Warden installation

Update monitoring dashboard software from Deeson

How it works

1. Install the Warden server dashboard application (Symfony)
2. Install and enable the Warden module on the Drupal website(s) you would like to monitor

Once the Warden Drupal module has registered each site, it will appear as ‘pending’ on the list of sites in the Warden server dashboard.

In order for the Warden server dashboard application to retrieve the information from each website and the latest update information from Drupal.org a bash script needs to be run regularly on the server with cron.

Warden server application

Before installing Warden make sure the server has the following:

• A web server (eg. nginx or Apache)
• PHP
• Mongodb
• Composer

Web server

Warden can be installed on both nginx or Apache. Both will just need fairly standard configuration in order to get a Symfony application running.

PHP

Install PHP 7.1 or 7.2. You are also prompted to install lots of PHP packages as you go along using something like apt Package Manager.

Composer

Warden is built using Symfony2 which uses Composer to manage its dependencies. Install Composer locally or globally on the server.

curl -s http://getcomposer.org/installer | php

MongoDb

Up-to-date instructions on the Warden Github Readme.

Installing Warden server application

1. Get a copy of the latest stable release (currently tagged 1.4.0 at the time of writing) Warden server files on Github.

Example:

git clone https://github.com/teamdeeson/warden.git --branch 1.4.0

Replace 1.4.0 with the tag of the latest stable release.

2. In the cloned directory run

composer install

3. Add installation parameters when prompted

The installation process should complete with a prompt for you to enter parameters for your install. If you leave them blank they will assume their default values (given in brackets in yellow). You will need your security token later to connect your Drupal websites to the server application dashboard.

Details about the basic installation parameters can be found in the README.md file.

4. Finally you will be asked to create the admin user you will use to log into the main Warden dashboard in your browser.

5. Point your URL: The Virtual Host/Server Block will need to point to the web folder within the Warden server application directory.

6. Once these steps are complete you should be able to browse to your dashboard (at whatever URL you chose in the previous step) and log in using the credentials created on installation.

Warden Drupal module

Installing the Warden module

The Warden Drupal module can be downloaded and installed/enabled as usual.

Using drush with Warden

The module directory contains a file called warden.drush.inc file which provides the following drush commands:

Drupal 7:

drush warden-check-connection

Drupal 8:

drush warden-check

This tests the connection between the Drupal website and Warden by getting the public key.

drush warden-update

This updates the Warden server with the latest data from the Drupal website.

drush warden-show-module-data

This displays the module data that will be sent to Warden.

Configuring the website

Once the Warden module is installed and enabled, go to the sites/default/settings.php file and add the configuration options.

A full list of the configuration options (and default values) which are available can be found in the module Readme file.

An example of the very bare minimum configuration necessary is below. It tells the website where the Warden dashboard is, allows the dashboard to request information from the website and points to where modules are installed:

For Drupal 7

$conf[‘warden_server_host_path’] = ‘https://yourwardendashboardurl.com’;

$conf[‘warden_allow_requests’] = TRUE;

$conf['warden_preg_match_contrib'] = '{^sites\/([A-z,\.,\-]+)\/modules\/*}';

For Drupal 8

$config['warden.settings']['warden_server_host_path'] = 'https://yourwardendashboardurl.com';

$config['warden.settings'][‘warden_allow_requests’] = 'https://yourwardendashboardurl.com';

$config['warden.settings']['warden_preg_match_contrib'] = '{^modules\/contrib\/*}';

The 'warden_preg_match_contrib' is a regular expression which should point to the directory where your contrib modules are kept (eg. /sites/all/modules/contrib or modules/contrib).

You might need to add more configuration options - for example the IP address of the warden server which is allowed to request callback information from the website, or an HTTP authentication username and password.

Once these configurations have been added flush the Drupal cache.

Connecting the website with the server dashboard

Visit /admin/config/system/warden and press the ‘add this site to your Warden dashboard’ button which will connect the website to the Warden dashboard. The websites should now appear in the websites list on the dashboard as ‘pending’.

Configuring the cron job

To test the bash script you can run the cron.sh file manually from your terminal:

./scripts/cron.sh @dev

You will be in the @dev environment by default but you could alternatively specify @prod or @test if you want to update different environments.

Example crontab running every day, checking for new sites hourly:

01 16 * * * /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html/scripts/cron.sh @dev

01 * * * * /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html/scripts/cron.sh @dev --new-only

Notes

Libraries

To populate the Warden server application dashboard with information about the libraries that each website uses this information needs to be added manually to the settings.php file for each website.

Alternatively you could write a Drupal module per website which checks which libraries the website is using and adds that information to the array in the settings.php file, or have some code which runs at a server level to check which libraries and versions are installed on each website and writes to a file which is included in the settings.php file for each website.

Permissions

The web server user (eg. www-data) will need correct permissions to be able to write to the var/cache and var/logs folders correct ownership of the entire warden directory and it’s content.

Symfony app.php directory

The web directory in the Warden server application dashboard has an index file called app.php so your server may need to have mod_rewrite activated to allow the Warden .htaccess file to set the web directory index file to be app.php

Installing the Warden Drupal module - troubleshooting

The command

composer require drupal/warden

will install the Drupal module using composer. Installing the module using other methods on a composer managed site can result in the following error:

Fatal error: Class 'WardenApi\Api' not found in /modules/contrib/warden/src/Service/WardenManager.php

To rectify, uninstall the module and try again using the composer command above.

Installing the Drush file

In some environments the warden.drush.inc file needs to go into a new directory called drush at the same level as the directory containing the Drupal website.

After the file has been added run

drush cc drush

to clear the drush cache.

Drush URI configuration for warden-update

The warden-update function uses the website’s $base_url which Drush sometimes replaces with ‘http://default’.

If the environment does not have the drush uri defined then either add $options['uri'] = ‘http://yourdrupalwebsite.com’; to a sites/default/drushrc.php file, or define --uri when running the command as below:

drush --uri=http://yourdrupalwebsite.com warden-update

Error logs

Warden server application dashboard

The Warden server logs are found in app/logs within the Warden server - the two files are dev.logs and prod.logs.

Warden Drupal module

The module writes errors in the normal way to the Recent log messages page on the Drupal website.