[ckan-dev] fi.thedatahub.org installation - some help needed

Mon Jan 16 08:35:17 UTC 2012

> On 13 January 2012 03:05, Henri Ahti <henri.ahti at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> We are currently installing ckan to fi.thedatahub.org. We used package
>> installation on ubuntu 10.04 server according to these instructions:
>> http://readthedocs.org/docs/ckan/en/latest/install-from-package.html.
>> However, there seems to be extra '?id=None' -parameter that is appended  
>> to
>> some links, for example to 'Search' -link
>> (http://fi.thedatahub.org/dataset?id=None), and that of course screws up
>> the search (adds an extra unwanted search filter). There are several  
>> other
>> places, even when creating a new package. So, it seems that there is  
>> extra
>> get -parameter that is for whatever reason carried around. Do you have  
>> any
>> idea what might cause this and how to fix it?
>
> What causes this is Routes config (the url generation in Pylons). We
> have seen this before. What is happening here is that Pylons can
> operate in different modes and in the strict mode (which we are now
> use) it won't default any parameters which can have the affect of this
> ?id=None showing up. I have to say we thought this was completely
> eliminated (e.g. it does not happen on thedatahub.org) so surprised
> you are encountering it.
>
> How are you generating these links that get the id=None parameter? For
> example we are generating search link (which goes to /dataset) on the
> front page by doing:
>
> url_for(controller='package', action='index')

We have default out of the box install from package repository on ubuntu
10.04 that gives us problems with links having extra ?id=None parameter.
We don't have a custom theme for now. For example, each of the links at
layout_base menu have this extra parameter and they are generated as such:

   <span py:if="h.check_access('package_create')">
     ${h.nav_link(c, _('Add a dataset'), controller='package',  
action='new')}
   </span>
   ${h.nav_link(c, _('Search'), controller='package', action='index'
   , highlight_actions = 'new index')}
   ${h.nav_link(c, _('Groups'), controller='group', action='index')}
   ${h.nav_link(c, _('About'), controller='home', action='about')}

Also links to API contain ?id=None:

   <li>
     ${h.link_to(_('API'), h.url_for(controller='api', action='get_api'))}
   </li>
   <li>${h.link_to(_('API Docs'), 'http://wiki.ckan.net/API')}</li>

as well as login and register links:

   <a href="${h.url_for(controller='user',action='login')}">Login</a>
   <a href="${h.url_for(controller='user',action='register')}">Register</a>

Mostly that extra ?id=None parameter is harmless, I think, but when
going through that search link, it uses that ?id=None as a search facet.
That will of course screw up the search.
Can this be fixed with Routes config or is the issue more complicated?

>> Only thing that went 'wrong' in the installation was that we had to
>> initialize database after installation scripts failed to do it.
>
> Was that due to permissions?

Probably, or because of newer version of postgres. Unfortunately I didn't
copy the error message. But it was due to not being able to create database
for reason or another. We had 9.x version of postgres installed when I
tried the installation. After the db part of install failed, I installed
postgres version 8.4, made user account for ckan by hand and created a db
with owner being ckan. Then I ran init db script, and it worked.

>
>> Also, we need two extensions on our installation. Googleanalytics and
>> disqus. Googleanalytics seems to work at least somewhat (writes to log
>> after doing its things) after installing it like instructed in the
>> tutorial
>> (http://readthedocs.org/docs/ckan/en/latest/install-from-package.html)  
>> and
>> in the extension readme. But, we can't seem to get disqus working. Ckan
>> finds the extension, but it does seem to do nothing (does not write
>> anything to log). We have disqus account 'datahubsuomi' for
>> fi.thedatahub.org and ckan is configured to use extensions like so:
>> ckan.plugins = disqus googleanalytics
>> disqus.name = datahubsuomi
>>
>> Is there some further magic that is required or is there some  
>> compability
>> issue with newer ckan version/package install version or something else
>> that we should know?
>
> Hmmm, I believe that some changes with the default v1.5 theme may have
> caused some problems here. We'll take look asap (probably tomorrow)
> and get back with more detail.
>

According to David, disqus is not compatible with v.1.5 default theme, so  
we will
discuss what we will do with it (dump it or try to fix it).