Norc on Dreamhost

Norc is a Task Management System that replaces Unix cron developed by Darrell Silver for use at Perpetually.com. Norc on Dreamhost gives you a basic template to get Norc up and running on Dreamhost.

To read more about Norc: http://github.com/darrellsilver/norc

Installation

The installation process involves a few steps. Before we get started, make sure you have shell access for your user. To check this, go to Users > Manage Users in your Dreamhost Web Panel.

Create a domain/subdomain on Dreamhost

First, you need to create a domain/subdomain for your installation to live.

• In your browser, go to https://panel.dreamhost.com and login
• Go to Domains > Manage Domains in the left navigation
• Click on Add New Domain / Sub-Domain
• Fill in the fields in the form:
  • Enter the domain you want your Norc installation to be in
  • Choose the username you want it to be under
  • Under Web Directory, it will have what you put in the Domain to Host field. However, you must add public after that. For example, if you wanted to host your Norc installation on norc.example.com, you need to put norc.example.com/public in the Web Directory field.
  • Then, click the checkbox next to Passeger (Ruby/Python apps only)
• Click on Fully host this domain

Clone repo and install

Login into Dreamhost and clone the repo.

$ ssh [email protected]
$ cd norc.example.com
$ git clone clone git://github.com/bdotdub/norc_dreamhost.git

Since Dreamhost's default Python version is Python 2.3, we have to convert all the executables to use Python 2.4 (newest Python available on Dreamhost). Because of this, I have created a helper script to convert the Python executable path in the files in bin.

Also, since the Norc codebase is a submodule of this repo, the helper script also does a init and update to load the Norc code.

./dh_install.sh

Setup Norc installation

Now that you have everything Dreamhost related setup, follow the instructions in norc/INSTALL.md.

$ less norc/INSTALL.md

You can skip the Start up Django development enviroment steps because it is handled i passenger_wsgi.py and Passenger itself.

Running Norc

Since Norc is running under Passenger, it should be up and running if you go to http://norc.example.com. However, whenever you make a change in passenger_wsgi.py or the Norc codebase, you'll have to restart it by running the following:

$ mkdir -p tmp
$ touch tmp/restart.txt

Running a Norc daemon

I believe Dreamhost may kill daemons at any time, so to have a daemon run, you may want to start a screen session and start it there

$ tmsd --region MY_REGION

Resources

• Norc
• Norc Install
• GNU Screen Manual

Dreamhost

• Python on Dreamhost
• Passenger WSGI
• MySQL