Installing PM Software Stack

Installation of PM Software Stack is very easy and self-explanatory with basic linux server administration skills. The complete procedure takes 15 to 30mins depending on the type of server, most of this time is spent by apt installing new packages and compiling required software from source.

Requirements

• Freshly installed dedicated server/VPS with Debian 5.0
• root access to the server
• DNS setup for FQDN in one form or another

Note: Quota may or may not work with OpenVZ. At the very least do not alter default quota (inc. do not compile quota from source) in a OpenVZ virtual machine. Note 2: Debian 6.0 quota from repository is quite sufficient. See bottom of this page for Debian 6.0 special instructions.

Quick installation

cd ~
wget http://pulsedmedia.com/remote/install.sh
bash install.sh
shutdown -r now

Reply to questions, and setup quota as requested (if needed). After reboot issue command quotaon -av and you are done :)

Quota setup

Copy & paste last line of the fstab line without # character to the according device options, ie.:

/dev/md4        /home   ext4    defaults,noatime,usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv1       1       2

Monitoring setup

You need to have a Munin node running somewhere. Set host_name attribute in munin.conf to the FQDN of the server. Comment out allow for localhost if you do not need it. Check allow line on bottom of the file and input your monitoring server IP.

To edit node munin-config:

vi /etc/munin/munin-node.conf

SSL Cert questions

You may skip all of them, these are innecessary and empty works fine if you want to allow non-signed cert HTTPS.

Hostname

When the installation scripts open the file for hostname make certain it is the servers FQDN. You can even leave it as is, as now you can also access user accounts via any hostname/ip it responds to in the format of uri/user-#USERNAME#/

Installing on Debian 6.0 Squeeze

At the very least you need to remove quota compilation from installation, and the line with rar installation for apt-get is not working. The correct package in squeeze is unrar-free. After installation complete you need to run:

/usr/sbin/lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
/usr/sbin/lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php
/etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload

Among a lot of environment changes, and probably a few added packages as well. The default in Debian 6.0 are quite poor for server environments, or general shell usage. For example, VI enhanced is lacking syntax highlighting, some autocomplete features work somewhat illogically compared to 5.0 etc.

The list of changes required for Debian 6.0 is quite extensive for optimal experience, but above instructions will get you started.