Status of official Ubuntu packages for Etherpad

There are no Ubuntu packages for Etherpad available from the repositories yet. If you want to help package Etherpad in Ubuntu see:

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+bug/563484

This document describes how to install Etherpad from Etherpad.org's repositories or, if you are inclined to do so, building it from its source code and installing it.

Installing Etherpad from Etherpad.org's repository

Install Java, MySQL and Scala required packages

Install pre-requisite packages for getting and building Etherpad.

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk scala mysql-server mysql-client libmysql-java git-core

Etherpad will not build or run with openjdk-6-jdk or openjdk-6-jre. It also is best to use Sun's jar since fastjar seems to have some issues.

If you get this error:

Package sun-java6-jdk is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package sun-java6-jdk has no installation candidate

Checkout /etc/apt/sources.list and add this line if missing:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy multiverse

For Lucid you have to activate the partner repository

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner

Then

apt-get update

and try again.

It is necessary to ensure that the server's host name is in the /etc/hosts for the IP 127.0.0.1 . If this is not there you will have a compile time error like this :

"Unable to establish connection to compilation daemon

• Compilation failed."

Furthermore, it might be necessary to tell Ubuntu to switch from OpenJDK to Sun’s Java:

update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

Installing the Etherpad package

There is now an apt source that you can put in your /etc/apt/sources.list http://wiki.github.com/ether/pad/installation-instructions-ii

sudo echo "deb http://apt.etherpad.org all ." >> /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo echo "deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy multiverse" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Then do the following commands

$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install etherpad

You will get the following message.

$ apt-get install etherpad
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  etherpad
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/31.5MB of archives.
After this operation, 45.0MB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
  etherpad
Install these packages without verification [y/N]? 

Type Y because you trust the Etherpad foundation.

Now for some mysql magic. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/adding-users.html

First, you would check if this is necesary to do checking if the user etherpad already exists.

$mysql -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 205
Server version: 5.1.41-3ubuntu12.3 (Ubuntu)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE etherpad;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'etherpad'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'some_password_here' 
mysql> quit
Bye
$

Now the etherpad database is done. Give yourself a pat on the back. Now depending on the speed of box server you might want to get a drink right now. Or read http://xkcd.com/ while the code is compiling.

$cd /usr/share/etherpad
$bin/build.sh

In your favorite editor or nano

nano /etc/etherpad/etherpad.local.properties

Edit the line topdomains = <YOUR DOMAIN HERE>, Ubuntu,localhost,localhost.localdomain To include your Fully Qualified Domain Name(FQDN) of your box. then run

$sudo bin/run.sh

YAY You did it. Be the only kid on your block that has installed etherpad.

Installing Etherpad from source code

Please note this is not recommended for production systems and will not provide feature and security updates.

Build from source

If you want the latest an greatest from the etherpad foundation you have to use git. Don't worry git is super cool and easy.

$cd ~
$git clone git@github.com:ether/pad.git

You should now have a directory with the etherpad source!

Compiling Etherpad

From pad/:

$ bin/build.sh

Running Etherpad

$ bin/run.sh