“New” Omgcatz Setup Guide

 So about a month ago, the creator of omgcatz, cadejsroggins, decided to stop hosting the website that we all know and love to get our 8tracks fix. 

Naturally, I was quite distressed at this. BUT, never fear, for you too can host your very own version of omgcatz...right from your own computer! For free! And for those of you who balk at the setup instructions provided in the README.md, fear not. For I, the humble computer science major, am here to help you keep that sweet, sweet music flowing. 

Important note: I tried this guide with my roommate who has Windows 10 and it doesn’t work...this is because one of the 3 programs you need to install hasn’t released a stable version for Windows 10 yet. Once they do this should work, but until then you are out of luck. I haven’t tried this on Windows 8 because I don’t have access to one of those computers, so if you encounter issues, just PM me and I’ll make a separate guide and bum one of my roommates’ computer for a while to see if I can get it working. 

It looked like others on Windows were having a lot of issues in the developer’s GitHub pages. This guide should let it work on Windows...in theory. 

If you use a Mac, you’re in luck...because it definitely works. 

Alright! Here we go:

Step 1: Follow this link to the Readme.md and keep it open in a separate tab, since we’ll be referencing it frequently during setup. 

Step 2: Unless you’re a developer or very tech-savy, you probably won’t have the three required programs that omgcatz needs to run. Follow these two links to VirtualBox and Vagrant. Install these for your correct operating system  (Note: If you use Windows 10, VirtualBox doesn’t officially support it yet. This means that you can’t set it up using this guide until they have official support. I tried this setup guide on my roommate’s computer on the Windows 5.0.x testbuild which should have worked here but doesn’t. Sorry Windows 10 people!! If you’re really desperate there is a way to revert back to Windows 8 if you installed Windows 10 within 30 days of today, though I can’t guarantee this works on Windows 8. Google it to learn how!). 

Basically we will be running a virtual machine that the developer of omgcatz has configured to run correctly with all the things we are going to download from GitHub (a place where developers keep their code and continually update it). 

Step 2.5: Install Git so we can use the terminal commands that cadejsroggins has provided for us. Mac click here. Windows click here. 

For windows (skip this paragraph if in Mac): when the installer changes to “Adjusting your PATH environment” choose “Use Git from the Windows Commands Prompt”. For “Configuring the Ending Conversions” keep the “Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings”. For “Configuring the terminal emulator to use Git Bash” keep the top choice: “Use MinTTY”. Do not enable file system caching. 

NOW RESTART YOUR COMPUTER ONCE ALL THREE ARE INSTALLED. I cannot stress this enough. The following steps won’t work if you do not restart your computer to let the programs finish installing. 

Step 3: Alright, this is the cool part where you get code running across your screen and anyone looking over your shoulder will think you’re a super-hacker.  

It should be noted that things may pop up on their own after each command. Things that look like this:

Don’t worry about it. Wait until you see a little flashing cursor before typing any new commands into the terminal. it should look something like this:

Alright, let’s get started. Open the Terminal application (or command line if on windows) and type and press enter:

git clone https://github.com/cadejscroggins/omgcatz && cd omgcatz

This command tells your computer to get all the files from cadejscroggins’ repository in GitHub and copy them into a folder named omgcatz. Then it tells your terminal to move into the just-made omgcatz folder. 

Step 4: Now enter the following:

vagrant up

This sets up the virtual machine. 

Step 5: Now enter this line of code and press enter:

vagrant ssh -c "sudo /var/www/html/_install/setup.sh"

This sets up the virtual machine with the omgcatz stuff. If you’re running windows, you’ll get a scary error message that looks something like “`ssh` executable not found in any directories in the %PATH% variable.” So far other people have gotten this error too. Follow this guide by looking at the comments (each have different ways to achieve the same goal). Choose the one that seems easiest and once it’s working: then try the above code. It should resolve the issue. 

Be careful on this step: if your computer disconnects from the internet the first time you try to set up the script (or you close it out or something), it will create a temporary file and give you an error message when you try to resume downloading. Go to the folder ~/.vagrant.d/tmp via “Go to Folder” in Finder and delete the file there and attempt to rerun if this happens. 

Now fill out the following things that pop up like in the picture below. EXCEPT for “MySQL password” type out “vagrant”. If you’re on Mac, it looks like nothing is being typed, however this is not true, you just can’t see it. Type in “vagrant” and press enter. 

CONGRATS! You did it and can access omgcatz from localhost:8080. 

Now, just a few housekeeping things. After a little while the vm will turn off. No problem, just open a Command Line or Terminal, enter:

cd omgcatz (then press enter)

vagrant up (then press enter)

If you have any issues with this guide, please PM me and I’ll try my best to help you out! Enjoy the music!