James Fraser's picture

Hi Team, i am a new user to Turnkey, well i have been hovering for some time. I have an Amazon account, i also have a test instance of my static website uploaded and working in s3, i also have EC2 installed (all easy even for me) but need to install an application not in the Turnkey or Ubuntu repositories, namely phpgedview, a web based Genealogy app. I cant find any help on this either in the Turnkey pages, phpgedview pages, or the Amazon help pages even though there are zillions! As an addition, i wish to import several MySql databases for said app.

So people, where can i go to get help with all this? or am i there already?

What i do know is i have to install Lamp for MySql and php, but then what? Would Turnkey do all this for me, and what would it cost? I am trying to migrate from a Host that keeps screwing my resources back, leaving me with a site that often breaks, i cant go on like that! Hence Amazon and bigger resources.

James 

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Jeremy Davis's picture

I have just had a quick look and it seems that PhpGedView is Abandonware... The last time it was updated was some time ago (2011?) and I read reports that it doesn't support newer versions of php (TKL 12.x has 5.3.3, TKL v13.x will have 5.4.4) although that may be hearsay...

My brief research suggests that webtrees may be a better option... It was forked from PhpGedView in 2010 and has been under consistant development since. It has a demo that you can have a look at and it also claims that it can import phpGedView data. From a cusory glance it appears that installation is relatively straight forward and I would imagine that it would install on the TKL LAMP appliance ok.

As it is free open source software and is maintained it could be a good candidate for a TKL appliance...

I would love to offer to help you or do it for you but I don't have the time or energy to take on anything more at the moment. But if you run into any issues then please feel free to post back and I will see what I can do...

James Fraser's picture

Hi Jeremy, thanks for the reply and the time spent with some research for me. I think you are correct with PGV as abandonware, and as you say its last release was 2011, shame. I have looked at webtrees site and downloaded the .zip file and will install and play. Interestingly they have a wizard that can import PGV data files, and obviously not the media dirctory due to possible size. The demo looks like the first install of PGV, and as you say a direct fork of that project. I shall give it a go and report back sometime, but could be a long wait as i am also busy with repairing my website, and further research, also looking to migrate to aws, but the LAMP stack install is not obvious to me coming from a normal host. Could you point me to where i can get info on this please, the aws docs are so manyand a little confusing to me.

Regards, James

Jeremy Davis's picture

Then I would suggest that you download the TKL LAMP appliance and install to a VM (VirtualBox is a free one - read more about virtualisation if you want here, a dated but still relevant VirtualBox install tutorial is here). Then it won't cost you anything until you are ready to launch it. TKL has an awesome backup system called TKLBAM which will allow you to migrate your VM straight to AWS (once you have it all working as you need it to (note though that if you have a big media directory that will take quite a while to upload). 

As for documentation, to be honest, formal TKL docs are a bit scant... You may (or not) find some reading in the Docs section (under Help at the top of the page), but specifically this page might be a good place to start. Also if you keep in mind that TKL is a headless server OS based on Debian (v12.x is based on Squeeze, v13 will be based on Wheezy) you will find tons of info via google. It may seem intimidating at first and the learning curve can be quite steep, but once you get going it's incredibly powerful and you are totally in control! :)

If you get stuck just ask and I will do my best to help you out! Also the Docs are a wiki so if you find anything that is out of date and/or could be explained better feel free to update it.

James Fraser's picture

Thanks for the feedback again Jeremy, looks like i need to do some more research into aws before i jump too far, comming from a run of the mill hosting enviroment, aws feels very strange and a deep learning curve. But like all things new it takes a while to get the hang of things, and as my old head gets older things take longer to sink in, but i will get there! I will follow those links this weekend, at the moment i have a long list of things to do on the main website, and that takes front seat for me. Thanks again for the info.

James

Jeremy Davis's picture

AWS is basically VPS hosting as opposed to shared hosting (which it sounds like what you are used to...). So instead of having a 'control panel' that only allows you to access to settings relevant to your host (on your shared server) you basically have your own server (basically a cloud based VM). So yes there is definitely a learning curve (basically you'll need to learn how to maintain your own Linux server...).

So like I said, I'd download TKL and install to a VM and start having a play there. TKL does have a handy WebUI called Webmin (accessed via https://<appliance-ip-or-domain-name>:12321) which might help you get started...

Like I said though, feel free to post back with further questions...! Good luck! :)

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