Running a Tactic Server

This is some preliminary documentation for running your own Tactic server. I haven’t tried following these instruction myself, so it very well might not work. But this should get you started.

I have so far run Tactic on Linux and under OS X.

  1. Install and start a MongoDb server. I have a note to myself that says: “Have to edit mongodb.conf so that it listens on all interfaces (comment out the bindIp line).” But I didn’t do this when recently creating an installation under OS X.

  2. Install and start Docker.

  3. Get the source code from the Tactic repository on Github.

  4. Create and activate a python virtual environment inside the folder. I did something like this:

virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 tactic_env

(The -p option lets you select a the python interpreter to be used. You want 2.7.x)

After creating the virtual environment, you have to activate it:

source tactic_venv/bin/activate

  1. Download all of the dependencies. I have sometimes found that is it necessary to first run:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

in order to get the installation of gevent to work. In any case, run this next to install the requirements.

pip install -r requirements.txt

  1. Create all of the needed docker images by cding into the tactic_app folder and running:

docker-compose build

  1. There is no longer a step (6). Enjoy the added free time.

  2. Create a script for starting tactic. The terminal script that I use on my ubuntu linux computer looks like this:

cd ~/PycharmProjects/tactic
source tactic_venv/bin/activate
export USE_SSL=False
export STEP_SIZE=100
export PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
export USE_LOCAL_SERVER=True
export CHUNK_SIZE=200
export MAX_QUEUE_LENGTH=500
export ANYONE_CAN_REGISTER=True
export SHORT_SLEEP_PERIOD=.0001
export LONG_SLEEP_PERIOD=.1
~/PycharmProjects/tactic/tactic_venv/bin/gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:5000 -k geventwebsocket.gunicorn.workers.GeventWebSocketWorker tactic_run:app

You’ll have to edit the first and last lines so that they contain the correct paths for your own machine.

Also, on the mac, I add:

export USE_FORWARDER=True

  1. Execute this script. If you have lived a good life to this point, then the Tactic server will start. If it starts, but gives an error message or two, count your blessings and go on to step (9).

  2. Go to a browser and enter 0.0.0.0:5000. You should see the prompt to log in. Since there aren’t any user accounts, you can’t log in yet. So, click the “register’ button to create an account. The first thing you should do is to create an account with the username”admin.” That’s the administration account. The other special account is called “repository.” This is where the shared resources live. If you set ANYONE_CAN_REGISTER=False then the admin user can still create new accounts, but no one else can.

  3. One remaining problem is that the repository on your local machine isn’t populated. There’s no simple fix for this right now. The right fix might be to allow a local server to still use a remote repository. But that isn’t implemented.