Roundup

Administration Guide

What does Roundup install?

There’s two “installations” that we talk about when using Roundup:

  1. The installation of the software and its support files. This uses the standard Python mechanism called “distutils” and thus Roundup’s core code, executable scripts and support data files are installed in Python’s directories. On Windows, this is typically:

    Scripts

    <python dir>\scripts\...

    Core code

    <python dir>\lib\site-packages\roundup\...

    Support files

    <python dir>\share\roundup\...

    and on Unix-like systems (eg. Linux):

    Scripts

    <python root>/bin/...

    Core code

    <python root>/lib-<python version>/site-packages/roundup/...

    Support files

    <python root>/share/roundup/...

  2. The installation of a specific tracker. When invoking the roundup-admin “inst” (and “init”) commands, you’re creating a new Roundup tracker. This installs configuration files, HTML templates, detector code and a new database. You have complete control over where this stuff goes through both choosing your “tracker home” and the main -> database variable in the tracker’s config.ini.

Configuring Roundup’s Logging of Messages For Sysadmins

You may configure where Roundup logs messages in your tracker’s config.ini file. Roundup will use the standard Python (2.3+) logging implementation.

Configuration for standard “logging” module:
  • tracker configuration file specifies the location of a logging configration file as logging -> config
  • roundup-server specifies the location of a logging configuration file on the command line
Configuration for “BasicLogging” implementation:
  • tracker configuration file specifies the location of a log file logging -> filename
  • tracker configuration file specifies the level to log to as logging -> level
  • roundup-server specifies the location of a log file on the command line
  • roundup-server specifies the level to log to on the command line

(roundup-mailgw always logs to the tracker’s log file)

In both cases, if no logfile is specified then logging will simply be sent to sys.stderr with only logging of ERROR messages.

Configuring roundup-server

The basic configuration file is as follows (taken from the roundup-server.ini.example file in the “doc” directory):

[main]

# Host name of the Roundup web server instance.
# If left unconfigured (no 'host' setting) the default
# will be used.
# If empty, listen on all network interfaces.
# If you want to explicitly listen on all
# network interfaces, the address 0.0.0.0 is a more
# explicit way to achieve this, the use of an empty
# string for this purpose is deprecated and will go away
# in a future release.
# Default: localhost
host = localhost

# Port to listen on.
# Default: 8080
port = 8017

# Path to favicon.ico image file.  If unset, built-in favicon.ico is used.
# The path may be either absolute or relative
# to the directory containing this config file.
# Default: favicon.ico
favicon = favicon.ico

# User ID as which the server will answer requests.
# In order to use this option, the server must be run initially as root.
# Availability: Unix.
# Default:
user = roundup

# Group ID as which the server will answer requests.
# In order to use this option, the server must be run initially as root.
# Availability: Unix.
# Default:
group =

# don't fork (this overrides the pidfile mechanism)'
# Allowed values: yes, no
# Default: no
nodaemon = no

# Log client machine names instead of IP addresses (much slower)
# Allowed values: yes, no
# Default: no
log_hostnames = no

# File to which the server records the process id of the daemon.
# If this option is not set, the server will run in foreground
#
# The path may be either absolute or relative
# to the directory containing this config file.
# Default:
pidfile =

# Log file path.  If unset, log to stderr.
# The path may be either absolute or relative
# to the directory containing this config file.
# Default:
logfile =

# Set processing of each request in separate subprocess.
# Allowed values: debug, none, thread, fork.
# Default: fork
multiprocess = fork

# Tracker index template. If unset, built-in will be used.
# The path may be either absolute or relative
# to the directory containing this config file.
# Default:
template =

# Enable SSL support (requires pyopenssl)
# Allowed values: yes, no
# Default: no
ssl = no

# PEM file used for SSL. A temporary self-signed certificate
# will be used if left blank.
# The path may be either absolute or relative
# to the directory containing this config file.
# Default:
pem =

