BitNami's Blog

Wordpress MU 2.8: Beginner's Guide Now Available - Sample Chapter for Download

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:01:00 GMT

We just received word that Wordpress MU 2.8: Beginner’s Guide is now available from Packt Publishing. Since we know a lot of our users are running Wordpress, we thought the book might be of interest. We haven’t had a chance to review the book, but Packt sent over a sample chapter that we have posted for download. Here is their summary of the book:

"WordPress MU enables you to build a complete, professional blog network. Each user gets their own blog, and can choose their favorite templates and plug-ins, and develop their own content. WordPress MU powers some of the largest blog networks in the world, including the mighty WordPress.com – home to thousands of bloggers.

This book will take you through the setup of a WordPress MU-powered blogging network, using a real, working blog network as an example, so that you can follow the creation process step-by-step. Your blogging network will be complete with professional features such as friends lists, status feeds, groups, forums, photo galleries, and more, to build your own WordPress.com – a place where users can quickly come and create a blog for themselves.

The book starts with a clean install of WordPress MU, and as you work through the book, you will build the blog network, and add on more and more features, all seamlessly integrated to achieve a professional, custom-built look.

You will find new themes and plug-ins added to the site, as well as customization of the WordPress multi-user code. The book will also look at ways you can manage your community, and keep your site safe and secure, ensuring that it is a spam-free, enjoyable community for your users. In the later chapters, you will add a forum using the bbPress script, and add BuddyPress social networking components to your site.

Imagine how good you’ll feel when your first WordPress multi-user blog network launches."

How to Install Wordpress in 5 Minutes Using BitNami

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:39:00 GMT

There is a great post up on Techsnot (yes, a somewhat unfortunate name :) on how to install Wordpress on a Mac in under 5 minutes using the BitNami Wordpress Stack. Although the author (‘dogsnot’) installs the Stack on a Mac, the steps are the same on Windows or Linux. In a future article, the author will explain how BitNami Modules work.

If you are using BitNami and want to help us out, writing tutorials like this is a great way to contribute. Thanks to Dogsnot for his article!

European PostgreSQL conference 2009

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:12:00 GMT

The PGDay 2009 is a chance for European users and developers of PostgreSQL to catch up, learn, build relationships, get to know each other and consolidate a real network of professionals that use this outstanding product for the daily management of relational and object databases. The event will take place November 6, 7 in Paris, so start planning for it. Checkout the PGDay website for more details

How to backup and update the BitNami Redmine Stack

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:43:00 GMT

A lot of BitNami users have asked in our forums how to create a backup or update Redmine. We have compiled all questions and solutions in this post to facilitate this task for other BitNami users. Although this post is based on the BitNami Redmine Stack, some of these solutions are valid for other BitNami applications.

Throughout the article, we will use the installdir term to refer us to the installation directory. On Linux it is usually “/home/redmine-version” when installed as a regular user or “/opt/redmine-version” in the case of an installation as the root user. On OS X the installation directory is “/Applications/redmine-version” by default and on Windows is “C:\Program Files\BitNami Redmine Stack”.

All commands should be executed from the BitNami Redmine Stack console. On Linux or OS X you should only run the “use_redmine” script or the “rubyconsole” script:


$ ./use_redmine
$ mysql --version
/home/bitrock/redmine-0.8.4-1/mysql/bin/mysql.bin  Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.67,
for redhat-linux-gnu (i686) using readline 5.1

On Windows you have a specific “use_redmine” shortcut to launch the console.

HOW TO CREATE A BACKUP

There are different ways of creating a backup. If you are interested in a backup of only the database data, you can create a dump file using the “mysqldump” tool.

Remember that you should run this command from the BitNami Redmine Stack console.


$ mysqldump -u root -p bitnami_redmine > redmine_backup.sql

This operation could take some time depending on the data size. Once you have the backup file, you can restore it:


$ mysql -u root -p bitnami_redmine < redmine_backup.sql

If you want to restore the database and the database schema does not exist, it is necessary to first follow the steps described below. As a side note, you can find the value for BITNAMI_USER_PASSWORD below at “installdir/apps/redmine/config/database.yml” file.


$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> create database bitnami_redmine;
mysql> grant all privileges on bitnami_redmine.* to 'bitnami'@'localhost'
identified by 'BITNAMI_USER_PASSWORD';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> exit;
$ mysql -u root -p bitnami_redmine < redmine_backup.sql

Note that the steps previously described will only back up the state of your database. Other files that you should take into account when performing a backup are files that have been uploaded to the
application. These files are stored in the “installdir/apps/redmine/files” folder so you can copy this folder to have a backup of your uploaded files.

