[CWB] [CQPweb] Help and tips for taking the plunge and installing CQPweb on a server

[Hardie, Andrew]

Hi Scott & Stefan (and all),

I’ve got to apologise for the lack of updates on CQPwebInABox; it’s partly a function of our having had 18 months between v 3.2.31 and 3.2.32, and partly that updating it had become a headache because it was built on Ubuntu and thus had ubuntu upgrade disease. I fully intend to release a new one once the bugs are worked out of the recent big changes, built from scratch on Debian buster + LXDE instead of Ubuntu. Going for buster should mean the base OS will be good for a couple of years.

As for the admin manual, there’s a new version of that on the website. I know it’s long but the majority of the text is devoted to explaining the concepts (and assorted things that can go wrong) rather than instructions on what to do. Knowing where to create metadata templates is one thing, knowing what a metadata template is and what it is for is quite something else.

The most up to date version of the manual is the Latex source in the SVN. However, the PDFs on the website, and at https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/doc , are kept updated al most as regularly.

Stefan’s handout is a very clear summary of the installation process. It would also be a handy guide to turning the release “InABox” into a general-use VM (I intend to keep the release as small as possible -- size matters for whatever is made available for download due to bandwitdth – that was why I was very displeased when I found that going to a new Ubuntu version had changed a 2GB download to a 4GB download.)

>> scripting some tedious parts would at least make it easier to set up new VM versions

Patches extending the autoconfig / autosetup scripts are always welcome.

best

Andrew.

From: cwb-bounces at sslmit.unibo.it <cwb-bounces at sslmit.unibo.it> On Behalf Of Stefan Evert
Sent: 04 May 2019 09:31
To: ssadowsky at gmail.com
Cc: CWBdev Mailing List <cwb at sslmit.unibo.it>
Subject: Re: [CWB] [CQPweb] Help and tips for taking the plunge and installing CQPweb on a server

Dear Scott,

I know your pain. ;-)   CQPwebInABox is a great way of getting people started with CQPweb and CWB, since the first installation is a fairly complicated and daunting procedure.  But if you want to keep your VM up to date, you will need some admin skills and be able to handle bugs cropping up after the updates.  At some point it makes sense to set up your own server (or adopt CQPwebInABox as your own server, upgrade the distro to the latest release and then iron out all the problems created by the upgrade).

CQPwebInABox isn't quite as dead as it might seem.  I just set up a new version of CQPwebInABox in March for participants of a summer school course in computational corpus linguistics – this is not based on Andrew's configuration, though, but a completely fresh setup based on standard Ubuntu 18.04 and my own preferences for useful components to pre-install.  In this day and age, I don't see much point in keeping the VM as small as possible.

I haven't made the VM available because (i) it's been tailored to the summer school, (ii) I haven't updated it to the latest CQPweb version that Andrew just released and (iii) it actually breaks down if you install Ubuntu updates (because of the bug we just discussed on the list).

I'm planning to provide a similar VM for a stable release of CWB 3.5 and matching CQPweb some time in the future; I might also want to discuss exactly which packages to install and how to set up the configuration with Andrew and the list first.

> So... with a daunting 100+ page manual awaiting me, I'd like to ask for everybody's help with collecting and pointing to me/sending me all possible up-to-date and currently applicable documentation on installing CQPweb, be it manuals, papers, your own personal notes, tutorials, lists of pitfalls or non-obvious packages that must be installed, etc.
>
> I'm going to be doing this on Ubuntu 18.04.2.

However, I've made detailed notes on the installation procedure (appended as a PDF).  If you follow these instructions step by step, you should end up with a fully functional CQPwebInABox.  You might want to improve system security (better password for the user account, don't let it own _everything_, configure Apache for HTTPS, etc.) for an actual server.  Updates to the installation recipe are very welcome (let me know if you want the .docx file).

> In return, as it were, I plan to script as much of the installation process as humanly possible, and when I'm done I'll upload the script to GitHub or somewhere similar so others can benefit from it.

I'm not so sure about the scripting.  Any script that sets up an entire Ubuntu installation and patches lots of system files is very likely to break with Ubuntu updates or minor changes in CWB / CQPweb.  But scripting some tedious parts would at least make it easier to set up new VM versions.

Best,
Stefan

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