www.nico.schottelius.org/software/mbs.mdwn

[[!meta title="Machine Booking System (mbs)"]]

The machine booking system allows users of the ETH Zurich to book machines.
It could be easily adjusted to support other institutions, with or without
LDAP authentication.

## Installation

### Get mbs

    git clone git://git.schottelius.org/mbs

### Requirements

To get mbs up and running, you need ruby and rails and the gems specified
in the Gemfile. You may use [rvm](http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/)
to assist you, like the following commandline:

    rvm install ruby-1.8.7
    rvm ruby-1.8.7
    rvm gemset create mbs
    rvm ruby-1.8.7@mbs
    gem install bundler
    cd mbs/
    bundle install
 
### Initialise Database

    cd mbs
    rake db:setup 

You can also use

    rake bootstrap

to add some example data.

## Setup

After mbs is up and running, you need to setup some basic data, before
you can actually use it.

### Authentication

The authentication part is defined in
**app/controllers/application_controller.rb** and currently bound to
Nethz-LDAP-Authentication, but can easily be adopted to other
systems.

The nethz method uses the input username and password and binds to
ldaps02.ethz.ch (most reliable). If that succeeds, the username
is copied into the database, to create an id.

### Machines types

mbs is heavily focussed on machine types. So the first thing is to
select ***admin => machine types => new machine type*** and  create
a new machine type with a number of associated machines.

## Usage

Now you are ready to use mbs!

### Bookings

After you are authenticated, you can create bookings,
select **new booking**.

### Admin

The admin area is accessable for everybody, because everybody
authenticated is trusted.