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Work Together To Install plots2 on your Local Machine(Setup)
Hi everyone, welcome to Public Labπ. This issue is meant to help you resolve any errors you might be getting while installing plots2 on your local machine or document the steps you took to resolve the error.
- To install plots2 on your local machine, follow our installation guide
- For contributors using windows, this is the windows installation guide
- You can also use gitpod to run and contribute to this codebase. Read more about gitpod. GitPod is our recommended way to begin, and can be used for most contributions!
π» π₯ Installation video: watch this excellent video of the GitPod install process running, by @AndroGenius-codes: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/11467
If you were able to resolve an issue someone else was facing, you can outline the steps you took to resolve the error. Also, if you were able to solve the error, report back with the steps you took to solve the error.
You can also take a look at our previous setup issue to look for solutions to errors you might be facing. Thank you for contributing to Public Lab.
Also a heads up: if you are installing the plots2 project on your local, maybe consider using sqlite3 for database
. On step 7 choose the second option,
If sqlite3, run
cp config/database.yml.sqlite.example config/database.ymlto make a copy of config/database.yml.sqlite.example in config/database.yml. kindly note if you choose to use sqlite some tests may fail. The project was setup initially to use mysql and some tests are tailored for mysql db. No need for alarm, we are working to fix these and this will not interfere with your development process
As we are having issues reported by folks using mysql2 (read more)
Originally posted by @cesswairimu in https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/10840#issuecomment-1079627068
Leave a comment here with the details of the errors you're facing. Thank you!
HI @TildaDares , I have been able to run infragram on my local machine , do I need to install plot2 in order to work on this project
Hi @akanbifatimah, no you don't have to install plots2.
alright,Thank you
Hello everyone!! Myself Ishika Jain, an outreachy aspirant.. I'm facing some issue in installing plots2 on my local machine. I'm stuck at step 5 of standard installation. I have attached ss of the errors that I'm getting. Would really appreciate any help in solving this issue...


Hi @ishikajn8126, have you installed rbenv or rvm? https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/main/doc/PREREQUISITES.md#ruby
Hi @TildaDares I'm participating on outreachy, do we have to contribute to the project that listed for the outreachy, or we can contribute to other repo too? Thanks!
Hi @untari, you can contribute to other repos too. thanks
Hi @cesswairimu, noted with thanks!
@ishikajn8126, it appears we may have run into the same issue. My Mac would not download rvm or rbenv due to an SSL certificate problem. In addition to the errors you mentioned, I received the following when I tried to run curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable.

If you're experiencing the same, please reach out to me. I found a quick and easy way to bypass this.
Also, please be advised that many in the community work exclusively with/through gitpod, it's a great alternative to setting up your local environment and you'll be immediately up and running.
Hi @ishikajn8126, have you installed
rbenvorrvm? https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/main/doc/PREREQUISITES.md#ruby
Hey @TildaDares, yeah i seem to have skipped the prerequisities... Got that issue resolved now!
@ishikajn8126, it appears we may have run into the same issue. My Mac would not download
rvmorrbenvdue to an SSL certificate problem. In addition to the errors you mentioned, I received the following when I tried to runcurl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable.
If you're experiencing the same, please reach out to me. I found a quick and easy way to bypass this.
Also, please be advised that many in the community work exclusively with/through gitpod, it's a great alternative to setting up your local environment and you'll be immediately up and running.
Hey @stephaniequintana! Thanks a lot for offering support!! I got that issue resolved!
@TildaDares I was able to resolve this issue 4396 . The error occurs when step 6 of the installation guide is skipped.
If you're experiencing the same, please reach out to me. I found a quick and easy way to bypass this.
Also, please be advised that many in the community work exclusively with/through gitpod, it's a great alternative to setting up your local environment and you'll be immediately up and running.
Hello @stephaniequintana. So I did try starting the app on gitpod. But got this error:
Have you been able to succesfully run the app on gitpod?
@PeculiarE, the original error I was referring to, above, is the one pertaining to the SSL Certificate problem. I solved that on (on my Mac) by bypassing the curl security and I was then, finally, able to download rvm. I was still unable to setup my local environment, view the thread starting here: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/4936#issuecomment-1075936910.
To your specific question, I did finally get GitPod to run successfully. I cannot advise you on what to do, but I will tell you what I did. ~Firstly, per the above thread, I incorrectly ran passenger start in GitPod. This is not necessary as it is already configured in plots2/.gitpod.yml to do so.~ <- I actually did do this in my local environment, per the thread... The next time I opened the repo in GitPod, there were a multitude of differences between my forked branch and the origin (mostly due to everything under the sun I was downloading to get zsh to cooperate with rvm). Rather than ignoring those, or squashing specific commits or rebasing to an earlier commit, or ...(there were many ways I could have remedied my branch)... I deleted the repo and started with a freshly forked one. After that, pending the VERY long build, the error page was no longer there and the app now runs smoothly.
I'm sorry I cannot provide more specific direction. Although, I do highly recommend asking the group. I'm a bit blown away by the knowledge and willingness to help that everyone here seems to have β€οΈ
Hey everyone!
I got stuck with another error at step 5 of standard installation, which occurred on running the command bundle install :
Would really appreciate any help in this regard..!