Another option for creating a backup is to copy the whole BitNami Stack installation. Because BitNami stacks are self-contained, the simplest option for performing your backups is to copy or compress the BitNami Redmine Stack installation directory. To do so in a safe manner, you will need to stop all servers, so this method may not be appropriate if you have people accessing the application continously.


$ cd <installdir>
$ ./ctlscript.sh stop
$ cp -r <installdir> redmine-backup

Or you can create a tarball:


$ tar -czvf redmine-backup.tar.gz <installdir>

To restore this backup you only need to uncompress the backup tarball in the same location. It is important to use the same path that was used when the stack was originally installed.

For example if you have a backup in a Red Hat machine, you can copy it to an Ubuntu Linux machine (a different distro!) in the same location. Then start the servers and that’s all.


$ cd <installdir>
$ ./ctlscript.sh start

On Windows, you should follow the same process. Stop the servers using the shortcuts and copy the whole installation directory. To restore the system, copy the directory to a different Windows machine in the same location and follow these steps from a command prompt:


$ cd <installdir>
$ serviceinstall.bat INSTALL

You can access your BitNami Redmine at the usual URL.

HOW TO UPDATE REDMINE

It is strongly recommended that you create a backup before starting the update process. If you have important data, it is advisable that you create and try to restore a backup to ensure that everything works properly.

First, you have to download the new Redmine version. You can choose to download the latest stable version of Redmine from RubyForge or you can download the latest repository version. In that case, you can use the Subversion tool included in the Stack:


$ svn co svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/redmine/trunk redmine

Once you have downloaded the newer Redmine version, you need to stop the servers and rename the old redmine folder:


$ cd <installdir>
$ ./ctlscript.sh stop
$ mv apps/redmine apps/redmine-old

On Windows:


$ cd <installdir>
$ servicerun.bat STOP
$ cd apps
$ rename redmine redmine-old

Move the new redmine version to the apps folder and name it “redmine” and then copy the following folders and files from the old copy to the new one: “scripts”, “conf” and “files” folders and all the yml files inside “config”. It is also necessary to create the “apps/redmine/tmp/pids” folder.


$ cd <installdir>/apps
$ cp -r redmine-old/scripts redmine-old/conf redmine-old/files redmine-old/files redmine/
$ cp redmine-old/config/*.yml redmine/config/
$ mkdir redmine/tmp/pids

If you want to keep using the currently installed Rails version, you should comment out the following line in “redmine/config/environment.rb”


RAILS_GEM_VERSION = 'x.x.x' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

It is also necessary to update the database to merge the changes in the new version. Remember to start the “use_redmine” script or the shortcut on Windows before typing the following commands:


$ cd <installdir>/apps/redmine
$ rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV="production"

If you have installed plugins you should also run these commands:


$ rake db:migrate:upgrade_plugin_migrations RAILS_ENV="production"
$ rake db:migrate_plugins RAILS_ENV="production"

Finally you should clean the cache and the sessions:


$ rake tmp:cache:clear
$ rake tmp:sessions:clear

Restart the servers and you can access to your new Redmine.

PostgreSQL module add-on

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:19:00 GMT

One of the most requested features in BitNami forums is the ability to support both MySQL and PostgreSQL in the same Stack. We are glad to announce that we have released a PostgreSQL module which you can install over LAMPStack, MAMPStack, WAMPStack or RubyStack. This module ships and configures the PostgreSQL database and the phpPgAdmin application to manage this database through the web with ease.

You can find the new add-on in the same download page of LAMPStack, MAMPStack, WAMPStack or RubyStack. Once you have downloaded it, you can select the installation folder where you have installed your previous LAMPStack, MAMPStack, WAMPStack or RubyStack and the module will configure PHP to support PostgreSQL. You can continue to manage your servers as usual and you can uninstall the module itself using their own uninstaller. We think that this module is a great option for developers who use MySQL and PostgreSQL, the most popular open source databases.

BitNami AMI Guide updated !

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:06:00 GMT

We have updated BitNami Amazon Machine Images (AMI) Guide. We describe there how to use BitNami AMIs together with Amazon Management Console. It should be much easier now to get it started.

Please checkout the new BitNami AMI Guide and let us know what you think !

Tutorial for Deploying BitNami Stacks on Amazon EC2

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:20:00 GMT

Andy McCaskey from SDR News gave a great presentation on deploying BitNami AMIs to Amazon EC2. It is on the New Tech Podcast Roundtable podcast, but also includes slides and a demo. Click here to view the presentation.

