Setting up the application

First You'll need to create RhodeCode config file. Run the following command to do this

paster make-config RhodeCode production.ini

• This will create production.ini config inside the directory this config contains various settings for RhodeCode, e.g proxy port, email settings, usage of static files, cache, celery settings and logging.

Next we need to create the database. I'll recommend to use sqlite (default) or postgresql. Make sure You properly adjust the db url in the .ini file to use other than the default sqlite database

paster setup-app production.ini

• This command will create all needed tables and an admin account. When asked for a path You can either use a new location of one with already existing ones. RhodeCode will simply add all new found repositories to it's database. Also make sure You specify correct path to repositories.
• Remember that the given path for mercurial repositories must be write accessible for the application. It's very important since RhodeCode web interface will work even without such an access but, when trying to do a push it'll eventually fail with permission denied errors.

You are ready to use RhodeCode, to run it simply execute

paster serve production.ini

• This command runs the RhodeCode server the app should be available at the 127.0.0.1:5000. This ip and port is configurable via the production.ini file created in previous step
• Use admin account you created to login.
• Default permissions on each repository is read, and owner is admin. So remember to update these if needed. In the admin panel You can toggle ldap, anonymous, permissions settings. As well as edit more advanced options on users and repositories

Using RhodeCode with SSH

RhodeCode repository structures are kept in directories with the same name as the project, when using repository groups, each group is a a subdirectory. This will allow You to use ssh for accessing repositories quite easy. There are some exceptions when using ssh for accessing repositories.

You have to make sure that the webserver as well as the ssh users have unix permission for directories. Secondly when using ssh rhodecode will not authenticate those requests and permissions set by the web interface will not work on the repositories accessed via ssh. There is a solution to this to use auth hooks, that connects to rhodecode db, and runs check functions for permissions.

TODO: post more info on this !

if Your main directory (the same as set in RhodeCode settings) is set to for example homehg and repository You are using is rhodecode

The command runned should look like this::

hg clone ssh://user@server.com/home/hg/rhodecode

Using external tools such as mercurial server or using ssh key based auth is fully supported.

Setting up Whoosh full text search

Starting from version 1.1 whoosh index can be build using paster command. You have to specify the config file that stores location of index, and location of repositories (--repo-location). Starting from version 1.2 it is also possible to specify a comma separated list of repositories (--index-only) to build index only on chooses repositories skipping any other found in repos location

There is possible also to pass -f to the options to enable full index rebuild. Without that indexing will run always in in incremental mode.

incremental mode:

paster make-index production.ini --repo-location=<location for repos>

for full index rebuild You can use:

paster make-index production.ini -f --repo-location=<location for repos>

building index just for chosen repositories is possible with such command:

paster make-index production.ini --repo-location=<location for repos> --index-only=vcs,rhodecode

In order to do periodical index builds and keep Your index always up to date. It's recommended to do a crontab entry for incremental indexing. An example entry might look like this

/path/to/python/bin/paster /path/to/rhodecode/production.ini --repo-location=<location for repos>

When using incremental (default) mode whoosh will check last modification date of each file and add it to reindex if newer file is available. Also indexing daemon checks for removed files and removes them from index.

Sometime You might want to rebuild index from scratch. You can do that using the -f flag passed to paster command or, in admin panel You can check build from scratch flag.

Setting up LDAP support

RhodeCode starting from version 1.1 supports ldap authentication. In order to use LDAP, You have to install python-ldap package. This package is available via pypi, so You can install it by running

easy_install python-ldap

pip install python-ldap

LDAP settings are located in admin->ldap section,

This is a typical LDAP setup:

Connection settings
Enable LDAP          = checked
Host                 = host.example.org
Port                 = 389
Account              = <account>
Password             = <password>
Enable LDAPS         = checked
Certificate Checks   = DEMAND

Search settings
Base DN              = CN=users,DC=host,DC=example,DC=org
LDAP Filter          = (&(objectClass=user)(!(objectClass=computer)))
LDAP Search Scope    = SUBTREE

Attribute mappings
Login Attribute      = uid
First Name Attribute = firstName
Last Name Attribute  = lastName
E-mail Attribute     = mail

Enable LDAP : required

Whether to use LDAP for authenticating users.

Host : required

LDAP server hostname or IP address.

Port : required

389 for un-encrypted LDAP, 636 for SSL-encrypted LDAP.

Account : optional

Only required if the LDAP server does not allow anonymous browsing of records. This should be a special account for record browsing. This will require LDAP Password below.

Password : optional

Only required if the LDAP server does not allow anonymous browsing of records.

Enable LDAPS : optional

Check this if SSL encryption is necessary for communication with the LDAP server - it will likely require Port to be set to a different value (standard LDAPS port is 636). When LDAPS is enabled then Certificate Checks is required.

Certificate Checks : optional

How SSL certificates verification is handled - this is only useful when Enable LDAPS is enabled. Only DEMAND or HARD offer full SSL security while the other options are susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. SSL certificates can be installed to /etc/openldap/cacerts so that the DEMAND or HARD options can be used with self-signed certificates or certificates that do not have traceable certificates of authority.

NEVER

A serve certificate will never be requested or checked.

ALLOW

A server certificate is requested. Failure to provide a certificate or providing a bad certificate will not terminate the session.

TRY

A server certificate is requested. Failure to provide a certificate does not halt the session; providing a bad certificate halts the session.

DEMAND

A server certificate is requested and must be provided and authenticated for the session to proceed.

HARD

The same as DEMAND.

Base DN : required

The Distinguished Name (DN) where searches for users will be performed. Searches can be controlled by LDAP Filter and LDAP Search Scope.

