Announcing RPM packages for Geeklog, Forum, Captcha, Filemgmt and Media Gallery.

I have created RPM packages for Geeklog 1.4.1, Forum 2.7, Filemgmt 1.5.2, Captcha 3.0.2 and Media Gallery 1.5.0. Packages do install all software within /etc/geeklog, /usr/share/geeklog, /var/lib/geeklog and /var/log/geeklog directories, trying to stick as much as possible with the FHS 2.3 (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard). Basically anyone with minimal skills (to know hoe to use mysqladmin, mysql and any text editor) and with a working Red Hat™ Enterprise Linux 5 based OS (CentOS 5, etc.) may install Geeklog, Forum, Filemgnt, Captcha and Media Gallery in less than three minutes.

Software repository for fresh and new Geeklog installations, with RPM and SRPM packages, courtesy of Alcance Libre, is located at: http://www.alcancelibre.org/al/webapps/.

Yum configuration:

Save the following lines as /etc/yum.repos.d/AL-Webapps.repo:

[AL-Webapps]
name=Alcance Libre Webapps Repository
baseurl=http://www.alcancelibre.org/al/webapps/
gpgkey=http://www.alcancelibre.org/al/webapps/AL-RPM-KEY

Installation from RPM package includes proper configuration, permissions and attributes for every Geeklog directory and file using the FHS 2.3 (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard), Apache configuration file and several patches to make painless the install procedure.

wget http://www.alcancelibre.org/al/webapps/AL-RPM-KEY
rpm --import AL-RPM-KEY
yum -y install geeklog geeklog-install geeklog-plugin-forum geeklog-plugin-filemgmt geeklog-plugin-captcha geeklog-plugin-mediagallery
service httpd reload
mysqladmin -p create geeklog
mysql -p
> grant all on geeklog.* to username@localhost identified by 'any_password';
> exit;

Any values from above may be changed editing the /etc/geeklog/config.php file before doing the procedures.

After that, installing packages and setting up database, the procedure reduces to modify configuration settings for database, username, password and Site URL in /etc/geeklog/config.php and access http://your_machine/geeklog/admin/install/install.php and complete the installation/configuration through the Web interface.

Forum, Filemgmt, Captcha and Media Gallery require to complete installation from the Admin menu, as any other plugin for Geeklog.

After installation and configuration procedures are completed, geeklog-install package (includes the install directory for Geeklog) may be removed from system, using:

yum remove geeklog-install

Or just using:

rpm -e geeklog-install

Configuration files (never replaced if updating through yum or rpm commands) from these packages are located at /etc/httpd/conf.d/geeklog.conf, /etc/geeklog/config.php, /etc/geeklog/lib-custom.php and /etc/geeklog/plugins/{forum,filemgmt,captcha,mediagallery}/config.php. I also Added Burning Memory and Sepia Memory (default theme) themes to main package.

Any comments and suggestions are welcome. I have created these packages with security and paranoia in my mind, but I'm open to add any improvements to the spec files. I'll be periodically publishing RPM packages for more Geeklog plugins (quite easy). My mail address is joelbarrios at alcance-empresarial dot com, and my website is located at http://www.alcancelibre.org/.