# Roundup trackers to serve.
# Each option in this section defines single Roundup tracker.
# Option name identifies the tracker and will appear in the URL.
# Option value is tracker home directory path.
# The path may be either absolute or relative
# to the directory containing this config file.
[trackers]

demo = /trackers/demo
sysadmin = /trackers/sysadmin

Additional notes for each keyword:

template
Specifies a template used for displaying the tracker index when multiple trackers are being used. It is processed by TAL and the variable “trackers” is available to the template and is a dict of all configured trackers.
ssl
Enables the use of SSL to secure the connection to the roundup-server. If you enable this, ensure that your tracker’s config.ini specifies an https URL.
pem
If specified, the SSL PEM file containing the private key and certificate. If not specified, roundup will generate a temporary, self-signed certificate for use.
trackers section
Each line denotes a mapping from a URL component to a tracker home. Make sure the name part doesn’t include any url-unsafe characters like spaces. Stick to alphanumeric characters and you’ll be ok.

To generate a config.ini in the current directory (note it will overwrite an existing file) from the roundup-server command line use:

roundup_server -p 8017  -u roundup --save-config  demo=/trackers/demo \
   sysadmin=/trackers/sysadmin

Configuring Compression

Roundup will compress HTTP responses to clients on the fly. Dynamic, on the fly, compression is enabled by default, to disable it set:

[web]
...
dynamic_compression = No

in the tracker’s config.ini. You should disable compression if your proxy (e.g. nginx or apache) or wsgi server (uwsgi) is configured to compress responses on the fly. The python standard library includes gzip support. For brotli or zstd you will need to install packges. See the installation documentation for details.

Some assets will not be compressed on the fly. Assets with mime types of “image/png” or “image/jpeg” will not be compressed. You can add mime types to the list by using interfaces.py as discussed in the customisation documentation. As an example adding:

from roundup.cgi.client import Client

Client.precompressed_mime_types.append('application/zip`)

to interfaces.py will prevent zip files from being compressed.

Any content less than 100 bytes in size will not be compressed (e.g errors messages, short json responses).

Zstd will be used if the client can understand it, followed by brotli then gzip encoding. Currently the preference order is hard coded into the server and not parsed using q values from the client’s Accept-Encoding header. This is an area for improvement.

In addition to dynamic compression, static files/assets accessed using @@file can be pre-compressed. This reduces CPU load on the server and reduces the time required to respond to the client. By default searching for pre-compressed files is disabled. To enable it set:

[web]
...
use_precompressed_files = Yes

in the tracker’s config.ini file. Then you can create a precompressed file and it will be served if the client is able to accept it. For a file .../@@file/library.js you can create:

tracker_home/html/library.js.gzip
tracker_home/html/library.js.br
tracker_home/html/library.js.zstd

which should be created by using (respectively):

gzip --keep --suffix .gzip library.js
brotli library.js
zstd library.js && mv library.js.zst library.js.zstd

see the man pages for options that control compression level. Note that some levels require additional memory on the client side, so you may not always want to use the highest compression available.

A pre-compressed file will not be used if its modified date is earlier than the uncompressed file. For example, if library.js.gzip is older (has earlier modification date) than library.js, library.js.gzip will be ignored. library.js will be served instead. library.js will be dynamically compressed on the fly and a warning message will be logged.

Precompressed files override dynamic compression. For example, assume the client can accept brotli and gzip. If there are no precompressed files, the data will be compressed dynamically (on the fly) using brotli. If there is a precompressed gzip file present the client will get the gzip version and not a brotli compressed version. This mechanism allows the admin to allow use of brotli and zstd for dynamic content, but not for static content.

Users and Security

Roundup holds its own user database which primarily contains a username, password and email address for the user. Roundup must have its own user listing, in order to maintain internal consistency of its data. It is a relatively simple exercise to update this listing on a regular basis, or on demand, so that it matches an external listing (eg. unix passwd file, LDAP, etc.)

Roundup identifies users in a number of ways:

  1. Through the web, users may be identified by either HTTP Basic Authentication or cookie authentication. If you are running the web server (roundup-server) through another HTTP server (eg. apache or IIS) then that server may require HTTP Basic Authentication, and it will pass the REMOTE_USER variable (or variable defined using http_auth_header) through to Roundup. If this variable is not present, then Roundup defaults to using its own cookie-based login mechanism.
  2. In email messages handled by roundup-mailgw, users are identified by the From address in the message.

