nginx

Note

Please note that you must use Apache if you intend to use SSO using Shibboleth/SAML/ADFS. If that’s not the case because you do not use SSO at all or use e.g. OAuth, we recommend using nginx.

1. Install Packages

PostgreSQL and nginx are installed from their upstream repos to get much more recent versions.

apt install -y lsb-release wget gnupg
echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list
echo "deb http://nginx.org/packages/$(lsb_release -is | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')/ $(lsb_release -cs) nginx" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | apt-key add -
wget --quiet -O - https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key | apt-key add -
apt update
apt install -y --install-recommends postgresql-9.6 libpq-dev nginx python-dev python-virtualenv libxslt1-dev libxml2-dev libffi-dev libpcre3-dev libyaml-dev build-essential redis-server uwsgi uwsgi-plugin-python

If you use Debian, run this command:

apt install -y libjpeg62-turbo-dev

If you use Ubuntu, run this instead:

apt install -y libjpeg-turbo8-dev zlib1g-dev

Afterwards, make sure the services you just installed are running:

systemctl start postgresql.service redis-server.service

2. Create a Database

Let’s create a user and database for indico and enable the necessary Postgres extensions (which can only be done by the Postgres superuser).

su - postgres -c 'createuser indico'
su - postgres -c 'createdb -O indico indico'
su - postgres -c 'psql indico -c "CREATE EXTENSION unaccent; CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;"'

Warning

Do not forget to setup a cronjob that creates regular database backups once you start using Indico in production!

3. Configure uWSGI & nginx

The default uWSGI and nginx configuration files should work fine in most cases.

ln -s /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/indico.ini /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled/indico.ini
cat > /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/indico.ini <<'EOF'
[uwsgi]
uid = indico
gid = nginx
umask = 027

processes = 4
enable-threads = true
chmod-socket = 770
chown-socket = indico:nginx
socket = /opt/indico/web/uwsgi.sock
stats = /opt/indico/web/uwsgi-stats.sock
protocol = uwsgi

master = true
auto-procname = true
procname-prefix-spaced = indico
disable-logging = true

plugin = python
single-interpreter = true

touch-reload = /opt/indico/web/indico.wsgi
wsgi-file = /opt/indico/web/indico.wsgi
virtualenv = /opt/indico/.venv

vacuum = true
buffer-size = 20480
memory-report = true
max-requests = 2500
harakiri = 900
harakiri-verbose = true
reload-on-rss = 2048
evil-reload-on-rss = 8192
EOF

Note

Replace YOURHOSTNAME in the next file with the hostname on which your Indico instance should be available, e.g. indico.yourdomain.com

cat > /etc/nginx/conf.d/indico.conf <<'EOF'
server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name YOURHOSTNAME;
  return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

server {
  listen       *:443 ssl http2;
  listen       [::]:443 ssl http2 default ipv6only=on;
  server_name  YOURHOSTNAME;

  ssl on;

  ssl_certificate           /etc/ssl/indico/indico.crt;
  ssl_certificate_key       /etc/ssl/indico/indico.key;
  ssl_session_cache         shared:SSL:10m;
  ssl_session_timeout       5m;
  ssl_protocols             TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
  ssl_ciphers               ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

  access_log            /opt/indico/log/nginx/access.log combined;
  error_log             /opt/indico/log/nginx/error.log;

  if ($host != $server_name) {
    rewrite ^/(.*) https://$server_name/$1 permanent;
  }

  location /.xsf/indico/ {
    internal;
    alias /opt/indico/;
  }

  location ~ ^/(images|fonts)(.*)/(.+?)(__v[0-9a-f]+)?\.([^.]+)$ {
    alias /opt/indico/web/static/$1$2/$3.$5;
    access_log off;
  }

  location ~ ^/(css|dist|images|fonts)/(.*)$ {
    alias /opt/indico/web/static/$1/$2;
    access_log off;
  }

  location /robots.txt {
    alias /opt/indico/web/static/robots.txt;
    access_log off;
  }

  location / {
    root /var/empty/nginx;
    include /etc/nginx/uwsgi_params;
    uwsgi_pass unix:/opt/indico/web/uwsgi.sock;
    uwsgi_param UWSGI_SCHEME $scheme;
    uwsgi_read_timeout 15m;
    uwsgi_buffers 32 32k;
    uwsgi_busy_buffers_size 128k;
    uwsgi_hide_header X-Sendfile;
    client_max_body_size 1G;
  }
}
EOF

