Phabricator – An Open Source Powerful Project Management Tool for Linux

Phabricator is an open source application that helps software companies to create/build better software, which is built using PHP language and available under Apache 2.0 open source license for Linux, MacOSX and can be run in any platform, it can even run in windows but it is totally based on Linux support. Phabricator has been used by Facebook before. The first version of phabricator was built by facebook with lots of features such as reviewing and auditing codes, tracking bugs etc.

Install Phabricator in CentOS and Ubuntu

We can use phabricator as a repository same as git and svn. There are several privacy settings available to secure the code among particular development teams. We can review the code of coworkers before finalizing the code.
I hope everyone is aware about git, if not please have a quick look at the GIT article below, that explain how to use it.

1. Install GIT to Create Your Own Projects on GITHub Repository

Same like git, phabricator also has lots of features and used by most of the popular companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Groupon to develop there web applications.

Requirements

Phabricator can run in a normal computer, with following required packages. We don’t need specification with high resources.

1. Apache2.2.7 or higher
2. MySQL and PHP 5.2 or higher
3. Git and some of the php extensions.

NOTE : Phabricator can only be installed on an entire domain (tecmint.com) or on an sub domain (phabricator.tecmint.com). You cannot install it to a specific path on any existing domain, say “tecmint.com/phabricator”.

Step 1: Installing Required Components

There are scripts available for setting-up in Ubuntu and Redhat based Linux, choose this option if you are not familiar with Linux.

1. RedHat Derivatives – http://www.phabricator.com/rsrc/install/install_rhel-derivs.sh
2. Ubuntu Derivatives – http://www.phabricator.com/rsrc/install/install_ubuntu.sh

If you are an Advance user, you just need to setup a LAMP server to run a phabricator. Okay, now let us start installing Phabricator on RHEL/CentOS and Ubuntu/Debian.

On RHEL/CentOS

Install LAMP server and include some php extensions, while installing.

# yum install mysql-server httpd git php php-mysql php-gd php-curl php-apc php-cli -y

On Ubuntu/Debian

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server apache2 git-core git php5 php5-mysql php5-gd php5-curl php-apc php5-cli -y

NOTE: On Ubuntu based distributions, during installation it will ask you to enter root password for MySQL.

Step 2: Downloading Phabricator Files

Once, you have all the above stuff installed, now pick install directory. Here I’m going to create a directory called ‘myprojectapp‘ under DocumentRoot of Apache directory.

# mkdir /var/www/html/myprojectapp  [On RedHat]

$ sudo mkdir /var/www/myprojectapp  [On Ubuntu]

If you are installing, as a normal user you need to add current user (in my case ‘tecmint‘) in Apache group to get the write permission. This step can be ignored if you are switched to root user.

# chown -R tecmint:apache /var/www/html  [On RedHat]
$ sudo chown -R tecmint:www-data /var/www [On Ubuntu] 

Then navigate to the newly created directory i.e. myprojectapp.

# cd /var/www/html/myprojectapp   [On RedHat]

$ cd /var/www/myprojectapp   [On Ubuntu]

Now, start pulling the phabricator and its dependencies from there official git repository.

git clone https://github.com/phacility/libphutil.git
git clone https://github.com/phacility/arcanist.git
git clone https://github.com/phacility/phabricator.git

Download Phabricator

Step 3: Configure Apache for Phabricator

On Ubuntu based distributions, you need to enable mod_php, mod_rewrite and mod_ssl modules, during installation most of these modules enabled by default, but we need to confirm.

# sudo a2enmod rewrite
# sudo a2enmod ssl

Enable PHP Modules

Once, these modules enabled, next restart the web server to reflect changes.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart  [On Ubuntu]

Next, create a separate Virtualhost in your Apache configuration file.

# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf   [On RedHat]

$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/phabricator.conf [On Ubuntu] 

Append the following Virtualhost entry at the bottom of the file and change the DocumentRoot path to match exact location of phabricator files.

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin root@phab.tecmintlocal.com
        ServerName phab.tecmintlocal.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/myprojectapp/phabricator/webroot
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteRule ^/rsrc/(.*)     -                       [L,QSA]
        RewriteRule ^/favicon.ico   -                       [L,QSA]
        RewriteRule ^(.*)$          /index.php?__path__=$1  [B,L,QSA]
<Directory "/var/www/html/myprojectapp/phabricator/webroot">
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

On Ubuntu, you need to enable the newly created virtualhost entry using following command. For RedHat based systems, no need to enable anything.

$ sudo a2ensite phabricator.conf

Finally, restart the Apache service to reflect new changes.

