't previously familiar with LimeSurvey, but didn't find it too difficult to create a test survey to confirm everything was working. I accessed the admin interface at http://example.ip/admin, logged in with the default credentials and in a few minutes had my first survey up and running.

Kudos to the Chelsea School gang, everything seems to be working out of the box. This will make a great addition to our open source appliance library!

Rik Goldman - Tue, 2010/08/03 - 21:52

I've been warned via email that there may be a bug in the LimeSurvey TKLPatch.

When opening the Template Manager, the user got this error:


Warning: fopen(/var/www/tmp/template_

temp_100801200912.html) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/admin/templates.php on line 1029

 
I won't have the team that worked on it back for a few weeks, but I'm gonna try to sort out what I can.

Rik Goldman - Tue, 2010/08/03 - 23:14

I thought I saw a permissions problem, but that didn't solve it. So for now, my decision has to be to work it out myself or wait til I have the team back.

Rik Goldman - Wed, 2010/08/04 - 17:53

I've located the source of the bug (permissions) and will address it myself. Expect a revised TKLPatch this afternoon or tomorrow. VMs for VirtualBox and VMWare, along with a revised ISO, will be available at http://9while9.com. I'll make meticulous notes so students have something close to the experience of a bug report and resolution.

Rik Goldman - Sat, 2010/08/07 - 04:14

Revised TKLPatch for LimeSurvey can be found here or by navigating to it from http://9while9.com. The revision addressed a bug helpfully pointed out by a user in which the administrator was unable to access the template manager. Original post has been revised to reflect the change.

 

Rik Goldman

Liraz Siri's picture

Liraz Siri - Mon, 2010/08/23 - 05:53

To check the fix I re-downloaded the limesurvey patch. All 23MBs worth of it. Then I calculated the diff:

diff --git a/limesurvey/conf b/limesurvey/conf
index 96c689b..35eac65 100755
--- a/limesurvey/conf
+++ b/limesurvey/conf
@@ -11,6 +11,10 @@ sed -i "s|127.0.1.1 \(.*\)|127.0.1.1 $HOSTNAME|" /etc/hostname
 #Update
 apt-get update

+#Permissions
+chown -R www-data /var/www/tmp
+chown -R www-data /var/www/templates
+chown -R www-data /var/www/upload
 #Change MySQL Server Root Account PW
 mysqladmin -u root password root

This should probably be:

chown -R www-data:www-data path

That sets the ownership to group www-data as well. Not that it makes a big difference but it's the correct thing to do. Otherwise those directories are owned by group root which is probably not what we want.

That's a lot of bits to download for such a small change. Makes the patch fatter than it needs to be. Perhaps in the future it would better to download the tarball from upstream (e.g., wget command in the conf) rather than stick it in the overlay.

Rik Goldman - Thu, 2010/09/16 - 00:22

Thanks for the substantive suggestions for improving the patch. I'm wrestling a little with using wget and then configuring, rather than taking a preconfigured app from the working vm. All your points are well taken. We just keep learning.

 

Thanks.

dmtelf's picture

dmtelf - Fri, 2010/09/03 - 12:06

To update the Limesurvey v1.87 ISO from 9while9.com to the latest version without getting out of memory errors in step 3 of the ComfortUpdate process, you need to replace updater.php as per my post here:

 

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/forum/general/20090817/what-about-limesurvey...


Rik Goldman - Tue, 2011/04/19 - 23:06

This is the only line that looks suspect to me:

tklpatch-apply / limesurvey-b.tar.gz

Unless I'm missing somthing bashish, I'm more used to something like this:

tklpatch-apply limesurvey-b.tar.gz

Run, of course, from the directory containing the patch. May want to check the patch to make sure to permissions are in tact (e.g. conf is executeable).

Personally, I'm much more comfortable applying a patch to an ISO in a build environment.

tklpatch turnkey-lamp-11.1.iso limesurvey-b.tar.gz

...and then moving the newly patched ISO into place for deployment - as a new VM, in all likelyhood.

I'll review the patch in the coming days and see if I can find something to cause what you're seeing.

Best of luck,

Rik Goldman

Rik Goldman - Wed, 2011/04/20 - 01:05 
tklpatch-apply / /limsurveyb.tar.gz #(note where spaces are and are not)

should work if the patch is in the root directory (top most in the hierarchy). Otherwise, if it's in your home directory, for example:

tklpatch-apply / ~/limesurveyb.tar.gz #I know the filename is wrong

I think the docs mention that patching a running instance may not always result as one would anticipate.

I see your later post - I'm gonna have at the patch and see what results I get. I'll share.

Rik Goldman - Wed, 2011/04/20 - 02:11

I have confirmed same results you get. I suppose it could be that we're doing the same thing wrong. But I think rather that the problem is here: the patch was built for Hardy, the previous LTS version of Ubuntu that appliances had been based on until the release of Lucid. The 11.1 releases are built on Lucid and have several feature improvements (no default passwords, etc). It's my thinking that the 11.1 Lamp might call for a rebuilt patch. I'd put this in the queue, but I believe the devs are working on a TKL Limesurvey appliance for the second half of 11.1. I don't won't to compound the work.

