Migrating indico 1.2 to 2.0, non root URL upgrade

1

Our original installation was made with indico 1.2.1, and has been working quite well for a bit less than two years. That installation was configured to work on its own folder instead of on the html document root of the server. I’m aware that indico documentation strongly recommends against that, but it was necessary because of the way our system works: we have Indico installed in its own virtual server, and the main institution server allows access to the Indico pages through a ProxyPass, ProxyPassReverse set of instructions:

ProxyPass /indico https://indico.virtual.server/indico
ProxyPassReverse /indico https://indico.virtual.server/indico

Both our experience and some question threads, like this one:

(1) https://serverfault.com/questions/561892/how-to-handle-relative-urls-correctly-with-a-reverse-proxy

tells us that this kind of proxy configuration cannot be used on the root html document directory when the internal links are absolute, as seems to be the case with indico, so trying to install indico on the root html directory of the indico virtual server and using this proxy configuration:

ProxyPass /indico https://indico.virtual.server
ProxyPassReverse /indico https://indico.virtual.server

didn’t work at all (the local installation of indico did work, but the proxy didn’t), so we had to install indico in its individual folder and use the former proxy configuration. As I’ve already mentioned, this has been working for a bit less than two years.

I’d like to mention that the link (1) suggests some additional alternatives, but none of them seems to be feasible: we cannot change the internal indico links to relative links (“One”), some of the internal first level folder links interfere with other links on the main server, so they can not be redirected individually (“Three”), and we cannot change the name of the virtual host (“Four”). As far as I know, “Five” doesn’t apply.

Now I’m trying to migrate indico 1.2.1 to indico 2.0 and, when installing indico, again in its own folder, following these instructions:

https://docs.getindico.io/en/latest/installation/production/debian/apache/#deb-apache-pkg

but making some changes to the configuration files:

  1. /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/indico.ini

is changed to:

[uwsgi]
uid = indico
gid = www-data
umask = 027

processes = 4
enable-threads = true
socket = 127.0.0.1:8008
stats = /opt/indico/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/indico/web/indico.wsgi  
wsgi-file = /opt/indico/indico/web/indico.wsgi  
virtualenv = /opt/indico/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

  1. /etc/apache2/sites-available/indico.conf

    <VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName indico.virtual.server
    DocumentRoot “/var/empty/apache”

     SSLEngine             on
 SSLCertificateFile    /etc/apache2/ssl/indico.crt
 SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/indico.key
 SSLProtocol           all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
 SSLCipherSuite        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
 SSLHonorCipherOrder   on

 XSendFile on
 XSendFilePath /opt/indico/indico 
 CustomLog /opt/indico/indico/log/apache/access.log combined
 ErrorLog /opt/indico/indico/log/apache/error.log
 LogLevel error
 ServerSignature Off

 AliasMatch "^/indico/static/assets/(core|(?:plugin|theme)-[^/]+)/(.*)$" "/opt/indico/indico/assets/$1/$2" 
 AliasMatch "^/indico/(images|fonts)(.*)/(.+?)(__v[0-9a-f]+)?\.([^.]+)$" "/opt/indico/indico/web/static/$1$2/$3.$5"
 AliasMatch "^/indico/(css|dist|images|fonts)/(.*)$" "/opt/indico/indico/web/static/$1/$2" 
 Alias /robots.txt /opt/indico/indico/web/htdocs/robots.txt <<<<

 SetEnv UWSGI_SCHEME https
 ProxyPass / uwsgi://127.0.0.1:8008/

 <Directory /opt/indico>
     AllowOverride None
     Require all granted
 </Directory>

  2. /etc/systemd/system/indico-celery.service

     [Unit]
 Description=Indico Celery
 After=network.target

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

 [Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

and creating the user “indico” like this:

useradd -rm -g www-data -d /opt/indico/indico -s /bin/bash indico

Moreover, the older indico installation has been copied to “/opt/indico-legacy” and when the wizard asks about that, that directory has been selected. The base url is given as “https://indico.virtual.server/indico” (that was the same in the older installation), so the final “indico.conf” file is:

# General settings
SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = 'postgresql:///indico'
SECRET_KEY = ''
BASE_URL = 'https://indico.virtual.server/indico'
CELERY_BROKER = 'redis://127.0.0.1:6379/0'
REDIS_CACHE_URL = 'redis://127.0.0.1:6379/1'
CACHE_BACKEND = 'redis'
DEFAULT_TIMEZONE = 'UTC'
DEFAULT_LOCALE = 'en_GB'
ENABLE_ROOMBOOKING = False
CACHE_DIR = '/opt/indico/indico/cache'
TEMP_DIR = '/opt/indico/indico/tmp'
LOG_DIR = '/opt/indico/indico/log'
ASSETS_DIR = '/opt/indico/indico/assets'
STORAGE_BACKENDS = {'default': 'fs:/opt/indico/indico/archive', 'legacy': 'fs-readonly:/opt/indico-legacy'}
ATTACHMENT_STORAGE = 'default'
ROUTE_OLD_URLS = True

# Email settings
SMTP_SERVER = ('127.0.0.1', 25)
SMTP_USE_TLS = False
SMTP_LOGIN = ''
SMTP_PASSWORD = ''
SUPPORT_EMAIL = 'indico@ice.csic.es'
PUBLIC_SUPPORT_EMAIL = 'indico@ice.csic.es'
NO_REPLY_EMAIL = 'noreply@ice.csic.es'

STATIC_FILE_METHOD = 'xsendfile'

I’m finding the following problems:

  1. Accessing (from the virtual server, using lynx, so no proxy involved yet) https://indico.virtual.server/indico I get a 404 error, an error about “Bad HTML”, and then this page:
    [logo_indico_bw.png]
    Choose Timezone
    (*) Use the event/category timezone
    ( ) Specify a timezone
    [UTC___________________________]
    (BUTTON) Save
    UTC English
    * English
    * Español
    * Français

    Login
Home Create event
  * Create lecture
  * Create meeting
  * Create conference

    Not Found

    The page you are looking for doesn't exist.
Go to the main page

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if I follow the link to “Go to the main page”, it points to https://indico.virtual.server (no “/indico”), and I obtain the same “bootstrap” page that I would obtain if installing in “/opt/indico”. So at least, both this “bootstrap” page and its link seem to be ignoring all the changes I’ve made. My guess is that I missed some configuration option at some point, but I cannot find where that may be.

  1. I’m not sure if this is an error, but even if I install in /opt/indico (no subfolders), opening “https://indico.virtual.server” shows the bootstrap page (no errors this time). Yet, since it’s an upgrade, I would expect it to use the users and configuration of the old server instead of asking me to create a new one.

Regards,

Josep Guerrero
ICE