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.

Pre-requisites

• PHP CLI should be available
• WEBROOT/application/config/config.php should be available and populated with the automated install's parameters.
• Folder permissions PHP Modules availability should match LimeSurvey needs
• Empty MySQL database should be created and the database use user should be properly privileged for it.

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@mydomain.com

It outputs the following text:

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

Syntax

php console.php <Admin User Name> <Admin User Password> <Full Name> <EMail ID>

• The Full Name and password are enclosed in double quotes if they contain spaces or other special characters.
• All other parameters like DB Name, DB Type, DB User, DB Password, etc are to be populated in the config.php file before script execution.