Installation on Amazon EC2

We've made an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) so you can quickly deploy on Amazon EC2. This is handy if you just want to evaluate Alaveteli, for example.

Note that there are other ways to install Alaveteli.

Installing from our AMI

To help you try out Alaveteli, we have created an AMI with a basic installation of Alaveteli, which you can use to create a running server on an Amazon EC2 instance. This creates an instance that runs as a development site. If you want to use this for a production site, you must change the configuration.

Amazon instances are graded by size. Unfortunately, the Micro instance does not have enough memory for Alaveteli to run – and that’s the only size available on Amazon’s free usage tier. You need to use a Small instance or larger, which Amazon will charge you for.

Using Amazon web services

To do this, you’ll need:

• an account with Amazon
• a SSL key pair (the Amazon web service screens guide you through this)

If you don’t have these already, you’ll need to create them. See Amazon’s introduction on running a Virtual Server on AWS.

Launch the instance

Once you’re logged in to Amazon’s service, and navigated to the EC2 Management Console, you can launch the instance. If you prefer to do this manually, you can find the AMI in the “EU West (Ireland)” region, with the ID ami-d2c812a1 and name “Basic Alaveteli installation 2015-09-17”. Alternatively, use this link:

launch instance with Alaveteli installation AMI

When the instance launches, the first thing you need to choose is the instance type. Remember that the Micro type does not have enough memory to run Alaveteli, so you must choose at least Small or Medium – note that these are not available on Amazon’s free usage tier.

When the instance is created, the Amazon interface presents you with a lot of choices about its configuration. You can generally accept the defaults for everything, except the Security Groups. It’s safe to click on Review and Launch right away (rather than manually configuring all the instance details) because you still get an opportunity to configure the security groups. Click on Edit Security Groups on the summary page before you hit the big Launch button.

You must choose Security Groups that allow at least inbound HTTP, HTTPS, SSH and, if you want to test incoming mail as well, SMTP. Amazon’s settings here let you specify the IP address(es) from which your instance will accept requests. It’s good practice to restrict these (if in doubt, choose a Source of “My IP” for them all – except incoming HTTP: for that, simpy to set Source to “Anywhere”). You can change any of these settings later if you need to.

Log into the server (shell)

You need access to the server’s command line shell to control and configure your Alaveteli site.

To access the server, use ssh and the .pem file from your SSL key pair. Change the .pem file and instance ID to match your own in this command, which connects to your server and logs you in as the user called ubuntu. Issue this command from your own machine, to log in to the server:

ssh -i path-to/your-key-pair.pem ubuntu@instance-id.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

You won’t be asked for a password, because the .pem file you supply with the -i option contains the authorisation that matches the one at the other end, on the server. You will be logged into the shell on your new Alaveteli server, and can issue Unix commands to it.

Smoke test: start Alaveteli

You must configure your Alaveteli site, but if you just want to see that you’ve got your instance running OK, you can fire it up right away. Ideally, you should skip this step and go straight to the configuration… but we know most people like to see something in their browser first. ;-)

On the command line shell, as the ubuntu user, start Alaveteli by doing:

sudo service alaveteli start

Find the “public DNS” URL of your EC2 instance from the AWS console, and look at it in a browser. It will be of the form http://your-ec2-hostname.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com. You’ll see your Alaveteli site there.

Your site isn’t configured yet, so this is insecure (for example, you haven’t set your own passwords for access to the administration yet), so once you’ve seen this running, bring the Alaveteli site down with:

sudo service alaveteli stop

Shell users: ubuntu and alaveteli

When you log into your instance’s command line shell, you must do so as the ubuntu user. This user can sudo freely to run commands as root. However, the code is actually owned by (and runs as) the alaveteli user.

You will need to customise the site’s configuration. Do this by logging into your EC2 server and editing the general.yml configuration file.

The configuration file you need to edit is /var/www/alaveteli/alaveteli/config/general.yml. For example, use the nano editor (as the alaveteli user) like this:

ubuntu@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ sudo su - alaveteli
alaveteli@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ cd alaveteli
alaveteli@ip-10-58-191-98:~/alaveteli$ nano config/general.yml

After making changes to that file, you’ll need to start the application server (use restart rather than start if it’s already running):

alaveteli@ip-10-58-191-98:~/alaveteli$ logout
ubuntu@ip-10-58-191-98:~$ sudo service alaveteli start

Your site will be running at the public URL again, which is of the form http://your-ec2-hostname.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.

If you have any problems or questions, please ask on the Alaveteli developer mailing list or report an issue.

What next?

Check out the next steps.