Installing Node in a linux grid server - node.js

So some background, I'm installing Node on a host server, but it's a grid server not a server that's solely for my website.
The grid server doesn't have a root user/ administrative powers. So to install node I found this workaround: http://iantearle.com/blog/media-temple-grid-and-nodejs . It's a Linux Grid server, I've never used Linux so if someone could explain to me what the commands mean, especially: ./configure --prefix=~/opt/
Lastly I followed the steps but when I try to run the node command in the server it says node:command not found - which is why I'm trying to understand the steps. Thanks

To explain the process:
Configure
The configure script is responsible for getting ready to build the software on your specific system. It makes sure all of the dependencies for the rest of the build and install process are available, and finds out whatever it needs to know to use those dependencies.
Unix programs are often written in C, so we’ll usually need a C compiler to build them. In these cases the configure script will establish that your system does indeed have a C compiler, and find out what it’s called and where to find it.
Make
Once configure has done its job, we can invoke make to build the software. This runs a series of tasks defined in a Makefile to build the finished program from its source code.
The tarball you download usually doesn’t include a finished Makefile. Instead it comes with a template called Makefile.in and the configure script produces a customised Makefile specific to your system.
3.Make Install
Now that the software is built and ready to run, the files can be copied to their final destinations. The make install command will copy the built program, and its libraries and documentation, to the correct locations.
--prefix=~/opt/ -> will set the build directory to /home/yourhome/opt directory.
Now if you didnt get errors while doing those 3 steps explained above make sure you did the following:
nano ~/.bash_profile
export PATH=~/opt/bin:${PATH}
nano is a text editor and you are opening .bash_profile file with it.
you need to add export PATH=~/opt/bin:${PATH} in that file and save it using ctrl+x
Then restart your terminal.
Specified github repository for nodejs is outdated. use the following link instead.
git clone https://github.com/nodejs/node.git
P.S node:command not found usually happens when the program is not installed correctly or it's executable isnt in your terminal's PATH variable.

Related

Compiling Linux Buildroot overrides local changes

I am working to enable the kexec support in my propriety Linux distribution and I would like to debug the kexec tools in user space. I am adding debug prints in the kexec.c that's located in buildroot/output/build/kexec-2.0.15/kexec/kexec.c, but if I do an incremental build with make, it doesn't look like the kexec binary has been updated. If I rebuild everything from scratch with make all, the source code kexec.c has been overridden and I don't see my changes. My guess is that every full build re-extracts the kexec package and that is why my changes are not taking affect.
How do I solve this issue?
Try to use "make kexec-rebuild".
If you only want to restart the build process of a package from its
compilation step, you can run make <package>-rebuild [...]. It will restart the compilation and installation of
the package, but not from scratch: it basically re-executes make and
make install inside the package, so it will only rebuild files that
changed.
[...]
Internally, Buildroot creates so-called stamp files to keep track of
which build steps have been completed for each package. They are
stored in the package build directory,
output/build/-/ and are named .stamp_.
The commands detailed above simply manipulate these stamp files to
force Buildroot to restart a specific set of steps of a package build
process.
(from the Buildroot manual, section Understanding how to rebuild packages -- I suggest you read the whole section)
Also, look at your build log. If you don't see a line like
>>> kexec 2.0.16 Building
then the kecxec package hasn't been (re)built.

Installing dependencies in configure script

I'm writing a program that requires LLVM, and thinking of using autotools to ship it on Linux, so from the user's viewpoint the process would look like the well-known ./configure && make && sudo make install.
With autotools, one normally relies on the system package manager to install dependencies. The problem is that, for whatever reason, this doesn't work with LLVM; on Ubuntu 14.04, apt-get thinks the latest version is 3.4, whereas a more recent version would actually be needed. Thus, I need to supply a script to download and build LLVM first (a local copy thereof, not interfering with any older version that might be on the system), a process which takes a few hours.
The most obvious place to put this process is at the start of configure. Is this considered normal and reasonable? Or is there a convention that configure should only contain the things autotools normally puts in it, and installing dependencies should be another script that the user runs first and separately? In the latter case, is there a convention regarding what that separate script should be called?
Don't install anything during configure. The scripts name is "configure" not "install-dependencies".
Write a configure check, and if llvm is missing, Give the user an explanation how to install it. If necessary provide a separate script to download llvm.
It is good practice to run configure (and make) as normal unprivileged user and not as root. So you may not even have permissions to install anything. You would have to check if "sudo" is installed, etc.
It may also happen that the system the user is installing has no network connectivity (firewall etc.), so your download will fail.

