Alliance Auth Installation¶
Tip
If you are uncomfortable with Linux permissions follow the steps below as the root user.
Dependencies¶
Alliance Auth can be installed on any operating system. Dependencies are provided below for two of the most popular server platforms, Ubuntu and CentOS. To install on your favourite flavour of Linux, identify and install equivalent packages to the ones listed here.
Hint
CentOS: A few packages are included in a non-default repository. Add it and update the package lists.
yum -y install https://centos7.iuscommunity.org/ius-release.rpm
yum update
Python¶
Alliance Auth requires python3.4 or higher. Ensure it is installed on your server before proceeding.
Ubuntu:
apt-get install python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-setuptools python3-pip
CentOS:
yum install python36u python36u-devel python36u-setuptools python36u-pip
Database¶
It’s recommended to use a database service instead of SQLite. Many options are available, but this guide will use MariaDB.
Ubuntu:
apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client libmysqlclient-dev
CentOS:
yum install mariadb-server mariadb-devel mariadb-shared mariadb
Note
If you don’t plan on running the database on the same server as auth you still need to install the libmysqlclient-dev package on Ubuntu or mariadb-devel package on CentOS.
Redis and Other Tools¶
A few extra utilities are also required for installation of packages.
Ubuntu:
apt-get install unzip git redis-server curl libssl-dev libbz2-dev libffi-dev
CentOS:
yum install gcc gcc-c++ unzip git redis curl bzip2-devel
Important
CentOS: Make sure Redis is running before continuing.
systemctl enable redis.service
systemctl start redis.service
Database Setup¶
Alliance Auth needs a MySQL user account and database. Open an SQL shell with mysql -u root -p and create them as follows, replacing PASSWORD with an actual secure password:
CREATE USER 'allianceserver'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';
CREATE DATABASE alliance_auth CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON alliance_auth . * TO 'allianceserver'@'localhost';
Add timezone tables to your mysql installation:
mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root -p mysql
Note
You may see errors when you add the timezone tables. To make sure that they were correctly added run the following commands and check for the time_zone tables:
mysql -u root -p
use mysql;
show tables;
Close the SQL shell and secure your database server with the mysql_secure_installation command.
Auth Install¶
User Account¶
For security and permissions, it’s highly recommended you create a separate user to install auth under. Do not log in as this account.
Ubuntu:
adduser --disabled-login allianceserver
CentOS:
useradd -s /bin/nologin allianceserver
Virtual Environment¶
Create a Python virtual environment and put it somewhere convenient (e.g. /home/allianceserver/venv/auth/)
python3 -m venv /home/allianceserver/venv/auth/
Warning
The python3 command may not be available on all installations. Try a specific version such as python3.6 if this is the case.
Tip
A virtual environment provides support for creating a lightweight “copy” of Python with their own site directories. Each virtual environment has its own Python binary (allowing creation of environments with various Python versions) and can have its own independent set of installed Python packages in its site directories. You can read more about virtual environments on the Python docs.
Activate the virtualenv using source /home/allianceserver/venv/auth/bin/activate. Note the /bin/activate on the end of the path.
Hint
Each time you come to do maintenance on your Alliance Auth installation, you should activate your virtual environment first. When finished, deactivate it with the deactivate command.
Ensure wheel is available with pip install wheel before continuing.
Alliance Auth Project¶
You can install the library using pip install allianceauth. This will install Alliance Auth and all its python dependencies. You should also install Gunicorn with pip install gunicorn before proceeding.
Now you need to create the application that will run the Alliance Auth install. Ensure you are in the allianceserver home directory by issuing cd /home/allianceserver.
The allianceauth start myauth command bootstraps a Django project which will run Alliance Auth. You can rename it from myauth to anything you’d like: this name is shown by default as the site name but that can be changed later.
The settings file needs configuring. Edit the template at myauth/myauth/settings/local.py. Be sure to configure the EVE SSO and Email settings.
Django needs to install models to the database before it can start.
python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py migrate
Now we need to round up all the static files required to render templates. Make a directory to serve them from and populate it.
mkdir -p /var/www/myauth/static
python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py collectstatic
Check to ensure your settings are valid.
python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py check
And finally ensure the allianceserver user has read/write permissions to this directory before proceeding.
chown -R allianceserver:allianceserver /home/allianceserver/myauth
Background Tasks¶
Gunicorn¶
To run the auth website a WSGI Server is required. Gunicorn is highly recommended for its ease of configuring. It can be manually run from within your myauth base directory with gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0 myauth.wsgi or automatically run using Supervisor.
The default configuration is good enough for most installations. Additional information is available in the gunicorn doc.
Supervisor¶
Supervisor is a process watchdog service: it makes sure other processes are started automatically and kept running. It can be used to automatically start the WSGI server and Celery workers for background tasks. Installation varies by OS:
Ubuntu:
apt-get install supervisor
CentOS:
yum install supervisor
systemctl enable supervisord.service
systemctl start supervisord.service
Once installed it needs a configuration file to know which processes to watch. Your Alliance Auth project comes with a ready-to-use template which will ensure the Celery workers, Celery task scheduler and Gunicorn are all running.
Ubuntu:
ln -s /home/allianceserver/myauth/supervisor.conf /etc/supervisor/conf.d/myauth.conf
CentOS:
ln -s /home/allianceserver/myauth/supervisor.conf /etc/supervisord.d/myauth.ini
And activate it with supervisorctl reload.
You can check the status of the processes with supervisorctl status. Logs from these processes are available in /home/allianceserver/myauth/log named by process.
Note
Any time the code or your settings change you’ll need to restart Gunicorn and Celery.
supervisorctl restart myauth:
Webserver¶
Once installed, decide on whether you’re going to use NGINX or Apache and follow the respective guide.
Superuser¶
Before using your auth site it is essential to create a superuser account. This account will have all permissions in Alliance Auth. It’s OK to use this as your personal auth account.
python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py createsuperuser
The superuser account is accessed by logging in via the admin site at https://example.com/admin.
If you intend to use this account as your personal auth account you need to add a main character. Navigate to the normal user dashboard (at https://example.com) after logging in via the admin site and select Change Main. Once a main character has been added it is possible to use SSO to login to this account.
Updating¶
Periodically new releases are issued with bug fixes and new features. To update your install, simply activate your virtual environment and update with pip install --upgrade allianceauth. Be sure to read the release notes which will highlight changes.
Some releases come with changes to settings: update your project’s settings with allianceauth update /home/allianceserver/myauth.
Some releases come with new or changed models. Update your database to reflect this with python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py migrate.
Always restart Celery and Gunicorn after updating.