Lesson "Installing Omeka" is not working anymore

[josircg]

Hi folks, I'm helping the portuguese translation editors and I tried to reproduce the installation procedures and I found that the recent version of Ubuntu 18.04 is not compatible anymore with the suggested omeka version on lesson text.

So here are my suggestions to fix the lesson:

1) Most service providers do not allow ssh connection by root. So, in most of the cases, this is a confunding factor for a newbie. Suggestion to fix:

• Line 47: instead of ssh root@hostname, change to ssh user@hostname where user is the user informed by the ISP and hostname is your server address.

2) Mysql connection: as you are logged as root, you don't need a password

• Line 89: remove the -p

3) We should install also php-xml and we can use the same line here:

• Line 144: sudo apt install unzip php-xml

4) omeka version. The 2.4 version doesn't work anymore. The first one that is working with Ubuntu 18.04 php is 2.7

• Line 140: wget http://omeka.org/files/omeka-2.7.zip
• Line 148: unzip omeka-2.7.zip
• Line 152: mv omeka-2.7 omeka

5) In order to avoid problems for new users, I would remove "Grab the URL from http://omeka.org/download". Why? Because newer versions will require other packages besides php-xml and user will be frustrated because Omeka will just issue a 500 error and will not help him with a readable error message.

6) There is also a pitfall after installation. The path omeka/file should be writable for apache process:

• after line 184, add this: sudo chmod -R g+w files

If you want to see all fixes implemented, I tested here:

https://github.com/josircg/jekyll/blob/gh-pages/en/lessons/installing-omeka.md

[anisa-hawes]

Thank you so much, @josircg! I will take a look and prepare a PR to update this.

[acrymble]

@anisa-hawes can we please prioritise this bug for fixing. It looks like we have a full solution here.

[anisa-hawes]

Thank you, @acrymble.

Apologies for the long delay, @josircg. I have tried to test these steps several times, and should have written to you sooner to explain that I am unable to set up an SSH connection...

The first paragraph of this lesson provides links to instructions elsewhere on the web that guide readers to set up a virtual server. I have an AWS account and I followed the (very clear) instructions to set up an EC2 instance which I think was successful. One stumbling point was establishing the key-pair (which was new to me) but I did manage that in the end.

What I have not been successful in doing is connecting my instance with an SSH client. I will revisit the instructions here again this afternoon, and see if I can find a way through.

(An aside is that this lesson seems (to me) a good example of an intermediate difficulty lesson because the steps are outlined, and less experienced readers are empowered to gain requisite knowledge from external resources that are identified. Every now and again, I think to myself that I am 'intermediate' by our definition... but then at times like this, I change my mind!)

[hawc2]

@anisa-hawes setting up an SSH client can be a huge pain. I can help with troubleshooting this lesson if you want to meet and test together over zoom?

[josircg]

Hi @anisa-hawes did you solve the ssh client access?

If not, another option is access the server directly on the web. Just click on "Action/Connect" menu. You can run all commands from there.

[anisa-hawes]

Hello, @josircg. Thank you for following up. I'm afraid I haven't been been able to solve this. Might you have scope to work through / talk through the steps together? I'll email you to organise.