PartKeepr (Personal Inventory System) NO FUSS Installation!

[Max_EEV]

Morning everybody!

If you're searching for a generic inventory system for your workshop, you're in the right place!
After several days looking for such thing for my growing workshop and after trying complicated ERP systems like Odoo and NextERP and tired of easy to crap spreadsheets I finally found PartKeepr (Online Demo here: https://demo.partkeepr.org/).
Web: https://partkeepr.org/# Github: https://github.com/partkeepr/PartKeepr

The problem is linux and for me, being a not so proud windows guy, was tortuous and finally impossible to get this running on a Raspberry Pi 3, even following dedicated instructions. A very good friend of mine, linux master, had to help me.
Because I don't want you to suffer the same than me and because, like me, you only want to spend your time introducing your fancy pieces, I have created a image of my fresh installation for just burn a MicroSD and get ready!

Instructions:

• Download my custom zipped image (4GB) from https://mega.nz/#!WCQV1aSD!4FnrOf93mTsRwC-F2OwZOImUDSObXF0wgvxVbodAm98.
• Download and learn to use Win32 Disk Imager from here: https://raspberry-projects.com/pi/pi-operating-systems/win32diskimager
• Burn the image into a 32GB or greater MicroSD card.
• Introduce the card in a LAN connected Raspberry Pi (Pi 3 recommended) and switch on.
• With whatever PC connected in the same network write in a browser the Raspberry IP and press enter (you can see the IP in the router page).
• Use the default "Administrator/admin" credentials to enter in your PartKeepr system.
• You're done! Now you can start to work!

Features/limits of my image:

• It's 32GB. Yes, I know, I should have used a smaller MicroSD.
• It's Raspbian Stretch OS with GUI and recommended apps, all installed with NOOBS. Yes, I know, I should have been used a simpler initial image.
• It's PartKeepr 1.4.0 version.
• It's clean. Before I started to introduce my personal data, made the image.
• The speed improvements are done: https://wiki.partkeepr.org/wiki/APC_Metadata_Caching.
• You may or not experiment login issues (invalid username or password promt). That's because the server is configured as WSSE authentication method. You can easily change it connecting the Pi to a monitor and following this instruction to change to HTTPBasic authentication method: https://wiki.partkeepr.org/wiki/Authentication.

For the developer: Felicia, I really thank you your extraordinary job, your free community support and love how you have made the difficult easy and nice.
I would really like to contact you with some simple ideas and I'm looking forward to see the 1.5 version improvements!!!

Well, I hope you all enjoy this!

[hendorog]

Is that the raw image which is a 32GB download?

If you use zip or gzip on it then you will massively shrink it - as it is sure to be mostly empty space.

[anishkgt]

Wouldn’t be easier with access database.


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[rs20]

Hooray, first Hass.io and now this. What should be a simple piece of software is distributed "for Linux" by distributed as an entire 32GB operating system image, because I should buy a new raspberry pi for every single piece of software I might want to run. Clap clap.

[Max_EEV]

If you use zip or gzip on it then you will massively shrink it - as it is sure to be mostly empty space.

Will try, thank you!

Wouldn’t be easier with access database.

I don't know, I tried ABC from Almyta and didn't liked. Too 80's. PartKeepr uses MySQL database, so it's kind of universal too.

Hooray, first Hass.io and now this. What should be a simple piece of software is distributed "for Linux" by distributed as an entire 32GB operating system image, because I should buy a new raspberry pi for every single piece of software I might want to run. Clap clap.

It's also a entire OS. You can install whatever additional software you want.

[kayvee]

And there's a Docker image available too 

https://hub.docker.com/r/mhubig/partkeepr/

[rs20]

Hooray, first Hass.io and now this. What should be a simple piece of software is distributed "for Linux" by distributed as an entire 32GB operating system image, because I should buy a new raspberry pi for every single piece of software I might want to run. Clap clap.

It's also a entire OS. You can install whatever additional software you want.

And what if I'm already running a Hass.io image, and now I want to add PartKeepr to it. Now I have two 32 GiB, separate images that I have to "combine" somehow. Are you beginning to see why distributing every little piece of software as an entire image containing a complete operating system might be a dumb idea?

And there's a Docker image available too 

https://hub.docker.com/r/mhubig/partkeepr/

Hooray, a docker image. The other shit way that Hass.IO is distributed too. Consider all the applications that run beautifully as simple pieces of software without the need for entire operating system images or virtualization: Apache, KiCad, Blender. These are all VASTLY more complex and featureful than PartKeepr or Hass.IO; but clearly only the latter are so poorly designed that one has to resort to entire operating system images or virtualization to deploy them without hours of pain. A complete failure to write properly encapsulated software.

In fairness to both of you, maybe I shouldn't be criticising the OP so much. This is probably more a sign of how awfully designed PartKeepr is; maybe Docker/OS images are the least bad way to work around that awful design.

[Bassman59]

Hooray, first Hass.io and now this. What should be a simple piece of software is distributed "for Linux" by distributed as an entire 32GB operating system image, because I should buy a new raspberry pi for every single piece of software I might want to run. Clap clap.

The source is readily available, so if you're into futzing with web servers and database backends, have at it.

[zitt]

Thanks for the effort here.
I'm not a fan of RazPi for real work like this.

I took the git repo and struggled to get it functional as a virtual machine. I put the database on my Synology NAS and then moved the VM to Synology's Virtual manager.

I haven't spent enough time with the software; but look forward to trying it out from my EE desk PC.
Thanks for making me do this project.

[ebclr]

Thanks, work like a charm on my VPs

[FrankBuss]

Thanks for your effort, but how can I be sure that the image doesn't contain some malicious software, which then has access to my internal network (and my parts list) when running on a Raspberry Pi? The installation instruction doesn't look too difficult:

https://github.com/partkeepr/PartKeepr/blob/master/documentation/Installation.md

On Windows nowadays you can even install WSL to use Linux programs, which would then allow to simply use some "apt-get install" command to install it and then editing some config files:

https://medium.com/@ssharizal/how-to-install-lamp-stack-server-on-windows-subsystem-linux-wsl-windows-10-133419c22473

Or install it natively with some LAMP stack. But might be useful to have a small installation script for the Raspberry Pi, which runs on a clean NOOBS installation, if someone wants to run it on such a system.

[Max_EEV]

Hahaha... Do whatever you want. I personally was laughing and crying during the installation.



Good luck.

[Jeroen3]

I've tried running getting PartKeepr running on Ubuntu Server (virtual), but I kept running into dependency problems since today we're are PHP 7.2. And for some reason all earlier stuff has been exiled from repositories.

Web stuff is so frustratingly entangled, like playing schrödinger's mikado. It's amazing people can actually keep things running.

Tomorrow I will try docker. But I'd had bad luck with atlassian's demos in docker.
^{I think docker was invented to bypass the sheer complexity of dependencies by just shipping entire vm's. Perhaps this is an indicator of poor maintainability?}

If anyone know if PartKeepr is able to run Ubuntu Server 18.04, please tell me how.

[HendriXML]

If you use KiCad on Windows this might be of use:
https://github.com/HendriXML/KiCad-BOM-reporter/wiki

(Only) I use it all the time