README

Thank you for selecting RackTables as your datacenter management solution!
If you are looking for documentation or wish to send feedback, please
look for the respective links at project's web-site (racktables.org).

*******************************************************
*                                                     *
*             INSTALLING RACKTABLES                   *
*                                                     *
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*** I. SERVER ***

RackTables requires a MySQL server version 5.x built with InnoDB and
Unicode support and configured appropriately. By default RackTables is 
developed on Apache httpd with PHP 5 module and several PHP extensions.
Below is a list of known-good distributions with respective setup notes.

*** Fedora 8-16
* MySQL: yum install mysql-server mysql
* Apache/PHP: yum install httpd php php-mysql php-pdo php-gd php-snmp \
              php-mbstring php-bcmath
* To enable Unicode, add "character-set-server=utf8" line to "[mysqld]"
section of "/etc/my.cnf" file and restart mysqld.

*** Debian 6
* MySQL: aptitude install mysql-server-5.1
* Apache/PHP: aptitude install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-gd php5-mysql php5-snmp
* To enable Unicode, add "character-set-server=utf8" line to "[mysqld]"
section of "/etc/mysql/my.cnf" file and restart mysqld.

*** Debian 7 with nginx
* MySQL: aptitude install mysql-server-5.1
* nginx: aptitude install nginx php5-fpm
* Remember to adjust server_name in server {} section, otherwise your logout link
* will point to localhost (and thus fail).
* Notice, that fpm.sock is advised, keep the rest on default configuration, or
* tweak to your needs. You may need to set fastcgi_read_timeout 600; if you use
* some external addons like fping, which may take some time in certain situations.
* Please note that setting aggresive caching for php scripts may result in stale
* content - so maximum of 60 seconds is advised, but by default it is not enabled.
* To enable Unicode, add "character-set-server=utf8" line to "[mysqld]"
section of "/etc/mysql/my.cnf" file and restart mysqld.

*** ALTLinux 4.0
* MySQL: apt-get install MySQL-server
* Apache/PHP: apt-get install apache2-httpd-prefork php5-gd2 \
php5-pdo_mysql php5-pdo apache2-mod_php5 php5-mbstring
* To enable Unicode, add "CHSET=utf8" line to "/etc/sysconfig/mysqld" file
and restart mysqld.

*** openSUSE 11.0
* MySQL: YaST -> Software -> software management -> Web and LAMP server -> mysql
* Apache/PHP: use YaST to install apache2-mod_php5, php5-gd, php5-mbstring,
php5-mysql, php5-bcmath, php5-snmp and php5-ldap
* To enable Unicode, add "default-character-set=utf8" line to "[mysql]"
section of "/etc/my.cnf" file and restart mysqld.

*** Scientific Linux 6
* MySQL: yum install mysql-server mysql
* Apache/PHP: httpd php php-mysql php-pdo php-gd php-mbstring php-bcmath
* To enable Unicode, add "character-set-server=utf8" line to "[mysqld]"
section of "/etc/my.cnf" file and restart mysqld.

*** CentOS 5
* MySQL: yum install mysql-server mysql
* Apache/PHP: httpd php53 php53-mysql php53-pdo php53-gd php53-mbstring \
              php53-bcmath
* To enable Unicode, add "character-set-server=utf8" line to "[mysqld]"
section of "/etc/my.cnf" file and restart mysqld.

*** FreeBSD 8
* Apache/PHP:
# make -C /usr/ports/www/apache13-modssl install
# make -C /usr/ports/www/php5-session install
[X] CLI        Build CLI version
[X] APACHE     Build Apache module
[X] MULTIBYTE  Enable zend multibyte support
# make -C /usr/ports/graphics/php5-gd install
# make -C /usr/ports/databases/php5-pdo_mysql install
# make -C /usr/ports/devel/pcre install
!!! Enable UTF-8 support ............ : yes
!!! Unicode properties .............. : yes
# make -C /usr/ports/devel/php5-pcre install
# make -C /usr/ports/converters/php5-mbstring install
[X] REGEX  Enable multibyte regex support

# make -C /usr/ports/net-mgmt/php5-snmp install
# make -C /usr/ports/net/php5-ldap install

*** II. FILES ***
Unpack the tar.gz/zip archive to a directory of your choice and configure Apache
httpd to use "wwwroot" subdirectory as a new DocumentRoot. Alternatively,
symlinks to "wwwroot" or even to "index.php" from an existing DocumentRoot are
also possible and often adisable (see README.Fedora).

*** III. INSTALLER ***
Open the configured RackTables URL and you will be prompted to configure
and initialize the application.

*******************************************************
*                                                     *
*              UPGRADING RACKTABLES                   *
*                                                     *
*******************************************************

0. BACKUP YOUR DATABASE and check the release notes below before actually
   starting the upgrade.
1. Remove all existing files except configuration (the "inc/secret.php" file)
   and local plugins (in the "plugins" directory).
2. Put the contents of the new tar.gz/zip archive into the place.
3. Open the RackTables page in a browser. The software will detect version
   mismatch and display a message telling to log in as admin to finish
   the upgrade.
4. Do that and report any errors to the bug tracker or the mailing list.

