rbook and Ubuntu

This post explains how to install rbook 2.2 on the base Ubuntu 7.10 Server LAMP install.  To quote the developer rbook is:

An easy-to-install, database-driven recipe management system, with an easy to use interface for editing and viewing recipes. Includes basic authentication and authorization and an admin panel for editing users and categories

First download rbook from sourceforge.net and transfer the zip file to your Ubuntu server.  You will need the program unzip in order to extract the files from the zip file. Assuming you are connected to your Ubuntu server via ssh sudo aptitude install unzip You can then unzip the contents of the file: sudo unzip rbook-2.2.zip -d /var/www/ You should now have rbook files in /var/www/rbook/. You will need to copy the contents of .htaccess and add it to a virtual host file because by default Ubuntu does not allow the use of .htaccess files. sudo cat .htaccess You should see something like: Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI RewriteEngine On #RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA] RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.php [QSA,L] highlight the entire contents of the file to copy it. We can now create the virtual host file. sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/rbook.yourdomain.com You then need to insert the relevant information for your set up plus the information from the .htaccess file. you should end up with something like. <VirtualHost */> ServerName rbook.yourdomain.com DocumentRoot /var/www/rbook/ <Directory /var/www/rbook/> Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI RewriteEngine On #RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA] RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.php [QSA,L] </Directory> </VirtualHost> You then need to enable the virtual host: sudo a2ensite rbook.yourdomain.com You will also need to enable mod rewrite: sudo a2enmod rewrite You will then need to reload apache: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload You then need to install and set up some pre-requisites for rbook to function correctly: sudo aptitude install php-pear imagemagick sudo pear install db You should now be able to browse to http://rbook.yourdomain.com/install/. After choosing your language you'll get a couple warnings about not being able to write directories or files. This is ok because you don't want rbook to be able to write everything. you can clean up the permissions after the install. The install page is mostly self explanatory, and once you are done it will show you the config.php file you must put in /var/www/rbook/. A couple modifications I needed to make were that "DBPASSWORD" had my root password when it should actually be the same as the "DBUSER" in my case i had made it rbook_admin. I also had an apostrophe in my "APPTITLE" which was then escaped with a '\', I had to remove the '\' because it showed up in the page's header. You may want to look through the other options and set things as you desire.
Next create a folder for images and give the apache user ownership: sudo mkdir /var/www/rbook/img sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/rbook/img/ Next set the permssions on the template_c directory for the default skin: sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/rbook/skins/default/templates_c/ Check it out and make sure everything is working and you can then delete the install directory. sudo rm -r /var/www/rbook/install/