The other day I set out to write a post on getting a WordPress instance running on OpenShift.  I got sidelined in the confusion of determining the best place to install rhc tools from.

I’m trying to be more deliberate about using OpenShift and blogging about about my experiences along the way.  I myself, prefer more detailed, step-by-step guides and that is what I plan to writer here.

Stay with upstream for now

The best place to currently get rhc tools is from the openshift.redhat.com repo.  I’m told this is because they change a lot and the versions in Fedora don’t get updated as often because of the updates approval process (that’s not a knock on the Fedora process–OpenShift follows Fedora’s process and policies just like everyone else and updates Fedora as time permits).

rubygem-rhc

rhc tools is available in Fedora 14 through 17 and known as rubygem-rhc.  Setting aside the technical or policy reason why the package name is this way, it always bugs me when a trip to Google is required to determine the package named toyum install something this simple.  It’s definitely not as obscure as 7zip.

Install rhc tools

Below is the essence of what you need to do.  Alternatively you can follow OpenShift’s getting started instructions which felt less efficient to me.

1) Set up the yum repo.  As root,

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d
# wget https://openshift.redhat.com/app/repo/openshift.repo

If you prefer to configure the OpenShift repo by hand, as root, put the following in a separate file (with a name ending in .repo, for example openshift.repo) in /etc/yum.repos.d:

[openshift]
name=OpenShift
baseurl=https://openshift.redhat.com/app/repo/rpms/$releasever/$basearch/
failovermethod=priority
skip_if_unavailable=1
gpgkey=https://openshift.redhat.com/app/repo/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-beta
ggpkey=https://openshift.redhat.com/app/repo/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

2) Install rhc tools

$ su -c 'yum install rhc'

 

UPDATE: A new page has been added to the OpenShift Developer center clarifying this process for each operating system.  It’s better than my steps above.