*******************************************************
*                                                     *
*                   RELEASE NOTES                     *
*                                                     *
*******************************************************

*** Upgrading to 0.21.0 ***

The minimum (oldest) supported release of PHP is 5.3.

*** Upgrading to 0.20.7 ***

From now on the minimum (oldest) release of PHP that can run RackTables is
5.2.10. In particular, to continue running RackTables on CentOS 5 it is
necessary to replace its php* RPM packages with respective php53* packages
before the upgrade (except the JSON package, which PHP 5.3 provides internally).

Database triggers are used for some data consistency measures.  The database
user account must have the 'TRIGGER' privilege, which was introduced in
MySQL 5.1.7.

The IPV4OBJ_LISTSRC configuration option is reset to an expression which enables
the IP addressing feature for all object types except those listed.

Tags could now be assigned on the Edit/Properties tab using a text input with
auto-completion. Type a star '*' to view full tag tree in auto-complete menu.
It is worth to add the following line to the permissions script if the
old-fashioned 'Tags' tab is not needed any more:
  deny {$tab_tags} # this hides 'Tags' tab

This release converts collation of all DB fields to the utf8_unicode_ci. This
procedure may take some time, and could fail if there are rows that differ only
by letter case. If this happen, you'll see the failed SQL query in upgrade report
with the "Duplicate entry" error message. Feel free to continue using your
installation. If desired so, you could eliminate the case-duplicating rows
and re-apply the failed query.

*** Upgrading to 0.20.6 ***

New MGMT_PROTOS configuration option replaces the TELNET_OBJS_LISTSRC,
SSH_OBJS_LISTSRC and RDP_OBJS_LISTSRC options (converting existing settings as
necessary). MGMT_PROTOS allows to specify any management protocol for a
particular device list using a RackCode filter. The default value
("ssh: {$typeid_4}, telnet: {$typeid_8}") produces "ssh://server.fqdn" for
servers and "telnet://switch.fqdn" for network switches.

*** Upgrading to 0.20.5 ***

This release introduces the VS groups feature. VS groups is a new way to store
and display virtual services configuration. There is a new "ipvs" (VS group)
realm. All previously existing VS configuration remains functional and user
is free to convert it to the new format, which displays it in a more natural way
and allows to generate virtual_server_group keepalived configs. To convert a
virtual service to the new format, it is necessary to manually create a VS group
object and assign IP addresses to it. The VS group will display a "Migrate" tab
to convert the old-style VS objects, which can be removed after a successful
conversion.

The old-style VS configuration becomes DEPRECATED. Its support will be removed
in a future major release. So it is strongly recommended to convert it to the
new format.

*** Upgrading to 0.20.4 ***

Please note that some dictionary items of Cisco Catalyst 2960 series switches
were renamed to meet official Cisco classification:
	2960-48TT   => 2960-48TT-L
	2960-24TC   => 2960-24TC-L
	2960-24TT   => 2960-24TT-L
	2960-8TC    => 2960-8TC-L
	2960G-48TC  => 2960G-48TC-L
	2960G-24TC  => 2960G-24TC-L
	2960G-8TC   => 2960G-8TC-L
	C2960-24    => C2960-24-S
	C2960G-24PC => C2960-24PC-L

The DATETIME_FORMAT configuration option used in setting date and time output
format now uses a different [1] syntax. During upgrade the option is reset to
the default value, which is now %Y-%m-%d (YYYY-MM-DD) per ISO 8601.

This release intoduces two new configuration options:
REVERSED_RACKS_LISTSRC and NEAREST_RACKS_CHECKBOX.

[1] http://php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php

*** Upgrading to 0.20.1 ***

The 0.20.0 release includes bug which breaks IP networks' capacity displaying on
32-bit architecture machines. To fix this, this release makes use of PHP's BC
Math module. It is a new reqiurement. Most PHP distributions have this module
already enabled, but if yours does not - you need yo recompile PHP.

Security context of 'ipaddress' page now includes tags from the network
containing an IP address. This means that you should audit your permission rules
to check there is no unintended allows of changing IPs based on network's
tagset. Example:
	allow {client network} and {New York}
This rule now not only allows any operation on NY client networks, but also any
operation with IP addresses included in those networks. To fix this, you should
change the rule this way:
	allow {client network} and {New York} and not {$page_ipaddress}

*** Upgrading to 0.20.0 ***

WARNING: This release have too many internal changes, some of them were waiting
more than a year to be released. So this release is considered "BETA" and is
recommended only to curiuos users, who agree to sacrifice the stability to the
progress.

Racks and Rows are now stored in the database as Objects.  The RackObject table
was renamed to Object.  SQL views were created to ease the migration of custom
reports and scripts.

New plugins engine instead of local.php file. To make your own code stored in
local.php work, you must move the local.php file into the plugins/ directory.
The name of this file does not matter any more. You also can store multiple
files in that dir, separate your plugins by features, share them and try the
plugins from other people just placing them into plugins/ dir, no more merging.

