Administration Guide

Site administrators have access to all functionality of the Web interface. For example, site administrators can update and delete all registered accounts. Site administrators are also able to act as project administrator for all projects without actually being a member of any project. Site administrators can also access the administration section of the Web interface (Admin).

System administrators have access to the system installation and are able to administer most aspects of a KForge service easily via the command line. KForge is installed and setup from the command line. The KForge configuration file is editable from the command line, hence many system settings cannot be adjusted through the Web interface.

When returning to administer a KForge site from the command line, please remember to activate the site’s virtualenv, and set the KForge environment variable KFORGE_SETTINGS.

$ source $HOME/software/$RELEASE/bin/activate
$ export KFORGE_SETTINGS=$HOME/settings/$SERVICE/kforge.conf

Create or Upgrade Site

For information about creating and upgrading KForge sites, please see the Install Guide.

Change Site Settings

With your editor, open the KForge configuration file.

$ editor $KFORGE_SETTINGS

Optional settings are mostly well documented within the configuration file (more detailed documentation is forthcoming).

After making changes to the file, reload Apache.

$ kforge-admin apacheconfig reload

Enable Plugins

Site administrators can adjust the types of project services and other functionality that is available on a KForge site by enabling and disabling the plugins which are available.

Since KForge plugins often depend on other programs that will be installed and configured from the command line, it is recommended to enable KForge plugins from the command line so that any dependencies can be checked and resolved.

Some plugins, such as ‘git’, provide functionality for project services. Other plugins, such as ‘ssh’, optionally enhance core and project service functionality.

Project administrators can only create new project services with enabled plugins. Disabling a service plugin which has been used to create project services is not possible until those services have been deleted.

You can see which plugins are available by running the ‘plugin available’ command.

$ kforge-admin plugin available

You can see which plugins are enabled by running the ‘plugin enabled’ command.

$ kforge-admin plugin enabled

The recommended way to enable and disable plugins is the kforge-admin plugin command, which checks the plugin settings and dependencies before the plugin is enabled.

$ kforge-admin help plugin

For each plugin you wish to use, read the ‘plugin doc’, then ‘plugin enable’ the plugin, and then ‘plugin show’ its status. You won’t be able to enable a plugin if its dependencies aren’t available on your system.

To create a plugin object via the Web interface, go to the Plugin Model Administration page (Admin >> Model >> Plugin).

Press the ‘Create Plugin’ button. Complete and submit the form.

The plugin will be enabled immediately. However, if there are problems with the plugin’s settings or dependencies, then a form error will be shown and the plugin will not be enabled.

Create Administrators

Any registered user can be made into a site administrator by setting their personal role to ‘Administrator’.

To promote a user to a site administrator, when logged into the Web interface as a site administrator, go to the ‘Person’ register in the model administration section (Admin >> Model >> Person).

Select the registered Person to be promoted to a site administrator.

Press the ‘Update Person’ button.

Change the ‘role’ to ‘Administrator’ and submit the form.

The selected user will immediately have access to all functionality of the Web interface.

Adjust Model

Site administrators may wish to adjust the objects of the domain model directly.

When logged in as a site administrator, go to the Model page (Admin >> Model).

Select the type of object you want to adjust. Either create a new object, read an existing object, update an existing object, or delete an existing object.

The changes will be effective immediately.

Please note, from the command line it is also possible to invoke a Python shell and directly manipulate the KForge domain model as Python objects.

For example, to change the role of a user:

$ kforge-admin shell
>>> from kforge.soleInstance import application
>>> person = application.registry.persons['anna']
>>> person.role = application.registry.roles['Administrator']
>>> person.save()

Alternatively, to enable a plugin:

$ kforge-admin shell
>>> from kforge.soleInstance import application
>>> application.registry.plugins.create('ssh')

Change Themes

The KForge Web user interface theme is defined by:

• the CSS and images in the media directory (config file: ‘media_dir’)
• the HTML in the templates directory (config file: ‘templates_dir’)

If you want to create a new theme you should:

1. Create new media and template directories (probaby best done by copying the existing directories).
2. Edit the necessary files (to understand how the templates work please read up on Django templates: http://www.djangoproject.com/).
3. Adjust your KForge configuration file to use your new directories.
4. Regenerate the Apache configuration file and reload apache.

For example:

• If you wanted to change the colours, use Firebug and adjust .css files.
• If you wanted to change the text on the front page of the site edit snippets/introduction.html, snippets/sitesummary.html, and snippets/userlinks.html in the base template directory.
• If you wish to change the basic look and feel of all pages you start by editing master.html in the base template directory.

KForge can also be backed up and upgraded from the command line.