Thanks, Andy, for showing how easy it is to work with BitNami Stacks on EC2!

BitNami on the palm of your hand!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 07:27:00 GMT

Coming soon to a wall outlet near you, all the power of BitNami in a small SheevaPlug … stay tuned!

2009 Open Source CMS Award and BitNami

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:48:00 GMT

The nominations for the 2009 Open Source CMS Award have begun and from now until 11th September you can submit your nomination for your favourite Content Management Solution. In BitNami you can find several of the CMS that have already been nominated. Give them a try and vote the one you like most!

Alfresco : Nominated for the Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best Other Open Source CMS.

Drupal : Competing for the Hall of Fame Award and nominated Best Open Source PHP CMS.

Enano CMS : Nominated for the Overall Open Source CMS Award.

eZ Publish : Nominated for the Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best Open Source PHP CMS.

Joomla! : Competing for the Hall of Fame and nominated for the best Open Source PHP CMS.

Liferay : Nominated for the Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best Other Open Source CMS.

Moodle : Nominated for the Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best Open Source PHP CMS.

Wordpress : Nominated for the Overall Open Source CMS Award and Best Open Source PHP CMS.

This year a new category has been created for Joomla! and Drupal supporters. For the Hall of Fame Award Joomla! and Drupal, previous winners of the Overall Open Source CMS Award, will be competing against each other as well as having sub-category awards for its best themes and extensions.

We wish the best luck to all these Open Source projects!

BitNami Apps Now Available as Virtual Appliances

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:30:00 GMT

A lot of our users have been asking for virtual machine images of the BitNami Stacks, and we’re happy to announce that they are now available!

Last week, we released most of the BitNami Stacks for Linux as VM Images for VMWare. Note that this is just a first and very basic release. We’ll be improving them based on your feedback, so let us know what you think in the Virtual Appliance forum.

To take one of the new virtual appliances for a spin, visit the download page for your favorite BitNami application and click on the download link under the “VM” icon on the far right of the table.

The virtual images will run in any version of VMWare for Windows, Mac or Linux. They are based on openSuSE 11.1 and include the minimum software required along with a minimal, pre-configured firewall.

If you’re not familiar with virtual appliances or how to run them, we have posted a special Virtual Appliance FAQ section for your reference.

As mentioned previously, the launch of the BitNami Virtual Appliances was driven by feedback from our users. We’re looking at other features and functionality that we can add to BitNami and would really appreciate your input. Please take a second to complete our new poll if you haven’t already done so.

ocPortal installer released!

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:49:00 GMT

We are happy to announce the release of a new application stack. ocPortal is a CMS with many Web 2.0 features for sophisticated sites. ocPortal supports many types of content (galleries, news/newsletters, etc.) – and integrating rich media and advertising into them. Community features include forums, member blogs, chat rooms, WIKI, and content commenting/rating. ocPortal lets you decide exactly how your site will look and behave. Features are plentiful, well integrated, and optional. Out-of-the-box your site will meet the highest accessibility and professional standards.

ocPortal is written in PHP with a MySQL backend and you can download the complete stack or just the module for an existing installation of a (L|M|S|W)AMP stack.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know at the ocPortal forum.

Enjoy!

Nice Bitnami Review

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:13:00 GMT

Chris Vann, a happy BitNami user describes his experience using BitNami As he mentions, most PHP applications run in Windows just fine, but often they are complex to setup and configure for users who are not experienced. We try our best to make the process seamless and are happy to see people enjoy the results!

Rubystack Review

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:10:00 GMT

Douglas Vos offers his impressions on RubyStack and how he will use it as a test system for a series of Ruby-related book reviews. You can read more at this blog entry

Japanese BitNami

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:52:00 GMT

Honestly, we have no idea what they say, but it looks pretty cool! Checkout the video at the bottom. http://kachibito.net/software/php-mysql-local-server-bitnami.html

GitHub Firewall Install

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:28:00 GMT

As you may know, we also have commercial clients that contract our services to build customized stacks for their applications. We are happy to announce GitHUB:FI which is a hosted version of GitHub developed for Logical Awesome and based on JRubyStack.

You can learn more about how it works at the BitRock Website

BitNami is on Twitter!

Wed, 27 May 2009 22:59:00 GMT

BitNami is now on Twitter! To keep up to date with the latest news and releases, follow BitNami on Twitter. For any tweets related to BitNami, use the hash tag #bitnami so we can keep track and respond.