In both cases, Roundup’s behaviour when dealing with unknown users is controlled by Permissions defined in the “SECURITY SETTINGS” section of the tracker’s schema.py module:

Web Registration
If granted to the Anonymous Role, then anonymous users will be able to register through the web.
Email Registration
If granted to the Anonymous Role, then email messages from unknown users will result in those users being registered with the tracker.

More information about how to customise your tracker’s security settings may be found in the customisation documentation.

Configuring Authentication Header/Variable

The front end server running roundup can perform the user authentication. It pass the authenticated username to the backend in a variable. By default roundup looks for the REMOTE_USER variable This can be changed by setting the parameter http_auth_header in the [web] section of the tracker’s config.ini file. If the value is unset (the default) the REMOTE_USER variable is used.

If you are running roundup using roundup-server behind a proxy that authenticates the user you need to configure roundup-server to pass the proper header to the tracker. By default roundup-server looks for the REMOTE_USER header for the authenticated user. You can copy an arbitrary header variable to the tracker using the -I option to roundup-server (or the equivalent option in the roundup-server config file).

For example to use the uid_variable header, two configuration changes are needed: First configure roundup-server to pass the header to the tracker using:

roundup-server -I uid_variable ....

note that the header is passed exactly as supplied by the upstream server. It is not prefixed with HTTP_ like other headers since you are explicitly whitelisting the header. Multiple comma separated headers can be passed to the -I option. These could be used in a detector or other tracker extensions, but only one header can be used by the tracker as an authentication header.

To make the tracker honor the new variable changing the tracker config.ini to read:

[web]
...
http_auth_header = uid_variable

At the time this is written, support is experimental. If you use it you should notify the roundup maintainers using the roundup-users mailing list.

Tasks

Maintenance of Roundup can involve one of the following:

  1. tracker backup
  2. software upgrade
  3. migrating backends
  4. moving a tracker
  5. migrating from other software
  6. adding a user from the command-line

Tracker Backup

The roundup-admin import and export commands are not recommended for performing backup.

Optionally stop the web and email frontends and to copy the contents of the tracker home directory to some other place using standard backup tools. This means using pg_dump to take a snapshot of your Postgres backend database, for example. A simple copy of the tracker home (and files storage area if you’ve configured it to be elsewhere) will then complete the backup.

Software Upgrade

Always make a backup of your tracker before upgrading software. Steps you may take:

  1. Install pytest and ensure that the unit tests run on your system (using your preferred python version):

    pip2 install pytest
    python2 -m pytest test/
    
    
    pip3 install pytest
    python3 -m pytest test/
    
  2. If you’re using an RDBMS backend, make a backup of its contents now.

  3. Make a backup of the tracker home itself.

  4. Stop the tracker web and email frontends.

  5. Install the new version of the software:

    python setup.py install
    
  6. Follow the steps in the upgrading documentation for the new version of the software in the copied.

    Usually you will be asked to run roundup_admin migrate on your tracker before you allow users to start accessing the tracker.

    It’s safe to run this even if it’s not required, so just get into the habit.

  7. Restart your tracker web and email frontends.

If something bad happens, you may reinstate your backup of the tracker and reinstall the older version of the sofware using the same install command:

python setup.py install

Migrating Backends

  1. Stop the existing tracker web and email frontends (preventing changes).

  2. Use the roundup-admin tool “export” command to export the contents of your tracker to disk. (If you are running on windows see issue1441336 on how to use the command line rather than interactive mode to export data.)

  3. Copy the tracker home to a new directory.

  4. Delete the “db” directory from the new directory.

  5. Set the value of the backend key under the [database] section of the tracker’s config.ini file.

  6. Use the roundup-admin “import” command to import the previous export with the new tracker home. If non-interactively:

    roundup-admin -i <tracker home> import <tracker export dir>
    

    If interactively, enter ‘commit’ before exiting.

