Alliance Auth¶
This document describes how to install Alliance Auth from scratch.
Tip
If you are uncomfortable with Linux permissions follow the steps below as the root user.
Note
There are additional installation steps for activating services and apps that come with Alliance Auth. Please see the page for the respective service or apps in chapter Features for details.
Dependencies¶
Operating System¶
Alliance Auth can be installed on any Unix like operating system. Dependencies are provided below for two of the most popular Linux platforms: Ubuntu and CentOS. To install on your favorite flavour of Linux, identify and install equivalent packages to the ones listed here.
Python¶
Alliance Auth requires Python 3.7 or higher. Ensure it is installed on your server before proceeding.
Ubuntu 1604 1804:
Note
Ubuntu 2004 ships with Python 3.8, No updates required.
add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install python3.7 python3.7-dev python3.7-venv
CentOS 7/8:
cd ~
sudo yum install gcc openssl-devel bzip2-devel libffi-devel wget
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.11/Python-3.7.11.tgz
tar xvf Python-3.7.11.tgz
cd Python-3.7.11/
./configure --enable-optimizations --enable-shared
make altinstall
Database¶
It’s recommended to use a database service instead of SQLite. Many options are available, but this guide will use MariaDB.
Warning
Many Ubuntu distributions come with an older version of Maria DB, which is not compatible with Alliance Auth. You need Maria DB 10.3 or higher!
For instructions on how To install a newer version of Maria DB on Ubuntu visit this page: MariaDB Repositories.
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';
Once your database is set up, you can leave the SQL shell with exit.
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 this command:
mysql_secure_installation
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 python3.7 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 virtual environment with (Note the /bin/activate on the end of the path):
source /home/allianceserver/venv/auth/bin/activate
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.
Eve Online SSO¶
You need to have a dedicated Eve SSO app for Alliance auth. Please go to EVE Developer to create one.
For scopes your SSO app needs to have at least publicData. Additional scopes depends on which Alliance Auth apps you will be using. For convenience, we recommend adding all available ESO scopes to your SSO app. Note that Alliance Auth will always ask the users to approve specific scopes before they are used.
As callback URL you want to define the URL of your Alliance Auth site plus the route: /sso/callback. Example for a valid callback URL: https://auth.example.com/sso/callback
In local.py you will need to set ESI_USER_CONTACT_EMAIL to an email address to ensure that CCP has reliable contact information for you.
Alliance Auth Project¶
Ensure wheel is available before continuing:
pip install wheel
You can install Alliance Auth with the following command. This will install AA and all its Python dependencies.
pip install allianceauth
You should also install Gunicorn now unless you want to use another WSGI server (see Gunicorn for details):
pip install gunicorn
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 following command bootstraps a Django project which will run your Alliance Auth instance. You can rename it from myauth to anything you’d like. Note that this name is shown by default as the site name but that can be changed later.
allianceauth start myauth
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
Finally, ensure the allianceserver user has read/write permissions to this directory before proceeding.
chown -R allianceserver:allianceserver /home/allianceserver/myauth
Services¶
Alliance Auth needs some additional services to run, which we will set up and configure next.
Gunicorn¶
To run the Alliance Auth website a WSGI Server is required. For this 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:
Note
Many package managers will install Supervisor 3 by default, which requires Python 2.
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
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.
Note that Alliance Auth is designed to run with web servers on HTTPS. While running on HTTP is technically possible, it is not recommended for production use, and some functions (e.g. Email confirmation links) will not work properly.
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. Be sure to read the release notes which will highlight changes.
To update your install, simply activate your virtual environment and update with:
pip install --upgrade allianceauth
Some releases come with changes to the base 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
Finally, some releases come with new or changed static files. Run the following command to update your static files folder:
python /home/allianceserver/myauth/manage.py collectstatic
Always restart AA, Celery and Gunicorn after updating:
supervisorctl restart myauth: