CDash:Installation

Note: CDash is currently in beta, and no official documentation has been released yet, hopefully these unofficial notes are enough to get you started.

CDash is a LAMP application, running on Apache using PHP to access a MySQL database.

System Requirements

• Apache
• MySQL database (5.x and higher)
• PHP (5.0 recommended)
• XSL module for PHP
• cURL module for PHP (for site statistics)
• GD module for PHP (for regression tests)

Downloading CDash

Currently CDash is only available from the development Subversion repository. Either extract the code into your web server tree, or another directory which will later be copied to the web server:

cd /srv/www/htdocs
svn co https://www.kitware.com:8443/svn/CDash/trunk CDash

Note: If this fails ensure any firewall allows outgoing access to port 8443.

Configuration

The system configuration is stored in .../CDash/config.php, edit this with your favorite ASCII editor.

Database

If you are running the MySQL database on the same server as the Apache web server the defaults should work with no changes:

// Hostname of the MySQL database 
$CDASH_DB_HOST = 'localhost';

// Login for MySQL database access
$CDASH_DB_LOGIN = 'root';

// Password for MySQL database access
$CDASH_DB_PASS = ;

// Name of the MySQL database
$CDASH_DB_NAME = 'cdash';

If you have just installed MySQL don't forget to start it:

rcmysql start

Email

You should probably edit the default email addresses:

// Default from email
$CDASH_EMAILADMIN = 'admin@cdash.org';
$CDASH_EMAIL_FROM = 'admin@cdash.org';
$CDASH_EMAIL_REPLY = 'noreply@cdash.org';

Backup directory

The backup/log directory by default is placed in .../CDash/backup, this must be made writable by the account that you run Apache under (typically wwwrun), you can move the directory via:

// Backup directory
$CDASH_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = 'backup';

Google Maps

CDash can use Google maps to display the location of submission sites. CDash comes with Kitware's key code which won't work for your site's URL. Every site that uses Google maps requires its own Google maps key which you should obtain from Google (it's free), use this style URL when applying for a key:

http://mysite.org/CDash

Paste your newly obtained key in place of Kitware's:

$CDASH_GOOGLE_MAP_API_KEY['localhost'] = 'paste key here';

If your submission machines use private IP addresses you can add default location information, e.g. for all machines in the 192.x.x.x network (use http://maps.google.com to obtain your location):

$CDASH_DEFAULT_IP_LOCATIONS[] = array("IP" => "192.*","latitude" => "42.6612","longitude" => "-73.7689");

Sometimes site location are misreported (e.g. the ISP's location is used), you can override these:

$CDASH_DEFAULT_IP_LOCATIONS[] = array("IP" => "76.65.240.*","latitude" => "43.667","longitude" => "-79.417");

You'll probably want to replace the defaults that are present.

Note: If you use the 192.x.x.x address range ensure you update the location information before submitting from any machines in this subnet, as the location is stored in the database on first submission from a site (but can be subsequently edited from the admin web pages).

Google Analytics

CDash can use Google analytics to monitor site usage. CDash's main index.php contains a reference to a default Kitware Google analytics code:

$CDASH_DEFAULT_GOOGLE_ANALYTICS='UA-701656-6';

When you configure each project you will have the opportunity to set a per-project Google analytics code.

RSS directory

Ensure that the .../CDash/rss (and .../CDash/backup) directory is writable by the user account that Apache runs under (typically wwwrun).

Apache

Ensure that the /srv/www/htdocs/CDash tree is accessible, you may have to add the following to your /etc/apache2/conf.d directory:

cdash.conf:

<Directory /srv/www/htdocs/CDash>
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
</Directory>

You may need to restart Apache:

rcapache2 restart

Creating database

Access your website to start the install process:

http://mywebsite.com/CDash

The first step will confirm the host login and password for the database, the default admin account and password are also displayed, make a note of these as you'll need them later, as its easy to skip past this step missing them (you can always find them in .../CDash/sql/cdashdata.sql).

See Also

The CDash web site's brief install instructions