  7. Test each of the admin tool, web interface and mail gateway using the new backend.

  8. Move the old tracker home out of the way (rename to “tracker.old”) and move the new tracker home into its place.

  9. Restart web and email frontends.

Moving a Tracker

If you’re moving the tracker to a similar machine, you should:

  1. install Roundup on the new machine and test that it works there,
  2. stop the existing tracker web and email frontends (preventing changes),
  3. copy the tracker home directory over to the new machine, and
  4. start the tracker web and email frontends on the new machine.

Most of the backends are actually portable across platforms (ie. from Unix to Windows to Mac). If this isn’t the case (ie. the tracker doesn’t work when moved using the above steps) then you’ll need to:

  1. install Roundup on the new machine and test that it works there,
  2. stop the existing tracker web and email frontends (preventing changes),
  3. use the roundup-admin tool “export” command to export the contents of the existing tracker,
  4. copy the export to the new machine,
  5. use the roundup-admin “import” command to import the tracker on the new machine, and
  6. start the tracker web and email frontends on the new machine.

Migrating From Other Software

You have a couple of choices. You can either use a CSV import into Roundup, or you can write a simple Python script which uses the Roundup API directly. The latter is almost always simpler – see the “scripts” directory in the Roundup source for some example uses of the API.

“roundup-admin import” will import data into your tracker from a directory containing files with the following format:

  • one colon-separated-values file per Class with columns for each property, named <classname>.csv

  • one colon-separated-values file per Class with journal information, named <classname>-journals.csv (this is required, even if it’s empty)

  • if the Class is a FileClass, you may have the “content” property stored in separate files from the csv files. This goes in a directory structure:

    <classname>-files/<N>/<designator>
    

    where <designator> is the item’s <classname><id> combination. The <N> value is int(<id> / 1000).

Adding A User From The Command-Line

The roundup-admin program can create any data you wish to in the database. To create a new user, use:

roundup-admin create user

To figure out what good values might be for some of the fields (eg. Roles) you can just display another user:

roundup-admin list user

(or if you know their username, and it happens to be “richard”):

roundup-admin filter user username=richard

then using the user id (e.g. 5) you get from one of the above commands, you may display the user’s details:

roundup-admin display <designator>

where designator is user5.

Running the Servers

Unix

On Unix systems, use the scripts/server-ctl script to control the roundup-server server. Copy it somewhere and edit the variables at the top to reflect your specific installation.

If you use systemd look at scripts/systemd.gunicorn. It is configured for a wsgi deployment using gunicorn, but may be a good starting point for your setup.

Windows

On Windows, the roundup-server program runs as a Windows Service, and therefore may be controlled through the Services control panel. Note that you must install the pywin32 package to allow roundup to run as a service. The roundup-server program may also control the service directly:

install the service
roundup-server -C /path/to/my/roundup-server.ini -c install
start the service
roundup-server -c start
stop the service
roundup-server -c stop

To bring up the services panel:

Windows 2000 and later
Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services
Windows NT4
Start/Control Panel/Services

You will need a server configuration file (as described in Configuring roundup-server) for specifying tracker homes and other roundup-server configuration. Specify the name of this file using the -C switch when installing the service.

Running the Mail Gateway Script

The mail gateway script should be scheduled to run regularly on your Windows server. Normally this will result in a window popping up. The solution to this is to:

  1. Create a new local account on the Roundup server
  2. Set the scheduled task to run in the context of this user instead of your normal login

Using roundup-admin

Part of the installation includes a man page for roundup-admin. Ypu should be able to read it using man roundup-admin. As shown above, it is a generic tool for manipulating the underlying database for you tracker.

Examples above show how to use it to:

  • install and initialize a new tracker
  • export/import tracker data for migrating between backends
  • creating a new user fom the command line
  • list/find users in the tracker

A brief (incomplete) summary is:

roundup-admin help
roundup-admin -i <tracker_dir> get [-list] designator[, designator,...] propname
roundup-admin -i <tracker_dir> set designator[, designator,...] propname=value ...
roundup-admin -i <tracker_dir> find [-list] classname propname=value ...

Run roundup-admin help commands for a complete list of subcommands.