Hi @ishikajn8126, do you have nodejs installed? You can install it by running sudo apt-get install nodejs
Thank you, @stephaniequintana. So, I wasn't running GitPod on my fork but directly from the main repo. Even tried setting it up on my local machine but kept on encountering one error or the other. Eventually, I followed your advice: deleted my existing fork, re-forked, and then tried running it again on GitPod. Had to change the db configuration in the database.yml file to an sqlite3 db before it eventually worked π. Thank you so much!
P.S. Did you have to tweak your database.yml file as well? Or it worked for you right out of the bag?
@ishikajn8126 When I tried setting up the project on my machine too, I faced this error even though I had nodejs already installed. But luckily for me, the error message also told me the command to run to fix it. The command was quite long and I can't remember it exactly. And sadly, recent console messages in my terminal have overwritten it. π’ π
I would suggest exactly what @stephaniequintana said. Try running the project on GitPod instead. It will save you time because even though I fixed this error you're facing now, I encountered like 6 more ahead and the app didn't still run perfectly after trying to fix all of them.
If you do have any issues running it on GitPod, please feel free to reach out to either me or Stephanie as it is working quite well for both of us π
Hello @TildaDares ,
I would like to point to one thing and differences which I found out during installation and reading files. The link you mentioned above for standard installation https://github.com/publiclab/plots2#standard-installation differs from the Readme file for plot2 repo link: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/master/README.md
Especially,
- in version of ruby 2.7.3 vs. 2.4.4,
- then older way to run command to exclude mysql db (
--without), - point 10. there is missing this line:
Setup React & webpacker by running rails webpacker:install && rails webpacker:install:react && rails generate react:installand info about prompt what to do so, or better to say not to do.
I ran into error message related to webpack and manifest.json which I solved with this command: bundle exec rake webpacker:install
I could update it π
This was my error after running server:

@PeculiarE, I'm so glad to learn you're up and running.
P.S. Did you have to tweak your database.yml file as well? Or it worked for you right out of the bag?
I actually tweaked the file (commented out the sql directive) initially. Though I meant to, I never went back to see if it would worked without the directive commented out.
Honestly, I experienced so many issues trying to set up locally that once I realized I can work (and gain experience) with GitPod, I never looked back. When I find some time, I will try again (bc I LOVE my VScode setup), but the errors I encountered and the (embarrassingly) amount of time I wasted coupled with the time constraints were outweighed by my excitement to get started. @ishikajn8126, I hope you're finally set up, too. If not, @PeculiarE makes an excellent point towards the time you will save (and from our personal experience, the errors you are likely to encounter in the upcoming steps).
Cheers, all - I hope everyone is having a great day!
If you're experiencing the same, please reach out to me. I found a quick and easy way to bypass this. Also, please be advised that many in the community work exclusively with/through gitpod, it's a great alternative to setting up your local environment and you'll be immediately up and running.
Hello @stephaniequintana. So I did try starting the app on gitpod. But got this error:
![]()
Have you been able to succesfully run the app on gitpod?
@PeculiarE here is the solution https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/4396#issuecomment-1079781786
for standard installationhttps://github.com/publiclab/plots2#standard-installation differs from the Readme file for plot2 repo link: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/master/README.md
Hi @illyShelly, thank you for the observation! We no longer make use of the master branch so it's the README on the main branch you should use https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/blob/main/README.md
@TildaDares got it π I have no idea how I get there. Thank you.
Thanks @stephaniequintana for your response. Lol...I know how that feels, wasting a lot of time trying to debug locally. But yeah, we're lucky we have GitPod to save the day π
@Forchapeatl .....thank you for your help. However, I did check out that thread while debugging on my local and implemented your suggestion but it didn't resolve my issue π’. Plus, the error-message screenshot I shared was gotten when I was trying to run the app on GitPod and not on my local machine. I fixed it by simply starting the whole forking process afresh, tweaked the database.yml file on GitPod and seeded the database. And everything was well.
Hi @ishikajn8126, do you have nodejs installed? You can install it by running
sudo apt-get install nodejs
Hey @TildaDares, I tried installing nodejs and running bundle install again, it's still giving the same error. I've got the project on running on gitod though..!
Hey @PeculiarE @stephaniequintana, thanks a lot for your inputs, I've got the project running on gitpod and opened a PR as well..
Awesome news @ishikajn8126 and you're very welcome π
Hello @PeculiarE @stephaniequintana
I was trying to run the application using gitpod. But I am getting this error shown in the image below
:
Could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?
@simransia, just brainstorming here...has it finished loading? When I use GitPod it tends to take quite a while for all the dependencies to load and then for the app to run. I see this error screen until the loading is complete...
@stephaniequintana yes mam it also took a while for loading all the dependencies in my browser as well. After the loading was completed I was not able to see the live preview of the application. So in the terminal I run the command "passenger start" and then this error page appears.