Multi Instance

It’s possible to host multiple instances of Group Office on one server. They all have their own database and optionally a license for additional modules. When pointing the DNS of a domain with a wildcard to the server, you can create a new instance with a few mouse clicks or via an API.

Installation

After installing Group Office via the Debian packages or Docker you’ll need to do the following to enable it:

  1. Make sure the main install database user has permissions to create databases by running the following SQL:

    GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'groupoffice'@'%' REQUIRE NONE WITH GRANT OPTION MAX_QUERIES_PER_HOUR 0 MAX_CONNECTIONS_PER_HOUR 0 MAX_UPDATES_PER_HOUR 0 MAX_USER_CONNECTIONS 0;

  2. Create “multi_instance” config folder (Skip this when using Docker):

    mkdir /etc/groupoffice/multi_instance && chown www-data:www-data /etc/groupoffice/multi_instance

  3. Create “multi_instance” data folder (Skip this when using Docker):

    mkdir /var/lib/groupoffice/multi_instance && chown www-data:www-data /var/lib/groupoffice/multi_instance

  4. If you’re using the professional version and the studio module is allowed in /etc/groupoffice/globalconfig.inc.php (see default settings below), then a package folder will be created for each instance in /usr/share/groupoffice/go/modules. So you have to make that folder writable for the webserver:

    chown www-data:www-data /usr/share/groupoffice/go/modules

  5. Login as administrator into the main Group Office instance that will manage the other instances and install the “Multi Instance” module from the “Community” package.

  6. Make sure the instances DNS records (we recommend using a wildcard domain) are pointing to the server and is picked up by the apache configuration.

  7. To log the hostname in access and error logs of apache you can set this in your virtual host settings:

    LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon
ErrorLogFormat "%V [%t] [%l] [pid %P] [client %a] %F: %E: %M"

Creating an instance

In the “Multi instance” tab you can click the add button. Enter the full hostname of the instance and click “Save”. After that you can select which modules it’s allowed to use. Via the more menu in the grid you can login to this instance.

Deleting and restoring instances

When you delete an instance it’s stored in the trash folder. You can restore an instance with this command:

./cli.php community/multi_instance/Instance/restore --name=test.example.com

When you have deleted the same name for a second time the folder might be named with a suffix. You can specify the trash path in that case:

./cli.php community/multi_instance/Instance/restore --name=test.example.com --trashPath=/var/lib/groupoffice/multi_instance/_trash_/test.example.com-606050820f3d

Automatically empty trash

The trash folder might fill up too much space. This cron job delete’s all trash after one month:

0 0 * * * root find /var/lib/multi_instance/_trash_  -maxdepth 1 -mtime +30 -exec rm -r "{}" \;

Default settings

You can control the default allowed modules via /etc/groupoffice/globalconfig.inc.php this file supports the same properties as config.php but applies to all instances if not overridden in the instance config file.

New portals will also copy the system settings of the main portal.

Command Line Tools

Group-Office searches for the config file in __DIR__/config.php, /etc/groupoffice/config.php and finally /etc/groupoffice/multu_instance/<HTTP_HOST>/config.php If you want to run a command line tool on an instance you can set the HTTP_HOST in the environment so it will use the correct instance:

export HTTP_HOST=myinstance.example.com