##Knuvu
This is the web application for knuvu, a discussion platform.
Configuring Your Local Environment
In order to contribute to development of the knuvu web app, you'll need to set-up your local environment.
Vagrant and Virtualbox
knuvu uses Virtual Machines to maintain environments for developers. In order to make this easy, Vagrant is used on top of Virtualbox.
So, install both Virtualbox and Vagrant by following their automated installers.
Launching the Virtual Machine
Once you clone this repository, change to it, i.e cd code/knuvu/web/ and
run:
vagrant up
Your virtual machine will now be automatically downloaded, installed and configured to run the knuvu web application. It is possible you may run into the following error.
Progress state: NS_ERROR_FAILURE
This issue can be fixed with the following command. Be sure to input your correct virtualbox location.
sudo /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox/VirtualBox restart
Interacting with the Virtual Machine
In order to run the web server and interact with the database of the application, you'll need to SSH into the Virtual Machine.
From your project directory, this is simply:
vagrant ssh
You'll then be in the virtual machine shared folder. Any changes you make on your host computer will be instantly reflected into the Virtual Machine's file system.
Preparing the Web Application
Initially, and periodically afterwards, you may need to update the gems for the application. From inside the VM, just run:
bundle install
Gems will be updated and installed as necessary.
The first time you provision your VM, you'll need to create a database.
rake db:create
When initially creating your database, you may run into a Character Encoding error.
The following commands will fix character encoding issues.
sudo su postgres
pg_dropcluster --stop 9.1 main ; pg_createcluster --start --locale en_US.UTF-8 9.1 main
exit
sudo -u postgres createuser -s knuvu_development
sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER USER knuvu_development WITH PASSWORD 'knuvu_development'"
rake db:create
rake db:migrate
Initially, and periodically, you'll need to migrate the database schema.
rake db:migrate
Initially, you will want to fill your database with some test data.
rake db:seed
Running the Web Application
Run the server:
rails s
If your database is throwing errors when starting your server, you may just need to restart the DB
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql stop
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql start
The local server can be accessed at:
77.77.77.77:3000
Troubleshooting
VM's and there providers (Virtualbox) can sometimes misbehave.
Your first solution should usually be to restart the VM.
vagrant reload
If that fails, try forcing it to shutdown, then launching it again.
vagrant halt -f
...
vagrant up
It's best not to waste time debugging issues within the VM beyond restarting it. Because the environment is fully reproducible, you can simply destroy the VM and re-provision a new one.
vagrant destroy [-f]
...
vagrant up
Sometimes, you need to force the VM to be destroyed with the -f flag.
Once the VM finishes provisioning, you'll have a brand new environment to work from.