4. Create an SSL Certificate

First, create the folders for the certificate/key and set restrictive permissions on them:

mkdir /etc/ssl/indico
chown root:root /etc/ssl/indico/
chmod 700 /etc/ssl/indico

If you are just trying out Indico you can simply use a self-signed certificate (your browser will show a warning which you will have to confirm when accessing your Indico instance for the first time).

Note

Do not forget to replace YOURHOSTNAME with the same value you used above

openssl req -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -subj /CN=YOURHOSTNAME -keyout /etc/ssl/indico/indico.key -out /etc/ssl/indico/indico.crt

While a self-signed certificate works for testing, it is not suitable for a production system. You can either buy a certificate from any commercial certification authority or get a free one from Let’s Encrypt.

Note

There’s an optional step later in this guide to get a certificate from Let’s Encrypt. We can’t do it right now since the nginx config references a directory yet to be created, which prevents nginx from starting.

5. Install Indico

Celery runs as a background daemon. Add a systemd unit file for it:

cat > /etc/systemd/system/indico-celery.service <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Indico Celery
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/indico/.venv/bin/indico celery worker -B
Restart=always
SyslogIdentifier=indico-celery
User=indico
Group=nginx
UMask=0027
Type=simple
KillMode=mixed
TimeoutStopSec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload

Now create a user that will be used to run Indico and switch to it:

useradd -rm -g nginx -d /opt/indico -s /bin/bash indico
su - indico

You are now ready to install Indico:

Note

If you need to migrate from Indico 1.2, you must install Indico 2.0, regardless of what the latest Indico version is. If this is the case for you, replace the last command in the block below with pip install 'indico<2.1'

virtualenv ~/.venv
source ~/.venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip setuptools
pip install indico

6. Configure Indico

Once Indico is installed, you can run the configuration wizard. You can keep the defaults for most options, but make sure to use https://YOURHOSTNAME when prompted for the Indico URL. Also specify valid email addresses when asked and enter a valid SMTP server Indico can use to send emails. When asked for the default timezone make sure this is the main time zone used in your Indico instance.

indico setup wizard

Now finish setting up the directory structure and permissions:

mkdir ~/log/nginx
chmod go-rwx ~/* ~/.[^.]*
chmod 710 ~/ ~/archive ~/cache ~/log ~/tmp
chmod 750 ~/web ~/.venv
chmod g+w ~/log/nginx
echo -e "\nSTATIC_FILE_METHOD = ('xaccelredirect', {'/opt/indico': '/.xsf/indico'})" >> ~/etc/indico.conf

7. Create database schema

Finally, you can create the database schema and switch back to root:

indico db prepare
exit

8. Launch Indico

You can now start Indico and set it up to start automatically when the server is rebooted:

systemctl restart uwsgi.service nginx.service indico-celery.service
systemctl enable uwsgi.service nginx.service postgresql.service redis-server.service indico-celery.service

9. Optional: Get a Certificate from Let’s Encrypt

Note

You need to use at least Debian 9 (Stretch) to use certbot. If you are still using Debian 8 (Jessie), consider updating or install certbot from backports.

If you use Ubuntu, install the certbot PPA:

apt install -y software-properties-common
add-apt-repository -y ppa:certbot/certbot
apt update

To avoid ugly SSL warnings in your browsers, the easiest option is to get a free certificate from Let’s Encrypt. We also enable the cronjob to renew it automatically:

apt install -y python-certbot-nginx
certbot --nginx --rsa-key-size 4096 --no-redirect --staple-ocsp -d YOURHOSTNAME
rm -rf /etc/ssl/indico
systemctl start certbot.timer
systemctl enable certbot.timer

10. Create an Indico user

Access https://YOURHOSTNAME in your browser and follow the steps displayed there to create your initial user.

11. Install TeXLive

Follow the LaTeX install guide to install TeXLive so Indico can generate PDF files in various places.