Installation using a command line interface (CLI)

Introduction

When doing automated installs like in a Virtual Machine setup, we can use use LimeSurvey's (v2.x referred to here) CLI (Command Line interface) to good effect. The files used for this purpose (and for resetting passwords as well) are in the WEBROOT/application/commands folder, the one of interest here being console.php.

Usage

For illustration purposes here we assume the WEBROOT to be /var/www/limesurvey

cd /var/www/limesurvey/application/commands
php console.php

This will show:

Yii command runner (based on Yii v1.1.14)
Usage: console.php <command-name> [parameters...]

The following commands are available:
 - install
 - message
 - migrate
 - plugin
 - resetpassword
 - shell
 - webapp

To see individual command help, use the following:
   console.php help <command-name>

What does not work

The following do not work:

cd /var/www/limesurvey/application/commands
php starter.php install limeadmin pwd123 Admin admin@mydomain.com
php starter.php limeadmin pwd123 Admin admin@mydomain.com

The following works

cd /var/www/limesurvey/application/commands
php console.php install limeadmin pwd123 Admin admin@sunbit.co.in

It outputs the following text:

/var/www/limesurvey/installer/sql/create-mysql.sql