From the sources

WARNING: we don't provide support for this installation method. We cannot guarantee anything if it's used in production. Use it at your own risk.

WARNING 2: It's impossible to predict the result of a build for any Node and NPM versions. Please consider using XOA before trying to play with the manual build, which can be difficult if you are not used to NodeJS and NPM.

Please take time to read this guide carefully.

This installation has been validated against a fresh Debian 8 (Jessie) x64 install. It should be nearly the same on other dpkg systems. For RPM based OS's, it should be close, as most of our dependencies come from NPM and not the OS itself.

As you may have seen,in other parts of the documentation, XO is composed of two parts: xo-server and xo-web. They can be installed separately, even on different machines, but for the sake of simplicity we will set them up together.

Packages and Pre-requisites

NodeJS

XO needs Node.js. Please always use the LTS version of Node.

We'll consider at this point that you've got a working node on your box. E.g:

$ node -v
v8.9.1

If not, see this page for instructions on how to install Node.

Yarn

Yarn is a package manager that offers more guarantees than npm.

See this page for instructions on how to install Yarn.

Packages

XO needs the following packages to be installed. Redis is used as a database by XO.

For example, on Debian:

apt-get install build-essential redis-server libpng-dev git python-minimal libvhdi-utils lvm2

Fetching the Code

You need to use the git source code manager to fetch the code. Ideally you should run XO as a non-root user, however if you don't run as root you will not be able to mount NFS remotes. As your chosen non-root (or root) user, run the following:

git clone -b master http://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra

Note: xo-server and xo-web have been migrated to the xen-orchestra mono-repository.

Installing dependencies

Once you have it, use yarn, as the non-root (or root) user owning the fetched code, to install the other dependencies. Enter the xen-orchestra directory and run the following commands:

$ yarn
$ yarn build

Now you have to create a config file for xo-server:

$ cd packages/xo-server
$ cp sample.config.yaml .xo-server.yaml

Edit and uncomment it to have the right path to serve xo-web, because xo-server embeds an HTTP server (we assume that xen-orchestra and xo-web are in the same directory). It's near the end of the file:

  mounts: '/': '../xo-web/dist/'

Note this dist folder will be created in the next step.

WARNING: YAML is very strict with indentation: use spaces for it, not tabs.

In this config file, you can also change default ports (80 and 443) for xo-server. If you are running the server as a non-root user, you will need to set the port to 1024 or higher.

You can try to start xo-server to see if it works. You should have something like this:

$ yarn start
WebServer listening on localhost:80
[INFO] Default user: "admin@admin.net" with password "admin"

Running XO

The only part you need to launch is xo-server which is quite easy to do. From the xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server directory, run the following:

$ yarn start

That's it! Use your browser to visit the xo-server IP address, and it works! :)

Updating

If you would like to update your current version, enter your xen-orchestra directory and run the following:

$ git pull --ff-only
$ yarn
$ yarn build

Then restart Xen Orchestra if it was running.

Always Running

• You can use forever to have the process always running:

yarn global add forever
# Run the below as the user owning XO
forever start bin/xo-server

• Or you can use forever-service to install XO as a system service, so it starts automatically at boot. Run the following as root:

yarn global add forever
yarn global add forever-service
# Be sure to edit the path below to where your install is located!
cd /home/username/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server/bin/
# Change the username below to the user owning XO
forever-service install orchestra -r username -s xo-server

The forever-service command above must be run in the xo-server bin directory. Now you can manage the service, and it will start on boot with the machine:

service orchestra start
service orchestra status

If you need to delete the service:

forever-service delete orchestra

Troubleshooting

If you have problems during the building phase, follow these steps in your xen-orchestra directory:

1. rm -rf node_modules
2. yarn
3. yarn build

FreeBSD

If you are using FreeBSD, you need to install these packages:

pkg install gmake redis python git npm node autoconf

You can update npm itself right now with a npm update -g

A few of the npm packages look for system binaries as part of their installation, and if missing will try to build it themselves. Installing these will save some time and allow for easier upgrades later:

pkg install jpeg-turbo optipng gifsicle

Because FreeBSD is shipped with CLANG and not GCC, you need to do this:

ln -s /usr/bin/clang++ /usr/local/bin/g++

To enable redis on boot, add this in your /etc/rc.conf:

redis_enable="YES"

Don't forget to start redis if you don't reboot now:

service redis start