Set environmental vars and enable core dumps in autotools build

I am using Autotools for my current project. I'm using Ubuntu and Linux mint. With Autotools I can tell it to check a users's system to check for any required libraries my project needs in order to function properly. Now I would like to check if a user's system has enabled core dumps and if not, then execute the command ulimit -c unlimited to enable core dumps. How and where do I specify this?
Also, once the user has executed the make command to compile the source code, they execute sudo make install in order to move the binaries at /usr/local/bin/MYPROJECT. I want to add the location of my project's binaries into the path environmental variable, so that the user can execute any of the binaries in my project from a terminal without the need of typing the full path. How and where do I specify this in Autotools?
I'm thinking this is something I would add in the configure.ac file, but I haven't found any examples on how I can do this. Any help would be appreciated.
It sounds as if you basically misunderstand what installation of a software
package on Linux is about.
The job of autotools is to build a portable installation package of your
software. When I install your package, it does not become your decision
whether programs that crash will generate core dumps on my computer
when I run them. It does not become your decision what PATH I use to
invoke programs by unqualified name. These are my decisions or defaults
that I have accepted from my OS distribution.
If you execute ulimit -c unlimited, the command will in any case
only apply to the shell in which it is invoked. It doesn't
reconfigure the host system (!).
If you would like users to be able to invoke your program by unqualified
name, the normal procedure is make your package install it by default in the place,
/usr/local/bin, that unix-like OSes traditionally add to a
user's default PATH for finding locally installed programs. That is
where autotools will configure it to be installed, by default. Change it
only if you don't want your program to be in the user's default PATH.
And in any case, a user can decide where your software is installed by
passing --prefix=/path/of/my/choice to the ./configure command. Unless
you have some unavoidable reason not to, make your package installation
use the defaults that everybody expects and leave it up to the installing user
to change them.
Bottom line: You are asking how to do installation actions with autotools that
are not meant to be done with autotools, because they are not meant to be
done by package installations.

Run build script in Code::Blocks instead of building a target

Background:
I recently joined a software development company as an intern and am getting used to a new build system. The software is for an embedded system, and lets just say that all building and compiling is done on a buildbox. The building makes use of code generation using xml files, and then makes use of make files, spec files, and version files as well.
We develop on our own comps, (linux - mandriva distro) and build using the following methods:
ssh buildserver
use mount to mount drive on personal computer to the buildserver
set the environment using . ./set_env (may not be exactly that)
cd app_dir/obj (where makefile is)
make spec_clean
make spec_all
make clean
make
The Question:
I am a newbie to Code::Blocks and linux and was wondering how to set up a project file so that it can simply run a script file to execute these commands, instead of actually invoking the build process on my actual computer. Sort of like a pre-build script. I want to pair the execution of this script simply to Ctrl-F9 (build) and capture any output from the above commands in the build log window.
In other words, there is no build configuration or target that the project needs to worry about. I don't even need a compiler installed on my computer! I wish to set this up so that I can have the full features of an IDE.
Appreciate any suggestions!
put your script in a shell script file. E.g.,
#!/bin/sh
mount ... /mnt/path/buildserver
. ./set_env
cd app_dir/obj
make spec_clean
make spec_all
make clean
make
Say you name it as /path/to/my_build_script, then chmod 755 /path/to/my_build_script and invoke the following from your ssh client machine:
script -c ssh buildserver "path/to/my_build_script"
When finish, then check for the file typescript under current directory.
HTH