LDAP Filter : optional

A LDAP filter defined by RFC 2254. This is more useful when LDAP Search Scope is set to SUBTREE. The filter is useful for limiting which LDAP objects are identified as representing Users for authentication. The filter is augmented by Login Attribute below. This can commonly be left blank.

LDAP Search Scope : required

This limits how far LDAP will search for a matching object.

BASE

Only allows searching of Base DN and is usually not what you want.

ONELEVEL

Searches all entries under Base DN, but not Base DN itself.

SUBTREE

Searches all entries below Base DN, but not Base DN itself. When using SUBTREE LDAP Filter is useful to limit object location.

Login Attribute : required

The LDAP record attribute that will be matched as the USERNAME or ACCOUNT used to connect to RhodeCode. This will be added to LDAP Filter for locating the User object. If LDAP Filter is specified as "LDAPFILTER", Login Attribute is specified as "uid" and the user has connected as "jsmith" then the LDAP Filter will be augmented as below

(&(LDAPFILTER)(uid=jsmith))

First Name Attribute : required

The LDAP record attribute which represents the user's first name.

Last Name Attribute : required

The LDAP record attribute which represents the user's last name.

Email Attribute : required

The LDAP record attribute which represents the user's email address.

If all data are entered correctly, and python-ldap is properly installed users should be granted access to RhodeCode with ldap accounts. At this time user information is copied from LDAP into the RhodeCode user database. This means that updates of an LDAP user object may not be reflected as a user update in RhodeCode.

If You have problems with LDAP access and believe You entered correct information check out the RhodeCode logs, any error messages sent from LDAP will be saved there.

Base DN              = OU=SBSUsers,OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=v3sys,DC=local
Login Attribute      = sAMAccountName
First Name Attribute = givenName
Last Name Attribute  = sn
E-mail Attribute     = mail

Setting Up Celery

Since version 1.1 celery is configured by the rhodecode ini configuration files simply set use_celery=true in the ini file then add / change the configuration variables inside the ini file.

Remember that the ini files uses format with '.' not with '_' like celery so for example setting BROKER_HOST in celery means setting broker.host in the config file.

In order to make start using celery run:

paster celeryd <configfile.ini>

HTTPS support

There are two ways to enable https, first is to set HTTP_X_URL_SCHEME in Your http server headers, than rhodecode will recognise this headers and make proper https redirections, another way is to set force_https = true in the ini cofiguration to force using https, no headers are needed than to enable https

Nginx virtual host example

Sample config for nginx using proxy:

server {
   listen          80;
   server_name     hg.myserver.com;
   access_log      /var/log/nginx/rhodecode.access.log;
   error_log       /var/log/nginx/rhodecode.error.log;
   location / {
           root /var/www/rhodecode/rhodecode/public/;
           if (!-f $request_filename){
               proxy_pass      http://127.0.0.1:5000;
           }
           #this is important if You want to use https !!!
           proxy_set_header X-Url-Scheme $scheme;
           include         /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
   }
}

Here's the proxy.conf. It's tuned so it'll not timeout on long pushes and also on large pushes:

proxy_redirect              off;
proxy_set_header            Host $host;
proxy_set_header            X-Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header            X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header            X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header            Proxy-host $proxy_host;
client_max_body_size        400m;
client_body_buffer_size     128k;
proxy_buffering             off;
proxy_connect_timeout       3600;
proxy_send_timeout          3600;
proxy_read_timeout          3600;
proxy_buffer_size           16k;
proxy_buffers               4 16k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size     64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size  64k;

Also when using root path with nginx You might set the static files to false in production.ini file:

[app:main]
  use = egg:rhodecode
  full_stack = true
  static_files = false
  lang=en
  cache_dir = %(here)s/data

To not have the statics served by the application. And improve speed.

Apache virtual host example

Sample config for apache using proxy:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName hg.myserver.com
        ServerAlias hg.myserver.com

        <Proxy *>
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
        </Proxy>

        #important !
        #Directive to properly generate url (clone url) for pylons
        ProxyPreserveHost On

        #rhodecode instance
        ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:5000/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:5000/

        #to enable https use line below
        #SetEnvIf X-Url-Scheme https HTTPS=1

</VirtualHost>

Additional tutorial http://wiki.pylonshq.com/display/pylonscookbook/Apache+as+a+reverse+proxy+for+Pylons

Apache as subdirectory

Apache subdirectory part:

<Location /rhodecode>
  ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:59542/rhodecode
  ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:59542/rhodecode
  SetEnvIf X-Url-Scheme https HTTPS=1
</Location>

Besides the regular apache setup You'll need to add such part to .ini file:

filter-with = proxy-prefix

Add the following at the end of the .ini file:

[filter:proxy-prefix]
use = egg:PasteDeploy#prefix
prefix = /<someprefix>

Apache's example FCGI config

TODO !

Other configuration files

Some example init.d script can be found here, for debian and gentoo:

https://rhodeocode.org/rhodecode/files/tip/init.d

Troubleshooting

• missing static files ?

• make sure either to set the static_files = true in the .ini file or double check the root path for Your http setup. It should point to for example: /home/my-virtual-python/lib/python2.6/site-packages/rhodecode/public

• can't install celery/rabbitmq

• don't worry RhodeCode works without them too. No extra setup required

• long lasting push timeouts ?

• make sure You set a longer timeouts in Your proxy/fcgi settings, timeouts are caused by https server and not RhodeCode

• large pushes timeouts ?

• make sure You set a proper max_body_size for the http server

• Apache doesn't pass basicAuth on pull/push ?

• Make sure You added WSGIPassAuthorization true