# service httpd restart    [On RedHat]

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart  [On Ubuntu]

Step 4: Configure MySQL for Phabricator

Now, it’s time to configure MySQL, but before heading up for setup, make sure your MySQL is running and you able to connect to it. So, that you can load the mysql settings into it.

# cd /var/www/html/myprojectapp/phabricator/  [On RedHat]

# cd /var/www/myprojectapp/phabricator/   [On Ubuntu]

# ./bin/config set mysql.host localhost
# ./bin/config set mysql.user root
# ./bin/config set mysql.pass mjackson

Next, run the storage upgrade script to load database schema into it. While processing, it will prompt you to press ‘y‘ to continue, this will take little time to complete the setup for setting-up data schema.

# ./bin/storage upgrade --user root --password mjackson

Configure MySQL

Once, scheme added to mysql, restart the service to take new settings.

# service mysql restart

$ sudo service mysql restart

Step 5: Configuring Phabricator Web UI

Now you can access the web UI at the following locations, but we need to create an admin login account.

http://phab.tecmintlocal.com/

OR

http://ipaddress

Phabricator Admin Account

If the above admin setup page is not displayed we need to create admin login manually from the terminal. This step only required, if incase we get the error cause admin account was not defined.

# ./bin/accountadmin

Once admin account created, you can login into admin section using same credentials. After login you can see some setup issue in the top left corner, that needs to be resolved before start using it.
Here are some of the steps to get fix, each and every issues can be resolved very easily as they have pointed how to resolve it.

Phabricator Setup Issues

Total, there are 10 setup issue mentioned as shown in the image below.

Open Phabricator Issues

Here, I can’t show how to resolve each issue, but will try to show how to resolve one of the issue as mentioned in the error page. Let’s take first issue, MYSQL STRICT_ALL_TABLES Mode Not Set, clicking on the link will get the instructions on how to solve the issue.

So, let’s follow those instructions as described in the page. Open and edit the mysql configuration file.

# /etc/my.cnf  [On RedHat]

# sudo vim /etc/mysql/my.conf [On Ubuntu]

Next, append the code under the mysqld section of conf file, what we get from while clicked on

“MYSQL STRICT_ALL_TABLES Mode Not Set“.

sql_mode = STRICT_ALL_TABLES
ft_min_word_len = 3

After resolving each errors, you must restart the MySQL and Apache service to reflect new changes.

------------ On Red Hat Systems  ------------
# service mysqld restart
# service apache restart


------------ On Ubuntu Systems  ------------
$ sudo service mysql restart
$ sudo service apache2 restart

After, solving all issues, you can login into the panel again and check for the status, you will see “Ready to Use” message.

Phabricator Login

Check Phabricator Issues

Step 6: Browsing Phabricator Features

You can see some of the user available features as shown in the pictures below.

Add Authenticate Provider

Phabricator Configuration

Core Applications

Utilities

Administration

For Creating a normal user account, click on top-left corner icon then Scroll down the page, then click on “People“. Now to create a new user we have to Click on “Create New User“.

Step 7: Recover Phabricator Admin Password

If incase, you forget your admin password and you want to recover it, just follow the below command.

# ./bin/auth recover tecmint

Recover Admin Password

Next, copy the given access code and access the URL to recover, as shown in the images below.

Authentication Failure

Phabricator Account Recovery

Source : http://www.tecmint.com
              http://phabricator.org/

Linux Directory Structure and Important Files Paths Explained

For any person, who does not have a sound knowledge of Linux Operating System and Linux File System, dealing with the files and their location, their use may be horrible, and a newbie may really mess up.

This article is aimed to provide the information about Linux File System, some of the important files, their usability and location.

Linux Directory Structure Diagram

A standard Linux distribution follows the directory structure as provided below with Diagram and explanation.

Linux Directory Structure

Each of the above directory (which is a file, at the first place) contains important information, required for booting to device drivers, configuration files, etc. Describing briefly the purpose of each directory, we are starting hierarchically.