How do I deploy Node.js applications as a single executable file? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to make exe files from a node.js app?
(20 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Supposed I have written a Node.js application, and I now would like to distribute it. Of course, I want to make it easy for the user, hence I do not want him to install Node.js, run npm install and then manually type node app.js.
What I'd prefer was a single executable file, e.g. an .exe file on Windows.
How could I approach this?
I am aware of this thread, anyway this is only about Windows. How could I achieve this in a platform-independent manner? Any ideas? Best practices? ...?
The perfect solution was a "compiler" I can give a source folder to. The source folder contains the app itself in various .js files, the node_modules folder and some metadata, such as the package.json. The output should be binaries for various platforms, such as Windows, OS X and Linux.
Oh, and what's important: I do not want to make any changes to the source code, so calls to require with relative paths should still work, even if this relative path is now inside the packaged app.
Any ideas?
PS: I do not want the user to install Node.js independently, it should be included inside the executable as well.
Meanwhile I have found the (for me) perfect solution: nexe, which creates a single executable from a Node.js application including all of its modules.
It's the next best thing to an ideal solution.
First, we're talking about packaging a Node.js app for workshops, demos, etc. where it can be handy to have an app "just running" without the need for the end user to care about installation and dependencies.
You can try the following setup:
Get your apps source code
npm install all dependencies (via package.json) to the local node_modules directory. It is important to perform this step on each platform you want to support separately, in case of binary dependencies.
Copy the Node.js binary – node.exe on Windows, (probably) /usr/local/bin/node on OS X/Linux to your project's root folder. On OS X/Linux you can find the location of the Node.js binary with which node.
For Windows:
Create a self extracting archive, 7zip_extra supports a way to execute a command right after extraction, see: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/39048-how-to-make-a-7-zip-switchless-installer/.
For OS X/Linux:
You can use tools like makeself or unzipsfx (I don't know if this is compiled with CHEAP_SFX_AUTORUN defined by default).
These tools will extract the archive to a temporary directory, execute the given command (e.g. node app.js) and remove all files when finished.
Not to beat a dead horse, but the solution you're describing sounds a lot like Node-Webkit.
From the Git Page:
node-webkit is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js. You can write native apps in HTML and JavaScript with node-webkit. It also lets you call Node.js modules directly from the DOM and enables a new way of writing native applications with all Web technologies.
These instructions specifically detail the creation of a single file app that a user can execute, and this portion describes the external dependencies.
I'm not sure if it's the exact solution, but it seems pretty close.
Hope it helps!
JXcore will allow you to turn any nodejs application into a single executable, including all dependencies, in either Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X.
Here is a link to the installer:
https://github.com/jxcore/jxcore-release
And here is a link to how to set it up:
http://jxcore.com/turn-node-applications-into-executables/
It is very easy to use and I have tested it in both Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04.
FYI: JXcore is a fork of NodeJS so it is 100% NodeJS compatible, with some extra features.
In addition to nexe, browserify can be used to bundle up all your dependencies as a single .js file. This does not bundle the actual node executable, just handles the javascript side. It too does not handle native modules. The command line options for pure node compilation would be browserify --output bundle.js --bare --dg false input.js.
There are a number of steps you have to go through to create an installer and it varies for each Operating System. For Example:
on Mac OS X you need to create a .pkg, there are instructions on how to do that here: https://coolaj86.com/articles/how-to-create-an-osx-pkg-installer.html
on Ubuntu Linux you need to create a .deb, there are instruction on how to do that here: https://coolaj86.com/articles/how-to-create-a-debian-installer.html
on Microsoft Windows you need to create a .exe or .msi, there are instruction on how do that using the innosetup installer here: https://coolaj86.com/articles/how-to-create-an-innosetup-installer.html
You could create a git repo and setup a link to the node git repo as a dependency. Then any user who clones the repo could also install node.
#git submodule [--quiet] add [-b branch] [-f|--force]
git submodule add /var/Node-repo.git common
You could easily package a script up to automatically clone the git repo you have hosted somewhere and "install" from one that one script file.
#!/bin/sh
#clone git repo
git clone your-repo.git

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