I downloaded the Turnkey Linux - LAMP stack (for VMWare) and added it to VMWare player. Prior to starting it up I switched its networking to NAT, since my home router doesn't treat bridged hosts well.

Upon starting it, I added its IP to the host computer's /etc/hosts file with the hostname habari-test:

192.168.12.130 habari-test

After starting up the VM, I logged in and installed all the packages needed:

apt-get install ruby rubygems ruby-full build-essential libxml2-dev libmysqlclient16-dev libxslt-dev firefox xvfb openjdk-6-jre

Git, Apache, MySQL and PHP were already installed, so if you're putting this together elsewhere you'd need to grab those as well (apt-get install git lamp-server^)

There are several ruby gems needed. This part seems to take the longest.

gem install gherkin rspec mechanize capybara-mechanize mysql cucumber 

By default these are not added to the path. Add it to the end of the ~/.bashrc PATH line (or put it in /etc/environment for all users of Ubuntu):

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin

At this point Xvfb can be started to provide a headless display to run Firefox for tests needing javascript. I typically start up gnu screen and run these in display 0:

root@lamp ~# Xvfb -ac :99 &

Start up mysql (using the root password you set at installation) and create a test user with necessary permissions:

root@lamp ~# mysql -u root -p

mysql> create database test; grant usage on *.* to test@localhost identified by 'test'; grant all privileges on test.* to test@localhost;

That database is going to be dropped and recreated many a time, so don't get too attached to it. The important parts are the permissions, anyway. At some point I'll probably want to not use the same database name, username, and password for clarity.

At this point the vhost needs to be set up. Create a new Apache conf file.

root@lamp ~# nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/habari-test

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName habari-test
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/habari/
</VirtualHost>

Symlink the new configuration. Now's as good a time as any to enable mod_rewrite, so do that also before restarting Apache.

root@lamp ~# ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/habari-test /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/habari-test
root@lamp ~# a2enmod rewrite
root@lamp ~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Add the habari-test hostname to the VM's hosts file (/etc/hosts):

127.0.0.1 habari-test

There are not files currently in /var/www/habari. You'll use Git to get them there, but first it needs to be configured. Set up your Git credentials (if you haven't already) and copy the public key to your github account.

root@lamp ~# git config --global user.name "Firstname Lastname"
root@lamp ~# git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
root@lamp ~# ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]"
root@lamp ~# cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Clone the Habari repository. Note this guide is written assuming you have write privileges to that repository.

root@lamp ~# cd /var/www
root@lamp var/www# git clone [email protected]:habari/habari.git

Add this repository as a submodule, and initialize the submodules. Then switch habari/system to use the master branch.

root@lamp var/www# cd habari 
root@lamp www/habari# git submodule add [email protected]:mikelietz/cucumber-for-habari.git tests
root@lamp www/habari# git submodule update --init
root@lamp www/habari# cd system
root@lamp habari/system# git checkout master 

Change the ownership so Habari can install:

root@lamp ~# chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/habari

You should now be able to run cucumber (in the Xvfb display) and test the installer.

root@lamp ~# cd /var/www/habari/tests/
root@lamp habari/tests# DISPLAY=:99 cucumber features/installer.feature