How to Install Pootle translation platform on Ubuntu?

Pootle is a great tool for translation collaboration and used by many open source projects including a few from Mozilla. This post is about the Pootle installation procedure. Visit Pootle if you want to find more about Pootle translation platform.

Preparing the machine for Pootle installation – Prerequisites

Install Django

sudo apt-get install python-django python-mysqldb

Install Translate Toolkit

Download the latest tar.bz2 translate toolkit from sourceforge

Install (replace the XXX with the Translate Toolkit that you downloaded)

tar xvjf translate-toolkit-XXX.tar.bz2
cd translate-toolkit-XXX
sudo ./setup.py install

Install lxml

sudo apt-get install python-lxml

Install Python-Levenshtein (optional)

sudo apt-get install python-levenshtein

Install memcached (optional)

sudo apt-get install memcached
sudo apt-get install php5-memcache

Download Pootle

Download the latest stable Pootle translation platform from sourceforge
Extract the folder (replace XXX with the Pootle version that you downloaded):

sudo tar xvjf Pootle-2.1.6.tar.bz2

Testing your Pootle Prerequisites

At this point, you are ready to run Pootle from its built in server. This is a great way to test drive Pootle.
Go to the Pootle folder and run it:

cd Pootle-2.1.1
sudo ./PootleServer

Watch the terminal for status. If everything goes fine, you should see the following status. If your machine is missing dependencies, you will see them listed.

Browse to http://localhost:8080. You will get sort of an error message stating that Pootle is missing database tables. Don’t panic, Pootle will take responsibility and start creating the tables. After the process is completed, you will be presented with the Pootle home page

If you are satisfied with what Pootle has to offer, continue with the following procedure to install Pootle and configure with Apache and MySQL. Running Pootle from the integrated server with sqlite is not recommended for a production environment.

Installing Pootle and configuring with Apache and MySQL

Install Pootle

Copy the Pootle folder to your web root (if you want to install Pootle in a different place, you can do so. Just make sure apache has read/write permissions to the folder)

sudo cp Pootle-XXX /var/www

Run Pootle installation script

cd /var/www/Pootle-XXX
sudo ./setup.py install

Configure Pootle for MySQL

Create a database/user for Pootle

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE pootle CHARACTER SET = ‘utf8’;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON pootle.* TO [email protected] IDENTIFIED BY ‘pootlepassword’;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Open the Pootle settings file

sudo nano /etc/pootle/localsettings.py

Update the file to use MySQL, and enter the database information that you just created

DATABASE_ENGINE = ‘mysql’
DATABASE_NAME = ‘pootle’
DATABASE_USER = ‘pootle’
DATABASE_PASSWORD = ‘password’
DATABASE_HOST = ‘localhost’
DATABASE_PORT = ‘3389’

Install and configure Apache and mod_wsgi

sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-doc apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils libexpat1 ssl-cert libapache2-mod-wsgi

Open httpd.conf for apache and enter the Pootle configuration. If you modified any of the installation locations, edit it accordingly.

# point at the wsgi loader script
WSGIScriptAlias /pootle /var/www/Pootle/wsgi.py
# directly serve static files like css and images, no need to go through mod_wsgi and django
Alias /pootle/html /var/www/Pootle/html
<Directory /var/www/Pootle/html>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
# Allow downloading translation files directly
Alias /pootle/export /var/www/Pootle/po
<Directory /var/www/Pootle/po>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>

Restart apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Your Pootle translation platform instance should know be accessible at:
http://localhost/pootle