1. /bin : All the executable binary programs (file) required during booting, repairing, files required to run into single-user-mode, and other important, basic commands viz., cat, du, df, tar, rpm, wc, history, etc.
2. /boot : Holds important files during boot-up process, including Linux Kernel.
3. /dev : Contains device files for all the hardware devices on the machine e.g., cdrom, cpu, etc
4. /etc : Contains Application’s configuration files, startup, shutdown, start, stop script for every individual program.
5. /home : Home directory of the users. Every time a new user is created, a directory in the name of user is created within home directory which contains other directories like Desktop, Downloads, Documents, etc.
6. /lib : The Lib directory contains kernel modules and shared library images required to boot the system and run commands in root file system.
7. /lost+found : This Directory is installed during installation of Linux, useful for recovering files which may be broken due to unexpected shut-down.
8. /media : Temporary mount directory is created for removable devices viz., media/cdrom.
9. /mnt : Temporary mount directory for mounting file system.
10. /opt : Optional is abbreviated as opt. Contains third party application software. Viz., Java, etc.
11. /proc : A virtual and pseudo file-system which contains information about running process with a particular Process-id aka pid.
12. /root : This is the home directory of root user and should never be confused with ‘/‘
13. /run : This directory is the only clean solution for early-runtime-dir problem.
14. /sbin : Contains binary executable programs, required by System Administrator, for Maintenance. Viz., iptables, fdisk, ifconfig, swapon, reboot, etc.
15. /srv : Service is abbreviated as ‘srv‘. This directory contains server specific and service related files.
16. /sys : Modern Linux distributions include a /sys directory as a virtual filesystem, which stores and allows modification of the devices connected to the system.
17. /tmp :System’s Temporary Directory, Accessible by users and root. Stores temporary files for user and system, till next boot.
18. /usr : Contains executable binaries, documentation, source code, libraries for second level program.
19. /var : Stands for variable. The contents of this file is expected to grow. This directory contains log, lock, spool, mail and temp files.

Exploring Important file, their location and their Usability

Linux is a complex system which requires a more complex and efficient way to start, stop, maintain and reboot a system unlike Windows. There is a well defined configuration files, binaries, man pages, info files, etc. for every process in Linux.

1. /boot/vmlinuz : The Linux Kernel file.
2. /dev/hda : Device file for the first IDE HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
3. /dev/hdc : Device file for the IDE Cdrom, commonly
4. /dev/null : A pseudo device, that don’t exist. Sometime garbage output is redirected to /dev/null, so that it gets lost, forever.
5. /etc/bashrc : Contains system defaults and aliases used by bash shell.
6. /etc/crontab : A shell script to run specified commands on a predefined time Interval.
7. /etc/exports : Information of the file system available on network.
8. /etc/fstab : Information of Disk Drive and their mount point.
9. /etc/group : Information of Security Group.
10. /etc/grub.conf : grub bootloader configuration file.
11. /etc/init.d : Service startup Script.
12. /etc/lilo.conf : lilo bootloader configuration file.
13. /etc/hosts : Information of Ip addresses and corresponding host names.
14. /etc/hosts.allow : List of hosts allowed to access services on the local machine.
15. /etc/host.deny : List of hosts denied to access services on the local machine.
16. /etc/inittab : INIT process and their interaction at various run level.
17. /etc/issue : Allows to edit the pre-login message.
18. /etc/modules.conf : Configuration files for system modules.
19. /etc/motd : motd stands for Message Of The Day, The Message users gets upon login.
20. /etc/mtab : Currently mounted blocks information.
21. /etc/passwd : Contains password of system users in a shadow file, a security implementation.
22. /etc/printcap : Printer Information
23. /etc/profile : Bash shell defaults
24. /etc/profile.d : Application script, executed after login.
25. /etc/rc.d : Information about run level specific script.
26. /etc/rc.d/init.d : Run Level Initialisation Script.
27. /etc/resolv.conf : Domain Name Servers (DNS) being used by System.
28. /etc/securetty : Terminal List, where root login is possible.
29. /etc/skel : Script that populates new user home directory.
30. /etc/termcap : An ASCII file that defines the behaviour of Terminal, console and printers.
31. /etc/X11 : Configuration files of X-window System.
32. /usr/bin : Normal user executable commands.
33. /usr/bin/X11 : Binaries of X windows System.
34. /usr/include : Contains include files used by ‘c‘ program.
35. /usr/share : Shared directories of man files, info files, etc.
36. /usr/lib : Library files which are required during program compilation.
37. /usr/sbin : Commands for Super User, for System Administration.
38. /proc/cpuinfo : CPU Information
39. /proc/filesystems : File-system Information being used currently.
40. /proc/interrupts : Information about the current interrupts being utilised currently.
41. /proc/ioports : Contains all the Input/Output addresses used by devices on the server.
42. /proc/meminfo : Memory Usages Information.
43. /proc/modules : Currently using kernel module.
44. /proc/mount : Mounted File-system Information.
45. /proc/stat : Detailed Statistics of the current System.
46. /proc/swaps : Swap File Information.
47. /version : Linux Version Information.
48. /var/log/lastlog : log of last boot process.
49. /var/log/messages : log of messages produced by syslog daemon at boot.
50. /var/log/wtmp : list login time and duration of each user on the system currently.

Source : http://www.tecmint.com