We specifically don't create a home directory for the 'mediagoblin' system account as part of the setup process, but npm wants to install to the mediagoblin user home dir:

checking for virtualenv... virtualenv
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/bin/mkdir -p
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating mediagoblin/_version.py
./devtools/update_extlib.sh
which: no bower in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin)
Bower not found, installing via npm!
npm ERR! Error: EACCES, mkdir '/home/mediagoblin'
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES, mkdir '/home/mediagoblin'] errno: 3, code: 'EACCES', path: '/home/mediagoblin' }
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! System Linux 3.10.0-229.1.2.el7.x86_64
npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "bower"
npm ERR! cwd /srv/mediagoblin.chicagolug.org/mediagoblin
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.33
npm ERR! npm -v 1.3.6
npm ERR! path /home/mediagoblin
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno 3
npm ERR! stack Error: EACCES, mkdir '/home/mediagoblin'
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /srv/mediagoblin.chicagolug.org/mediagoblin/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0
make: *** [extlib] Error 3

Is there an alternate install location for this part of the process (e.g., somewhere in /srv/mediagoblin.example.org/bin ) or should we create a mediagoblin home directory?

I'm setting this as a 0.8 milestone bug because I think we need to decide which approach to take & document things appropriately in the deployment docs.

We had a user in the IRC channel who had an issue with getting email verification setup. Based on the error they received¹ they assumed that MediaGoblin could route mail to remote hosts on its own². They were slightly confused by all this.

We should catch such errors and provide a more descriptive error that doesn't require the reading of Python tracebacks to understand. Something like "Couldn't contact mail server on <host>:<port>" would be far more helpful.

Feel free to contact me on IRC (moggers87) if you're thinking of tackling this ticket and are unfamiliar with MediaGoblin's internals.

¹: ​http://pastebin.ca/2965561 ²: it cannot

The currently-supported Debian platform is Debian Wheezy, but Debian Jessie will be out soon, so I attempted a test install on Jessie. If we do not intend to support Debian Jessie for the 0.8 release, this issue can be pushed-back to the 0.9 release.

The issue is that the ./bin/bootstrap.sh . . . && make step fails due to a naming change in Debian / Ubuntu, whereby "node" is now packaged as "nodejs". See here for more details on that change: ​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18130164/nodejs-vs-node-on-ubuntu-12-04

Creating a symlink between /usr/bin/nodejs and /usr/bin/node allows the bootstrap process to proceed, so it isn't really a problem with the overall program / code.

Perhaps, as part of the bootstrap step, we should check to see if "node" works, and (if not) try "nodejs", and if that doesn't work, say that the step failed.

The existing setup / code which looks for "node" does work on Fedora 21 installs, though, so I don't think that we can just flat-out switch from looking for "node" to looking for "nodejs".

As a final comment, I'm not at a computer where I would have access to the actual error message, but hopefully what I've provided is enough information. Thanks.