So, after trying to install ReviewBoard on a virtual machine (and failing), I decided to install it on my real server, a machine running Debian PPC (sarge).

Eventually I got it up and running, but here are my notes:

I decided to run it off fastcgi (asking apt-get to install lighttpd pulled in tons of other software I didn’t want… and I didn’t want to screw around with setting up mod_python - although in retrospect maybe that was silly). You need to apt-get libapache2-mod-fastcgi. EXCEPT this doesn’t work by default: you need to set your /etc/apt/sources.list file to download “non-free” software too. So you lines will look something like deb http://debian.lcs.mit.edu/debian/ testing main non-free. What makes this confusing is that there is libapache2-mod-fastcgid, which is a different implementation of the fastcgi protocol… but not what you want at all. Anyway there’s more yack about sources.list here.

Also, if you’re having Apache2 listen on an oddball port for requests to your ReviewBoard, make sure your firewall lets those ports through :).

Make sure to uncomment the line in apache2.conf that Includes the files in sites-enabled!

I thought Everburning: Fighting Review Board was going to be helpful, but turns out it mostly works out of the box (without the stuff he does).

You might have to fiddle with settings_local.py’s FORCE_SCRIPT_NAME, and what the rewrite rule in the Review Board generated Apache2 config file says, to make them agree. This will be pretty obvious when the front review board page is ugly (because the CSS didn’t load), OR you’ll get an error about URLconf defined in djblets.util.rooturl, Django tried these. URL patterns...

I think that’s it. I’m pretty sure I easy_install ReviewBoard to get it installed, but I think there might be an apt-get package for it too.

So it wasn’t a bad experience, just one I was hoping to avoid with a virtual machine for it.. oh well I guess. Hope this helps someone else.