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AlphaHelp

Alpha Software Documentation

Guidelines

Metadata stored in pages

values for tags : (can be one or more)

  • common - common to web and desktop.
  • web - web server only functionality
  • desktop - desktop only functionality
  • legacy - page is marked as legacy (omitted)
  • review - page is marked for review.
  • dbf - common DBF tag, tag these to make it easier to filter out DBF functions.

Installation on Ubuntu

Installing the help server on ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS

Prerequisites

If 'sudo add-apt-repository' fails - you will first need to install this.

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo apt-get install apt-file
sudo apt-file update
sudo apt-file search add-apt-repository
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Installing helpserver on Linux

First, installing Elasticsearch is required - install java8 before installing elastic search.

JDK

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openjdk-r/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install openjdk-8-jdk

Elastic searcj

wget -O - http://packages.elasticsearch.org/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb http://packages.elasticsearch.org/elasticsearch/1.4/debian stable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elasticsearch.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install elasticsearch=1.4.4

UPDATED instructions for installing elasticsearch - last of the above no longer seem to work

curl -fsSL https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/elastic.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/elastic.gpg] https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install elasticsearch

Edit the install uncomment line 'network.host: localhost' to restrict access to the elasticsearch service to just the host machine

sudo vi /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml

cursor keys (to navigate) work as expected to move to the file location. x - delete character cursor is over :wq - this sequence of characters writes the file and exist vi.

Then, start the elastic search service:

sudo start elasticsearch

If using systemd

sudo systemctl start elasticsearch

Installing GIT

To install git, which is required for getting and refreshing the help repo:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git

Installing node

To install node, execute the following. nodejs-legacy must also be installed because nodegit has dependencies on 'node', not 'nodejs'.

sudo apt-get update
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
sudo apt-get install npm
sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy

note - sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy appears to fail now

Clone AlphaHelp into the home folder...

Clone alphahelp, make a folder for generated files, initialize and update the elastic search index and table of contents.

sudo git clone https://github.com/BuildMan-Alpha/AlphaHelp /home/AlphaHelp
sudo git clone https://github.com/BuildMan-Alpha/AlphaHelpGen /home/AlphaHelpGen
sudo mkdir /home/AlphaHelp/generated
sudo mkdir /home/AlphaHelp/generated/topics
sudo mkdir /home/AlphaHelp/generated/plaintext
sudo mkdir /home/AlphaHelp/transform/generated
sudo mkdir /home/AlphaHelp/transform/generated/topics
sudo mkdir /home/AlphaHelp/transform/generated/plaintext
cd /home/AlphaHelp/helpserver
sudo npm install

If npm complains about nodegit

Node git is no longer maintained Make sure version 0.26.1 of nodegit is installed (should be resolved in future versions of helpserver):

sudo npm install nodegit@0.26.1

If the nodegit install fails because libstdc++ is missing, install it. The error message from nodegit will have instructions on how to install libstdc++. Below are the commands for installing libstdc++ version 4.9:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libstdc++4.9-dev

Create the helpserver Service (ubuntu 14 and before)

Copy the configuration file(s) to the /etc/init folder

sudo cp  /home/AlphaHelp/helpserver/helpserver.conf /etc/init
sudo cp  /home/AlphaHelp/helpserver/elasticsearch.conf /etc/init
sudo cp  /home/AlphaHelp/helpserver/transform.conf /etc/init

If using systemd, copy those files after doing initialization (after using the default elasticsearch settings).

Then, initialize the server. Replace "settings.json" with the name of the JSON file that contains the helpserver settings.

sudo nodejs initializeserver.js ./settings.json
sudo nodejs updateserver.js ./settings.json

If Initialization fails with CERT_UNTRUSTED, run the commands below. Then try initializing the server again.

sudo npm config set strict-ssl false

Create the helpserver Service for systemd (later ubuntu distros)

Install the service files...

 sudo cp /home/AlphaHelp/helpserver/*.service /etc/systemd/system

Start the systemd services

sudo systemctl start elasticsearch
sudo systemctl start helpserver
sudo systemctl start transform

Confirm that each service started

sudo systemctl status elasticsearch
sudo systemctl status helpserver
sudo systemctl status transform

Enable the service(s) so that the helpserver comes up automatically after reboot.

sudo systemctl enable elasticsearch
sudo systemctl enable helpserver
sudo systemctl enable transform

Install xsltproc

Install xsltproc if it is not already installed:

sudo apt-get install xsltproc

Start the helpserver Service

Then start the server...

sudo start helpserver

or

sudo systemctl start helpserver

Initialize the Helpserver TOC and Search Indicies

The first time in, there will be no generated table of contents. If you are running the helpserver with elasticsearch, the search index for the help system will also not exist. Before you can start browsing and searching the help system, you must initilize the index and TOC. The system can be initilized by refreshing the help index:

curl --insecure -d "" https://127.0.0.1/refresh
curl --insecure -d "" https://127.0.0.1/TransFormDocumentation/refresh

Refreshing Server Modules

To refresh the server modules (new release of helpserver npm).

sudo stop helpserver
cd /home/AlphaHelp/helpserver/node_modules/help_server
sudo npm update
sudo start helpserver

Caveat - nodegit 4.0.0 broken in reposity.js - whenever I refresh the npm now I need to execute this line

sudo cp /home/repository.js node_modules/helpserver/node_modules/nodegit/lib/repository.js

This will need to be done until the fix is rolled into the NPM.

Running in a Testing Environment

If running in a test environment, you do not need to create a service. Navigate to the helpserver directory and run the system:

sudo node helplocal.js

Starting helpserver on Linux

This needs needs to be every time we restart the machine, but also when we are installing helpserver.

sudo service elasticsearch restart

Troubleshooting Linux server

If the help server crashes, there are a number of logs to show what went wrong. The first place to look is the helpserver crash log file which exists in a generated file called helpserver_error.log. The command to see the contents of this log file is this:

cat /home/AlphaHelp/generated/helpserver_error.log

The node.js log exists here (this captures the output from the helpserver process, including tracking regeneration of indexes for pages). To see these dump node.log using this command:

cat /var/log/node.log

The Log for the helpserver service exists in a file called helpserver.log - in the upstart subfolder here:

cat /var/log/upstart/helpserver.log

If the logs are too big, 'rm' them and retry - if there is still a problem, the logs will be regenerated.

Setting GIT Webhook for Repository

Log in as buildman@alphasoftware.com to set the repository links on the AlphaHelp project

https://github.com/BuildMan-Alpha/AlphaHelp/settings/hooks

Add the server to the webhooks - remember to copy the secret from your 'settings.json' file in the helpserver folder.

Handling case sensitive path issues with Git-Unite

There is a utility in 3rdParty to handle fixups should files appear to be missing on the documentation server. Linux has a case sensitive file system, while windows does not, so in order to fix inconsistencies in GIT caused by this problem, it is necessary to occasionally run git-unite against the folder.

C:\dev\3rdParty\Git\git-unite\src\Git.Unite\bin\Debug>Git.Unite.exe C:\dev\AlphaHelp

Note on update stopping on Server

package-lock.json is saved in the repo, so dependabot changes to that file can cause a stash error as installing the revised npm packages can cause a merge conflict when the automated pull request is done.

Notes on node version

Unless we move to nvm, we are stuck at version 12.xx of nodejs, as ubuntu seems to prefer that version (even in the latest 22.x version). Had to change version for both simple-git and express. node - found that I had to separately run 'npm i simple-git'.