Install BookStack on Fedora 27

JaredBusch

@fuznutz04 said in Install BookStack on Fedora 27:

@JaredBusch Just curious, where do you have this located for your internal documentation? On a VPS like Vultr, or do you have this in your own COLO somewhere? I want to deploy bookstack this weekend to check it out and am trying to decide where to put it.

Mine is in a colo. We have a server there, it would be silly not to use it.

Our PBX is on vultr, because that should not go down because I change something in the colo like a fucking genius (been there done that, got the tshirt).

But things like our Nextcloud, Wiki, UNMS, UniFi Controller, etc. those can reside on the colo more cost effectively. At least until I need to upgrade the hardware.

AdamF

@jaredbusch Good to know. Our PBX is Vultr as well, for the same reason. But in our office (not COLO) we host some internal stuff, and I have room for another VM as well. I'm debating on just hosting the wiki at the office, or putting it on Vultr. The downside of hosting at an office is that there are no redundancies for power or internet.

dafyre

@fuznutz04 said in Install BookStack on Fedora 27:

@jaredbusch Good to know. Our PBX is Vultr as well, for the same reason. But in our office (not COLO) we host some internal stuff, and I have room for another VM as well. I'm debating on just hosting the wiki at the office, or putting it on Vultr. The downside of hosting at an office is that there are no redundancies for power or internet.

That would only be a problem if you don't have the chapter named "What do do when the power goes out" saved as a PDF somewhere, lol.

AdamF

@JaredBusch I got this up and running. I like it so far. Then I attempted to use cert bot to secure it, and somehow screwed it up. I do not have a reverse proxy in front of bookstack. What else needs to be changed in the config files? I'm almost there, but the page is now displaying "The site cant provide a secure connection." wiki.mysite.com sent an invalid response.

So it's getting to the site, but something is off.

AdamF

@fuznutz04 OK Getting somewhere. Now getting the default Apache test page . So I'm getting to the server, but not getting to Bookstack.

black3dynamite

@fuznutz04 said in Install BookStack on Fedora 27:

@fuznutz04 OK Getting somewhere. Now getting the default Apache test page . So I'm getting to the server, but not getting to Bookstack.

https://mangolassi.it/topic/16471/install-bookstack-on-fedora-27/3

AdamF

Got it. I had the wrong path in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf file. I was pointing the document root to /var/www/html/bookstack instead of /var/www/html/bookstack/public.

Time for a drink.

AdamF

Spoke too soon. I was only able to get to the home page. Clicking anything else like Settings, or books, give mes:

Not Found
The requested URL /books was not found on this server.

JaredBusch

It is certainly a problem with the ssl.conf. Make sure the options match the bookstack.conf

JaredBusch

Also you have to update the .env file

AdamF

@jaredbusch said in Install BookStack on Fedora 27:

It is certainly a problem with the ssl.conf. Make sure the options match the bookstack.conf

My frustrations got in the way, and I forgot to put in the Directory lines.

<Directory /var/www/html/bookstack/public>
        Require all granted
        AllowOverride All
        #Options +Indexes
</Directory>

Good to go! Can't wait to start populating content in this to see how I really like it.

JaredBusch

Log file path in the bookstack.conf updated to keep SELinux happy.
Here is the fix if you have a problem after a reboot and followed these instructions originally prior to the date of this post.

https://mangolassi.it/topic/16587/fedora-update-breaks-httpd/12

Cherryman

Hi everyone,

i just registered here to say thank you for this awesome step-by-step tutorial!
I use bookstack in my virtualbox VM with NAT network settings and i just had to use "#" for "APP_URL" in order to use http://localhost inside of the VM.

One big problem i have is the maintenance. In order to backup the database i have to use the MariaDB root password, which somehow isn't the one i used to install bookstack. Whenever i try to change the root password my database gets wrecked so hard that i have to restore old snapshots in order to systemctl start mariadb again.

i stoped mariadb then used mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables & and then connected to mysql and changed the root password with SQL statements. After that the database is unusable.

Any idea?

scottalanmiller

@cherryman said in Install BookStack on Fedora 27:

Any idea?

When installing BookStack, you don't want to use the root account for it to run, that would be the underlying issue. You'll want to make a new user that is dedicated to BookStack, set it with its own password and give it access only to the BookStack database. Then once the app is talking to the database using that account, you are free to use that account as well to make your backups, to make a separate account for backups, or to use the root account for backups. But you'll want to make sure that root is not the one being used by the application.

Cherryman

@scottalanmiller
Thank you for clarifying.
Just following the tutorial from @JaredBusch there is already a dedicated database_user just for the application.
So there is no security issue for me. Luckily the Bookstack_db_user works when I try to export the database. It's just odd that the root password i used for mysql doesn't work at all. aslong as the bookstack DB_user is enough as DB_Backup then i am happy with it.

Thanks alot!

JaredBusch

@cherryman If you used the above, the first variable is the root password.

# Root password for MariaDB
export DB_ROOT_PASS='somesecurepassword'

That said, if you cannot get in with it, the bookstack user bs_user should also work to backup the bookstack database. The password for that user can be found in the .env file. It is generated randomly during install.

JaredBusch

@scottalanmiller He was not running the applicaiton with the root user. but trying to make a backup from the CLI.

JaredBusch

@cherryman you can reset your root password like this.

https://websiteforstudents.com/reset-mysql-mariadb-root-password/

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-reset-your-mysql-or-mariadb-root-password

Cherryman

Yes i used DB_ROOT_PASS for the root database password, but maybe i used some symbols which mysql didn't liked and switched them somehow.
I will follow the instructions on the websites you posted. They look a little different. Maybe they work.
Wish me luck Thanks for all the help!

scottalanmiller

@cherryman said in Install BookStack on Fedora 27:

Yes i used DB_ROOT_PASS for the root database password, but maybe i used some symbols which mysql didn't liked and switched them somehow.
I will follow the instructions on the websites you posted. They look a little different. Maybe they work.
Wish me luck Thanks for all the help!

For databases, I keep passwords to standard numbers and letters, avoiding symbols. Some databases don't like those things and they can get squirely.