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##Simple Merlin Installation Walkthrough This won't necessarily result in the best merlin installation ever, but it should work.
Any improvements or alternative versions are welcome.

###Starting Point Debian Squeeze (6.0). In this case, the very bare version found on Chicago VPS.
If you have Wheezy (7.0) or better, you can skip step one and just run apt-get update before proceeding.

###Assumptions Running as root, without sudo installed. If you have sudo you can run sudo -s to open a root shell.
If you don't like vi, feel free to use nano or your preferred editor.

##Step One: Upgrade from Squeeze vi /etc/apt/sources.list Replace all occurences of "squeeze" with "wheezy"

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

##Step Two: Set up the environment Enable bash auto-completion (press tab to complete commands/filenames)

vi /etc/bash.bashrc

Enable colours in bash

vi ~/.bashrc

##Step Three: Install packages apt-get install vim-nox bash-completion screen git postgresql python-sqlalchemy python-psycopg2 python-django python-jinja2 python-numpy python-matplotlib python-bcrypt nginx logrotate

vim-nox and bash-completion just make life nicer. screen is used to keep the bot running after you logout. git is used to fetch and update the bot. postgresql, python-sqlalchemy, python-psycopg2, python-django and python-jinja2 are basic merlin/arthur dependencies. python-numpy and python-matplotlib have lots of dependencies, but are needed for graphing in arthur. python-bcrypt provides bcrypt support, which is recommended unless you are using FluxBB integration. nginx is an alternative to apache, and is my preference. logrotate should be automatically installed as a dependency of postgresql, but installing manually won't hurt. It will be used to keep merlin's log files to a manageable size.

##Step Four: Add a new user for merlin We'll create "merlin" as a normal user. You can rename this if you wish, but you may have to change other things further down the line. You can run more than one bot with the same username (in fact, it's easier).
Note that running a bot as root is a bad idea as any security issues will result in compromise of the whole machine.

useradd -ms /bin/bash merlin

##Step Five: Set up the database Become the database superuser

su postgres

Start the PostgreSQL client

psql

Create the database and user. You'll probably want to choose a different password.

CREATE DATABASE merlin ENCODING = 'UTF8' TEMPLATE template0;
CREATE USER merlin WITH PASSWORD 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE merlin TO merlin;
\q

Capitals are not required, but are used by convention.

Open the new database

psql merlin

Make sure it's owned by the new merlin user

ALTER SCHEMA public OWNER TO merlin;
\q

Logout of postgres user

exit

##Step Six: Set up the bot Login as the bot

su merlin

Go to the home directory

cd /home/merlin

Delete user files (they'll be recreated automatically)

rm .*

Clone the git repository

git clone https://github.com/d7415/merlin.git .

Create log files

touch dumplog.txt errorlog.txt arthurlog.txt scanlog.txt

Checkout the branch you want. Replace source_branch with any branch or tag name. For more details see Branches

git checkout source_branch

Create a branch for your bot

git checkout -b my_branch

Edit merlin.cfg. This is a good time to alter any access levels in Hooks/. If necessary, you should also change the path in excalibur.sh and/or add other bots to excalibur.pg.py
For more details, less README.md

vi merlin.cfg

Add your details to git

git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Commit your changes. Add a comment. "Config for bot_name" is a good starting point.

git commit -a

Set up the database tables

python createdb.py --new

Logout of merlin

exit

##Step Seven: Some permissions... For another way to achieve this, see README.Posix.

Add www-data to merlin's group

usermod -aG merlin www-data

Grant write permissions to the group where required

chmod g+w arthurlog.txt Arthur/graphs

Make the matplotlib directory, and make sure it is owned by the nginx user.

mkdir -p /var/www/.matplotlib
chown www-data:www-data /var/www/.matplotlib

##Step Eight: Set up the ticker Open the crontab

vi /etc/crontab

Add a line for excalibur

1  *    * * *   merlin  /home/merlin/excalibur.sh >> /home/merlin/dumplog.txt 2>&1

##Step Nine: Set up nginx Open/create a config file for arthur

vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/arthur

Once you're done, it should look like this

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name arthur.your-domain.com;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/arthur.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/arthur_err.log;
    root /home/merlin/Arthur/;

    location /static/ {
        alias /home/merlin/Arthur/static/;
        expires 30d;
    }

    location /media/ {
        alias /home/merlin/Arthur/static/;
        expires 30d;
    }

#    Uncomment this section to enable sharing of dump files
#    location /dumps/ {
#        alias /home/merlin/dumps/;
#        autoindex on;
#    }

#    Uncomment this section to point arthur.your-domain.com/forum/ at a FluxBB installation at /var/www/fluxbb/
#    location /forum/ {
#        alias /var/www/fluxbb/;
#        index index.php;
#    }

    location /favicon.ico {
        alias /home/merlin/Arthur/static/favicon.ico;
        expires 30d;
    }

    location /robots.txt {
        alias /home/merlin/Arthur/static/robots.txt;
        expires 30d;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
    }
}

If you have more than one arthur running, you will need to specify different ports to run on. To do this, edit arthur.py, and add a port number to the last line, e.g.

application = django.core.management.commands.runserver.Command().execute("8002")

Then alter the proxy_pass line of the nginx config.

Enable the new site...

cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
ln -s ../sites-available/arthur .
/etc/init.d/nginx restart

##Step Ten: Start the bot! cd /home/merlin screen su merlin python merlin.py

Press ctrl+a, c to start a new window in screen.

su merlin
python arthur.py

If required, repeat for IMAPPush.py, etc

##Step Eleven: Final steps! You should now have a working bot (merlin), website (arthur) and ticker (excalibur). Talk to the bot, as described in README.md (!secure, !reboot, !adduser, etc)

##Step Twelve (optional): Set up logrotate As root, create a new logrotate configuration file for merlin

vi /etc/logrotate.d/merlin

Once you're done, the file should look something like this

/home/merlin/*log.txt {
    rotate 1
    size 100k
    compress
    copytruncate
}