Getting it up and running on ARM-based devices (Debian)

[heathercat123]

Currently, you can only get it up and running using my installation guide on IBM PC compatibles capable of running Windows XP or newer. However, if you are on an ARM-based device and you try following my guide, you'll have to use the x86 emulator included in the ARM64 compiles of Windows 10 and 11. But emulation isn't ideal, Windows isn't either and you need a Raspberry Pi 4 or newer (8GB version) to run Windows. As such, it would be beneficial to run it natively on Linux.

Currently, HeatherscratchR has been confirmed to work on the following ARM64-compatible software:

• Debian.
• PHP 5.6.
• The latest version of the Apache HTTP server (2.4).
• The latest version of MariaDB (11). This guide was written for 10.1 because that was the latest tested and working version at the time.
• The latest version of memcached (1.6).

HeatherscratchR has been confirmed to NOT work on the following software:

• PHP 7+ (requires a patched version of CakePHP 1.2, but registration breaks with CakePHP 1.2 RC3+ unless you use the PHP7 branch).
• Whatever version of MariaDB 10.4 that's included in the version of XAMPP that I tried (errors out while installing some 2011 updates).

Guide:

• Before installing, add this to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch contrib main non-free
deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ bullseye main

You might need to replace bullseye by bookworm depending on your Debian version. The Trixie version is missing php5.6-memcache, which is required by ScratchR.

Then, run this commands:

wget -qO - https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Edit: It seems like you can't use apt-key anymore so if the commands above don't work, use these ones instead:

cd ~
wget https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
sudo mv apt.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php5.gpg

• Install MariaDB 10.1:
  sudo apt install mariadb-server-10.1 mariadb-client-10.1
  Notice: If you have another version of MariaDB (installed by default on Kali), you have to remove mariadb-server, mariadb-client and mysql-common then delete /usr/share/mysql, /usr/share/mysql-common and /var/lib/mysql.

• You may also need to run these commands:

sudo systemctl enable mysql
sudo systemctl start mysql

• Secure your installation and create a new user, where <DBUSER> and <DBPASS> are your desired username and password respectively:

mysql_secure_installation
sudo mysql -e "\
CREATE USER '<DBUSER>'@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '<DBPASS>'; \
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '<DBUSER>'@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '<DBPASS>'; \
FLUSH PRIVILEGES; "

• Install Apache:
  sudo apt install apache2 apache2-doc

• Add this to /etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.conf:

<IfModule mod_php5.c>
    <FilesMatch "\.ph(p3?|tml)$">
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
        Require all granted
    </FilesMatch>
    <FilesMatch "\.phps$">
        SetHandler application/x-httpd-php-source
        Require all denied
    </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

• Install PHP:
  sudo apt install php5.6 php5.6-mysql php5.6-gd php5.6-memcache php5.6-mbstring

Notice: If you have another version of PHP (installed by default on Kali), you have to apt purge php* before installing

• You'll need to add this to /etc/php/5.6/apache2/php.ini:

extension=gd.so
extension=mysqlnd.so
extension=mysql.so
extension=mysqli.so
extension=memcache.so
extension=opcache.so

opcache.enable=1
opcache.enable_cli=1
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
opcache.max_accelerated_files=4000
opcache.revalidate_freq=60
opcache.fast_shutdown=1

• Execute php -v to verify if you did anything wrong

• To install memcached, run this command:
  sudo apt-get install memcached

• Prepare to clone ScratchR, where <LUSER> is your Linux username:

cd /var/www/html
sudo chown <LUSER> /var/www/html
sudo chmod 777 -R /var/www/html
sudo rm *
sudo apt install git

• Clone (Heather)ScratchR:

# For ScratchR:
git svn clone https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/scratchr/
# For HeatherscratchR (recommended):
git clone https://github.com/heathercat123/HeatherscratchR.git scratchr

• You need to enable mod_rewrite using this command:
  sudo a2enmod rewrite

• Replace the contents of /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf by this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName scratch.local
  ServerAlias www.scratch.local
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/scratchr/app/webroot/
  <Directory />
    Options +FollowSymLinks -Multiviews
    AllowOverride All
    RewriteEngine On

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^static/projects/.+/([0-9]+)_(sm|med).png$ static/icons/project/default_$2.jpg [QSA,L]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^static/projects/.+/([0-9]+).sb$ static/misc/default.sb [QSA,L]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^static/icons/gallery/(.*)$ static/icons/gallery/default.jpg [QSA,L]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^static/icons/buddy/([0-9]*)_(sm|med).jpg$ static/icons/buddy/default_$2.jpg [QSA,L]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^static/icons/buddy/([0-9]*)_(sm|med).png$ static/icons/buddy/default_$2.jpg [QSA,L]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
    RewriteRule .*\.svn/.* - [F]
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

• In /etc/apache2/apache2.conf, in <Directory /var/www/>, replace AllowOverride Noneby AllowOverride All

• After setting up the VirtualHost, restart apache:
  sudo systemctl restart apache2

• Set up the database, where <DBUSER> and <DBPASS> are your MariaDB username and password respectively:

cd /var/www/html/scratchr/app/config/sql
dbuser="<DBUSER>"
dbpass="<DBPASS>"
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass -e "CREATE DATABASE scratchr;"
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./db-structure.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./db-data.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./db-sp.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/06-30-2009_altering_pcomments_and_gcomments.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/09-09-2009_whitelisted_ip_addresses.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/09-15-2009_alter_projects_frontpage.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/05-09-2010_alter_pcomment_gcomment.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/07-28-2010_disposable_domains.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/12-06-2010_remix_notifications.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/04-11-2011_project_credits.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/05-10-2011_survey.txt
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/13-05-2011_altering_project_censors.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/19-04-2011_altering_roles.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/19-07-2011_elections.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/20-02-2011_prompt_captcha_after_login_fail.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/22-07-2011-announcement-visibility.sql
mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/24-02-2011_redirect_url.sql

• For HeatherscratchR, you need to install another update:
  mysql -u $dbuser -p$dbpass scratchr < ./updates/01-12-2024_add_styles.sql

• Copy /var/www/html/scratchr/app/config/database.php.default to database.php

• Replace var $default = array(...) by this:

var $default = array(
  'driver' => 'mysqli',
  'persistent' => false,
  'host' => 'localhost',
  'login' => '<DBUSER>',
  'password' => '<DBPASS>',
  'database' => 'scratchr',
  'prefix' => '',
);

• Copy scratchr/app/webroot/static/rename2icons/ to icons/

• If you're using the normal ScratchR, you'll need this file from HeatherscratchR

Edit: Users now work! HeatherscratchR can now officially be set up on Debian!
Edit 2: This guide should now work on Debian Trixie. Tested with Kali Linux.

This guide was tested on Debian 11 Bullseye x86 with Raspberry Pi Desktop and Kali Linux (Debian Trixie) x64 on real hardware and on a Debian 12 Bookworm x86 VM with i3 as the desktop.
Now, we need someone to test it on ARM hardware.