If you have technical questions, please continue to post those to our forums. If you have general feedback, feel free to send it via Twitter or post to the forums. If you want your app packaged next, make sure you vote for it!

Support BitNami - Nominate it for the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards

Wed, 20 May 2009 23:33:00 GMT

The SourceForge Community Choice Awards are now open for nominations! A lot of you have been asking how you can give back to BitNami, and here is your chance: Support BitNami by nominating it for the ‘Best Tool or Utility for Sys Admins’. The 10 companies in each category with the most nominations by May 29th will become finalists. The finalists will be announced on June 22nd and then you have a month to vote for your favorite project in each category. Winners will be announced at a party at OSCON on July 23rd. Nominate BitNami to help us make it to the finalist round!

How to install and make public any BitNami Stack

Wed, 20 May 2009 07:11:00 GMT

In this post we will explain how to deploy any BitNami Stack in your own computer and how to publish and access it from anywhere. You can use a BitNami Stack to share documents with Alfresco or Knowledgetree, manage your client relationships with SugarCRM, your own blog using Wordpress or Roller, create your webpage with Drupal or Joomla, your development bug tracking with Subversion, Trac or Redmine and more with different Open Source applications. In this case, we will create a photo album with Gallery to share your videos and photos directly from your computer, so you can avoid having to upload videos to an unknown server and and be able to save as many photos as your computer has space for.

To access to your application from anywhere, you need a public IP. Your internet service provider (ISP) will give you this IP when you access to internet. You can check your IP at http://www.whatismyip.com/. The problem with this IP is that it is difficult to remember and your internet provider may change it often.

To avoid this problem, there are several service providers on the Internet which allow you to associate a name with an IP address. This name is called a “domain name” and the Internet DNS servers are in charge of converting the web page “www.example.com” to a public IP address such as “208.77.188.166”.

One of the most popular services is dyndns.org. You can get a free account and a domain name similar to this: yourwebpage.dyndns.org. Remember your domain name to give it to your friends :)

As you can see in the screenshots, it is really easy to create your free account and your Hostname.

Now it is time to configure your network. Simplifying things, there are two ways to connect to the Internet: using a modem or a router. If you have a modem, your computer uses the public IP given to you by your Internet service provider so you only can connect one computer to the Internet. If you have a router, you must configure the network so that you can access it from anywhere. The router uses the public IP and gives your computers private IPs, so you can connect several computers to the Internet because the router translates public IPs to private IPs.

In this case, you need to configure your router to redirect external requests to your server. Normally, the router has a configuration panel where you can modify the properties. You should add a NAT entry (Network Address Translation) to your router so it knows where your server is enabled. For that, you need to know your private IP and the port where is your Stack running (usually 80 or 8080).

Once you have a DNS and the router configured, install the BitNami platform to run BitNami-packaged applications. Download BitNami AMP Stack for your platform (WAMP for Windows, LAMP for Linux, MAMP for OS X and SAMP for Solaris). Once downloaded, double-click on the installer to start the installation wizard, which will ask you a few simple questions and then do all of the installation and configuration for you.

When the installation finishes, you can access the main BitNami web page at http://127.0.0.1 or at http://yourdns.dyndns.org. It is possible that your router will not let you access it from your own computer using your DNS name. In this case, you can use a free public proxy server to confirm that you can access from other computer to your BitNami Stack. For example, go to www.zend2.com and then write your DNS name. If everything is working properly, you will be able to see your main BitNami web page.

Now, install the application on BitNami that you would like to run. Be sure to download the Module, rather than the Stack, for the application you want to install. The Module will automatically install and configure the application to run on top of the BitNami Platform that you installed in the previous step. In this case, we have decided to install Gallery to share our photos and videos with friends.

Three more clicks and that is all – Gallery will be installed, configured and ready to go! To learn how to use Gallery itself, visit the Gallery project website. Do not hesitate to post any question or suggestion in our forums, we will be glad to help you. Enjoy your own video and photo server!

BitNami parla Italiano

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:46:00 GMT

The guys at Risorsa Informatica blog have published an article on how to install PHPBB with BitNami

Gallery installer released!

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:43:00 GMT

We are happy to announce the release of a new application stack. Gallery is a open source web based photo album organizer. It gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site. The Bitnami Gallery installer provides you with a lot of pre-installed modules, and you can update module and theme lists directly from your site.

Gallery is written in PHP with a MySQL backend and you can download the complete stack or just the module for an existing installation of a (L|M|S|W)AMP stack.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know at the Gallery forum.

Enjoy!