$path_to_local_php variable has no special meaning any more.
$racktables_confdir variable is now used only to search for secret.php file.
$racktables_plugins_dir is a new overridable special variable pointing to
                        plugins/ directory.

Beginning with this version it is possible to delete IP prefixes, VLANs, Virtual
services and RS pools from within theirs properties tab. So please inspect your
permissions rules to assure there are no undesired allows for deletion of these
objects. To ensure this, you could try this code in the beginning of permissions
script:

	allow {userid_1} and {$op_del}
	deny {$op_del} and ({$tab_edit} or {$tab_properties})

Hardware gateways engine was rewritten in this version of RackTables. This means
that the file gateways/deviceconfig/switch.secrets.php is not used any more. To
get information about configuring connection properties and credentials in a new
way please visit http://wiki.racktables.org/index.php/Gateways

This also means that recently added features based on old API (D-Link switches
and Linux gateway support contributed by Ilya Evseev) are not working any more
and waiting to be forward-ported to new gateways API. Sorry for that.

Two new config variables appeared in this version:
  - SEARCH_DOMAINS. Comma-separated list of DNS domains which are considered
    "base" for your network. If RackTables search engine finds multiple objects
    based on your search input, but there is only one which FQDN consists of
    your input and one of these search domains, you will be redirected to this
    object and other results will be discarded. Such behavior was unconditional
    since 0.19.3, which caused many objections from users. So welcome this
    config var.
  - QUICK_LINK_PAGES. Comma-separated list of RackTables pages to display links
    to them on top. Each user could have his own list.

Also some of config variables have changed their default values in this version.
This means that upgrade script will change their values if you have them in
previous default state. This could be inconvenient, but it is the most effective
way to encourage users to use new features. If this behavior is not what you
want, simply revert these variables' values:
  - SHOW_LAST_TAB               no => yes
  - IPV4_TREE_SHOW_USAGE        yes =>no (networks' usage is still available
                                by click)
  - IPV4LB_LISTSRC              {$typeid_4} => false
  - FILTER_DEFAULT_ANDOR        or => and (this implicitly enables the feature
                                of dynamic tree shrinking)
  - FILTER_SUGGEST_EXTRA        no => yes (yes, we have extra logical filters!)
  - IPV4_TREE_RTR_AS_CELL       yes => no (display routers as simple text, not
                                cell)

Also please note that variable IPV4_TREE_RTR_AS_CELL now has third special value
besides 'yes' and 'no': 'none'. Use 'none' value if you are experiencing low
performance on IP tree page. It will completely disable IP ranges scan for
used/spare IPs and the speed of IP tree will increase radically. The price is
you will not see the routers in IP tree at all.

*** Upgrading to 0.19.13 ***
A new "date" attribute type has been added. Existing date based fields ("HW
warranty expiration", "support contract expiration" and "SW warranty
expiration") will be converted to this new type but must be in the format
"mm/dd/yyyy" otherwise the conversion will fail.

*** Upgrading to 0.19.2 ***

This release is different in filesystem layout. The "gateways" directory has
been moved from "wwwroot" directory. This improves security a bit. You can also
separate your local settings and add-ons from the core RackTables code. To do
that, put a single index.php file into the DocumentRoot of your http server:

<?php
$racktables_confdir='/directory/with/secret.php/and/local.php/';
require '/directory_where_you_extracted_racktables_distro/wwwroot/index.php';
?>

No more files are needed to be available directly over the HTTP. Full list of
filesystem paths which could be specified in custom index.php or secret.php:
 $racktables_gwdir:      path to the gateways directory;
 $racktables_staticdir:  path to the directory containing 'pix', 'js', 'css'
                         directories;
 $racktables_confdir:    path where secret.php and local.php are located. It is
                         not recommended to define it in secret.php, cause only
			 the path to local.php will be affected;
 $path_to_secret_php:    Ignore $racktables_confdir when locating secret.php and
                         use the specified path;
 $path_to_local_php:     idem for local.php.

*** Upgrading to 0.19.0 ***

The files, which are intended for the httpd (web-server) directory, are now in
the "wwwroot" directory of the tar.gz archive. Files outside of that directory
are not directly intended for httpd environment and should not be copied to the
server.

This release incorporates ObjectLog functionality, which used to be available as
a separate plugin. For the best results it is advised to disable (through
local.php) external ObjectLog plugin permanently before the new version is
installed. All previously accumulated ObjectLog records will be available
through the updated standard interface.

RackTables is now using PHP JSON extension which is included in the PHP core
since 5.2.0.

The barcode attribute was removed. The upgrade script attempts to preserve the
data by moving it to either the 'OEM S/N 1' attribute or to a Log entry. You
should backup your database beforehand anyway.

*** Upgrading to 0.18.x ***

RackTables from its version 0.18.0 and later is not compatible with RHEL/CentOS
(at least with versions up to 5.5) Linux distributions in their default
installation. There are yet options to work around that:
1. Install RackTables on a server with a different distribution/OS.
2. Request Linux distribution vendor to fix the bug with PCRE.
3. Repair your RHEL/CentOS installation yourself by fixing its PCRE
   RPM as explained here: http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3252