Getting Started

Here are the basic steps to getting a demo copy of etch up and running. Once you're ready to progress to a production-grade install see our production setup page.

Etch can be run in either local mode (where the client reads configuration from a local directory), or client-server mode where the client talks to an etch server. To get an initial feel for etch you can start with local mode, then set up a server when you're ready to try etch out on multiple clients.

Local Mode

First up you need to install etch. If you already have ruby and rubygems then you just need to do:

• gem install etch

More client install details are documented here.

Then you'll need some sample configuration files. The etch source distribution comes with an etchserver-demo directory that can be used for your initial testing. It will tell etch to create a few files in /tmp so it should serve as a harmless demo.

To run etch against the sample configs unpack the source distribution and run:

etch --generate-all --interactive --local /path/to/etchserver-demo

Server

After you've tried out etch in local mode using just the client you can take the next step and set up the server, a Ruby on Rails application.

We provide a docker image of a demo etch server to make this easy:

• docker run -d -p 8080:8080 etch/serverdemo

More server install details are documented here.

At this point you should be able to connect to http://localhost:8080/ and see the etch dashboard where client statistics and results are reported.

The docker image contains the same demo files mentioned above. The server will tell etch to create a few files in /tmp so it should serve as a harmless demo.

Point the etch client to your server with etch --generate-all --interactive --server http://localhost:8080

And now you can go back to the etch dashboard at http://localhost:8080/ and see that the client reported the results of the test run.