Rik Goldman - Wed, 2011/04/20 - 02:56

Thanks for your feedback. I'm sorry the documentation is not serving your needs. I rely on the existing documentation for applying patches.

No, what you describe doesn't gibe with my experience with TKL releases. I'm tending to think it's the new TKL releases and their features.

In the meantime, I recommend trying out the prebuilt virtual machines for VB and VMware at the site (http://9while9.com). Alternatively, an ISO with the original patched Hardy version should be available.

Let me know how else I can help.

Rik Goldman

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Wed, 2011/04/20 - 04:45

But that's not why you are getting the error message you are. The error "file not found /tmp/blah/limesurvey" (or whatever it was exactly) suggests to me a misnamed patch. Try opening the patch in Windows (you'll need 7zip or similar) and check the name of the folder inside the archive. The patch archive name must be the same as the folder inside or it will fail in that way. Easiest thing to do is to rename the patch archive to the same name as the folder. (I know about this one because I stuggled lots with that issue too).

Although as Rik suggested it may also be an issue with an old patch being applied to a newer release as well.

FYI Rik, if you use tklpatch-bundle to package your patches, (and don't change the filename after) you won't get this issue.

Rik Goldman - Wed, 2011/04/20 - 15:05

Thanks for the substantive feedback, Hallsie.

I've edited to OP to note that this is intended to patch the Hardy release of the LAMP appliance. I've also noted the need to rename the compressed tarball.

It may be time to return to a discussion about a patch submission form that asks for specific details (such as appliance to patch), usage notes, credentials, and links to docs for the patch process. As it stands, I can think of three ways to submit a patch to the community, and all three ask different info of the submitter. The TKLPatch documentation does say to include certain information when sharing the patch. I'm going to double-check that doc to see if the appliance version to be patched is part of the information solicited.

Regarding the virtual appliances: if you have the time, please contact me via 9while9.com contact link and let me know the scoop. This is the first concern that's been expressed and I like to address them with the responsiveness I like to see in others.

Thanks Hallsie,

Rik Goldman

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Thu, 2011/04/21 - 00:57

[Sorry if this post seems a little out of sync with the conversation - I wrote it yesterday afternoon clicked the button and walked away. Just realised that it had only previewed, not posted. Was almost going to just leave it but thought I may as well post it!]

I realised I was a little late to the party but obviously missed the bit where you realised the renaming thing. That'll teach me for being smug and all knowing! :)

And yes documentation in general is definately an issue here. It's just one of those things that constantly falls by the wayside. I guess when there's so much to do and no one getting paid, people just do what they want to do to help, and more often than not, no one wants to do documentation! But you are right, some better docs would make a huge world of difference for anyone new here, especially for Linux newbs. Also it would make the project more accessable, which can only be a good thing. Even moreso, when part of the mission of TKL is to make the power and flexability of open source software accessable to mere mortals (which obviously isn't quite there yet...)

As for finding patches, probably the easiest way to go is to just use the forum tag "tklpatch" (on the left), that should pretty much bring them all up. Another way is there is a list of them on the TKL Dev Wiki. Where both of these methods fall over though, is they rely on the patch dev to list their patch on the Dev wiki and tag their post accordingly.

I for one agree with your sentiments around a TKLPatch subforum, and have spoken about how I would like to see the forum split up a little more but the core devs prefer to keep it as clean and simple as possible. In some respects they do have a bit of a point, also the tags are cool and in some respects (when posts are tagged appropriately) makes the idea of creating more subforums a little superfluous.

Rik Goldman - Wed, 2011/04/20 - 22:02

I'll look into revising the patch for the 11.1 Lamp appliance.

It think patching 11.1 with the patch intended for Hardy should be precisely as difficult as you're finding it. In 11.1, the MySQL root password is set on installation. IIRC, that was not the case with the Hardy appliance. As a result, I believe the patch doesn't have the priv's it needs to import the db tables and...junk. Likewise, it cannot add the limesurvey MySQL user, grant it priv's, and set its password.

Between talking to the TKL devs and the Limesurvey devs, I'll weigh whether to revise the patch for the 11.1 Lucid appliances. Knowing that an official release is coming is a deterrant. Both of us value our time; I think the time may be better spent coming up with patch submission protocols and procedures so your experience is repeated ad infinitum for other members of the community and other patches.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Thu, 2011/04/21 - 14:28

ANd I'm sure helpful for others.

FYI a TKLPatch is basically an install script, usually coupled with files to be overlayed on the host filesystem. The TKL devs haven't reinvented the wheel, just added some spokey dokes! :)

Actually TKLPatch is a lot more useful than spokey dokes and in my experience doesn't actually make any noise at all - regardless I like the analogy.

If you are insterested in learning I'm happy to help, otherwise even just posting the install instructions would help others I'm sure.

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