Installation and configuration

Dependencies and prerequisites

Lasco requires Python 2.7 and an RDBMS. I test with SQLite and use PostgreSQL on production. Other RDBMS should work as well.

Installation and configuration

Here below is the shortest path to test Lasco. It is highly recommended to install Lasco in a virtual environment:

$ mkdir test-lasco
$ cd test-lasco
$ mkdir src pics cache
$ cd src
$ # As of this writing, Lasco relies on a feature of
  # 'repoze.bitblt' that has not yet been released
$ wget -O - --no-check-certificate https://github.com/repoze/repoze.bitblt/tarball/master | tar xvz
$ cd repoze-repoze.bitblt-*
$ python setup.py install
$ cd ../../
$ easy_install Lasco

You may check the installation with the following command:

$ lascocli --help
Usage: lascocli [-i FILE]

Options:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  -i FILE, --ini=FILE  use FILE as the 'ini' file (default is './Lasco.ini')

On certain platforms (MacOS X 10.4, for example), you may have the following error:

ImportError: No module named readline

In this case, you need to install readline:

$ easy_install readline

Once you have installed the application, you need to fetch configuration files. Some development files are available from the source repository.

$ wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.github.com/dbaty/Lasco/master/dev.ini
$ wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.github.com/dbaty/Lasco/master/who.ini

Then edit dev.ini and change the following variables:

lasco.pictures_base_path = /path/to/test-lasco/pics
lasco.cache = /path/to/test-lasco/cache

You may also change the database, but a default SQLite will be good enough for a test.

If you do have pictures, copy them in a directory under /path/to/test-lasco/pics (for example in /path/to/test-lasco/pics/holidays-2010). If you do not have pictures at hand... wait, why would you want a gallery, then? Anyway, there are plenty of pictures set on the web, here is one with around 30 pictures:

$ cd pics
$ mkdir australia
$ cd australia
$ wget -r -np -nd -A "*.jpg" http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/imagedatabase/groundtruth/australia/
$ ls *.jpg | wc -l
      30
$ cd ../..

You now need to record these pictures in Lasco. There is no web interface for this, you must use the command line interface.

$ lascocli -c dev.ini
lasco> gallery_add test "Test gallery"
=> Gallery has been added.
lasco> album_add test australia Australia /path/to/test-lasco/pics/australia
=> Album has been added.

Ok, our pictures are in the database, but you need a user account to access them. For this test, we will just create a gallery administrator, but you may create simple album viewers as well.

(continued from the 'lascocli' session above)
lasco> user_add test test test
lasco> gallery_users test +test
lasco> quit

All right, you are almost ready, you just need to install a WSGI server:

$ easy_install waitress

Finally, we can start the application:

$ pserve dev.ini
Starting server in PID 15304.
serving on http://0.0.0.0:6543

If you visit http://0.0.0.0:6543 and connect with the test login and the test password, you should be able to access the gallery and see your pictures.