Install from scratch documentation feedback

[seancolsen]

@alvorithm emailed me the following feedback about our Install from scratch documentation (paraphrased slightly):

Potential changes:

• (A) When installing under $HOME, one needs to change the gunicorn service to run as $USER. Otherwise the permission error takes some time to work out (and I guess one doesn't want to give gunicorn.gunicorn control over the entire mathesar software folder?).

• (B) Once installed, we should go to localhost:8000 (currently no port is indicated)

• (C) The default caddy.service file from the standard .deb stable package comes with other AmbientCapabilities, maybe a line comment there could help the rushed installer notice the difference.

• (D) Within the installation steps, I created a <my-db> database with owner mathesar. Is it correct to say that this is already a 'user' database, meant for user data?

  The confusion is due to having to create an admin user TTW. This user, with name <admin-user> != 'mathesar' does not allow connecting to what (I believe) is the user database.

  What should one do here? Create a new DB via the psql prompt with user <admin-user> and connect to it, or re-use the 'mathesar' credentials and connect to <my-db>? I notice that even though I use the mathesar credentials, <admin-user> is listed as the sole user with access.

  It is almost obvious that I am missing some really basic distinction about how Postgres manages connection credentials vs. admin users (?), but given how smooth the rest of the process was, you might want to add a hint at the end of the flow so that the user successfully makes their first connection.

Overall feedback:

• It is a lengthy procedure but overall well documented. I now have mathesar running on my laptop.
• For a network host I'd much prefer getting it to run under guix (similar to nix, https://guix.gnu.org/), but I don't know yet how to create services in Guix (they use their own shepherd, instead of systemd).

[seancolsen]

I tried to make some progress on making changes to address this feedback, but I got hung up because I didn't understand the inner-workings of the installation process well enough.

@Anish9901 do you think you'd be able to make some docs changes to address this feedback?

[kgodey]

Added the "user reported" tag since this is feedback from a user.

[Anish9901]

I'll give it a shot @seancolsen.

[vr-varad]

@Anish9901 are u working on it or i can give it a try??

[seancolsen]

Sorry @vr-varad but this issue is restricted to maintainers.