This section is dedicated to description of MENDELU environment, especially to the usage of Akela server.
You can use SSH - Secure Shell to transfer files and to actually execute commands on remote computer. Read technical support section where you can find more about required software, here is just a list:
The important address is akela.mendelu.cz
. Login and password is same as your UIS credentials.
Akela server is not suitable as serious application hosting because anybody can read your database credentials from source files. Static or database-less presentations are OK.
Each student has a profile folder on Akela server. Let’s say, that your surname is “Smith”, the university assigned you
with a login xsmith12
. Therefore your home folder on Akela server is /export/home/xsmith12
.
To create a public WWW presentation, you have to create a folder public_html
in your home folder. The final path is
/export/home/xsmith12/public_html
. Anything placed into this folder is public and is eventually crawled by Google.
To access your public presentation use this address: https://akela.mendelu.cz/~xsmith12/
The disadvantage is, that all uploaded files and folders are publicly visible. You have to configure Apache HTTP server
to hide folders and
disable access to .env
file.
Do not reject read access to this folder for other users of Akela server. It would block Apache HTTP server and your presentation would stop working.
You can create a subfolder called devel
in your public_html
folder. Devel folder is used for your development
purposes and is not accessible publicly from internet (you have to know your UIS password to access it).
The public HTTP path is https://akela.mendelu.cz/~xsmith12/devel/
You do not have to worry about .env
file inside this folder, nobody can open it using web browser.
It is possible to browse other users’ folders and files. You can block others by setting the read/write/execute
permissions using WinSCP/FileZilla or chmod
command.
There are actually two installed DB administration tools:
Current version of Adminer is a bit old and is updated irregularly. You can download your own copy of
Adminer and place it into your public_html
folder if you wish. Remember to select
PostgreSQL database type when logging in with Adminer.
There is network tunnel between Akela server and real database server – therefore the hostname of database server
is localhost
.
The database account is created separately when you start to study APV course and the password is NOT same as UIS password. The default password is disclosed to you by the teacher in the beginning of the course. Database login is same as your UIS login and also the name of your dedicated database.
Do not change the default password to UIS password because source files which contain the password are readable by your classmates and other Akela server users. Use unique password which you do not use anywhere else.
You can change database password with this SQL command: ALTER USER your_login WITH PASSWORD 'new_password'
The credentials and configurations are (for user xsmith12
with database password garfield
):
DB_TYPE=pgsql
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=xsmith12
DB_PASS=garfield
DB_NAME=xsmith12
The database name is same as your login.
This is currently impossible as Akela server has some problem with accessing HTTPs resources.
If you do not have Composer installed on your own PC (you also need to install PHP as command line script interpreter and it can be a bit difficult for beginners), you can execute Composer on Akela server:
composer.phar
file from their site in the “Manual Download” section.composer.json
and composer.lock
files are
located).ssh
command on Linux).cd
to access your project folder.php composer.phar install
or php composer.phar require lib
or whatever. You are actually telling PHP to
execute that phar file. Other options and switches are interpreted by Composer application.vendor
folder should be updated.The phar file extension stands for “PHP archive” and is actually a bundle of multiple PHP scripts executable with PHP interpreter. It means, that Composer itself is written in PHP.