Installation experience

Jeremy

Hello,

@Franz contacted me via Twitter this morning, asking me to detail my Flarum installation experience. I first downloaded and attempted to install it two weekends ago, but ran into a couple of issues and have been sidetracked with freelance work and last weekend's Midwest PHP conference, so I'm in the process of attempting a fresh install so I can provide a more current and accurate perspective, as I'm sure many changes have been implemented since I last checked in with this project.

That said, while my Vagrant box is provisioning....

Two weeks ago, I followed the installation instructions at https://github.com/flarum/core and ran into a small handful of issues:

The version of Vagrant I was running wasn't current and needed to be updated.
There was a conflict in the Vagrantfile with the IP address provided by the project and my local system. I updated the Vagrantfile with another address to correct this issue.
The BASH configuration file set the path for Ember to be located in a directory named 'workspace' that didn't exist, so Ember couldn't be executed correctly out of the box.

I attempted to modify the BASH configuration file, but at this point in my career, I'm not familiar enough with Vagrant to understand how those changes get applied to the box itself. Modifying the configuration file did not modify the path when the server was booted. Of course, now that I think about it, I likely just needed to edit the $PATH environment variable in the command line...

At the time, I 'resolved' this issue by creating a new directory in root named 'workspace', then copied the entire flarum directory into it. It wasn't elegant, but it worked. At that point, I decided I needed to return my attention to my freelance, and that I would check back in this project in a bit.

Provisioning is done on this new installation, so some notes:

Provisioning occurred without issue, and once the box was up and running, I am now able to SSH in and run the Ember command as configured.
Ember claims that the site is being served at http://localhost:4200, but when I attempt to load it in my browser, I get a 'webpage not available' message in Chrome. I assume this is again due to IP address configuration issues, but I'm at work so I should probably move my attention there now. 🙂

I'll play around with this installation when I get home later tonight, and will post here with any additional findings and feedback that I have.

Franz

Jeremy
1. I think we can't do much about that, but maybe we should add a note to remind users to update their Vagrant version from time to time?
2. Hmm, difficult. That's always going to happen to someone, I guess. Maybe we can use a very random one here, though (after all, it is hardcoded).
3. Yeah, I encountered that issue, too, and fixed it last week.

Jeremy

I agree on point #1 above. Noting the version of Vagrant required to install Flarum should serve as a useful reminder to devs looking to check it out.

I'm not familiar enough with how IP addresses get assigned in Vagrant. Do you know whether it's possible to run a system check for available ranges before assigning one? Even with randomization, devs could run into a conflict. That said, a note to double-check the Vagrant configuration for IP conflicts may be of use, as well.

Regarding #3, did you do anything else other than update the aliases file in the scripts directory? I attempted to do the same thing, but for whatever reason, when I rebooted the Vagrant box, the system was still looking for Ember in the workbench directory. It doesn't matter now that you've fixed it, but I'm curious why the same modifications I made didn't register.

Franz

I suppose you made the modifications to the .bash_aliases file in the virtual machine. My change applied the fix to the file that is copied there during the provisioning of the VM

Jeremy

Ah, that would make sense - yes.