Introduction
Etherpad is an Open Source, web-based and real-time collaborative editor. It allows multiple persons, using their web browsers to edit a document at the same time. It also offers some cool features like rich text formatting and instant messaging.
The objective is to install Etherpad on Ubuntu 16.04 Linux.
Conventions
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user
Requirements
Privileged access to your Ubuntu machine.
Steps to follow
Install the prerequisites
In this first stage, let’s install git, curl, libssl-dev, python and build-essential.
$ sudo apt install git curl python libssl-dev pkg-config build-essential
Install node.js
Etherpad relies on node.js. We will install its latest stable version by using the following linux commands:
$ wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v6.9.2/node-v6.9.2-linux-x64.tar.xz $ tar xJf node-v6.9.2-linux-x64.tar.xz $ sudo mkdir /opt/nodejs/ && mv node-v6.9.2-linux-x64/* /opt/nodejs $ echo "PATH=$PATH:/opt/nodejs/bin" >> ~/.profile
Clone Etherpad binaries
Here, we will clone the binaries into /opt/etherpad directory:
$ sudo mkdir /opt/etherpad $ sudo chown -R $(whoami).$(whoami) /opt/etherpad $ cd /opt/etherpad $ git clone git://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite.git
Run Etherpad
Now we will run Etherpad by the use of the command below:
$ /opt/etherpad/bin/run.sh
Once Etherpad is started, we can access it through http://your_ip_address:9001.
Have you tried it? Are you facing any difficulties? Let’s talk about that in comments.