Introduction
If you’re working in an Educational institution, probably you’ve heard about Dspace which is used to setup Digital Repository System. Digital Repository is nothing but a Centralized storage place which can be used to store and distribute any digital contents to the client systems, whether it may be a video, audio, document files etc. So, the students of the Institution can be able to browse the contents or download and store them on their local drive for later reference. We can store online lectures, course materials, syllabus, Q&A documents and all kind of contents used for students in the Digital Repository. By this way, the students can access the digital contents either from his/her Laptop, Desktop, or any mobile devices via LAN or WAN.
Dspace is an open source and free application used by 1000+ educational institutions around the world. The MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard (HP) originally developed DSpace, but the software is now supported by DuraSpace. Using Dspace, we can setup Digital Repository for any institutions and store thousands of video lectures, books etc. As you may know, many popular Universities like IIT, IIMK, Harverd, MIT etc, has their own digital repository and have stored tons of course materials for their students. You can see the complete list of institutions that are using Dspace here.
Supported Digital contents
DSpace accepts all manner of digital formats.
- Documents, such as articles, preprints, working papers, technical reports, conference papers
- Books
- Theses
- Data sets
- Computer programs
- Visualizations, simulations, and other models
- Multimedia publications
- Administrative records
- Published books
- Overlay journals
- Bibliographic datasets
- Images
- Audio files
- Video files
- e-formatted digital library collections
- Learning objects
- Web pages
Minimum Hardware Requirements
- Any modern workstation or server(Preferably Quad core server).
- 4GB or more RAM
- 200GB or more Hdd
The storage may vary depending upon the size of the contents that you want to store.
In this brief tutorial, let me teach you how to setup our own Digital Repository using Dspace on Ubuntu 14.04 32bit server. However, the steps provided in this document are same for all Ubuntu based systems.
Scenario
As I said before, for the purpose of this tutorial, I have a test server running with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32bit edition. My test box details are given below.
- OS: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32bit Server
- IP Address: 192.168.1.250/24
- Hostname: server.unixmen.local
Prerequisites
Before installing Dsapce, we have to install the following important softwares.
- Java (JDK)
- Apache Ant, Maven, Tomcat
- PostgreSQL
Before installing the above prerequisites, update your server.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
Run the following command to install the above prerequisites all at once.
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk ant maven tomcat7 postgresql
Now, check the packages are properly installed as shown below.
Check Java:
java -version
Sample output:
java version "1.7.0_55" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 2.4.7) (7u55-2.4.7-1ubuntu1) OpenJDK Client VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode, sharing)
Check Ant:
ant -version
Sample output:
Apache Ant(TM) version 1.9.3 compiled on April 8 2014
Check Postgresql:
/etc/init.d/postgresql status
Sample output:
9.3/main (port 5432): online
Check Tomcat:
sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 status
Sample output:
* Tomcat servlet engine is running with pid 11402
Check Maven:
mvn -version
Sample output:
Apache Maven 3.0.5 Maven home: /usr/share/maven Java version: 1.7.0_55, vendor: Oracle Corporation Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-i386/jre Default locale: en_IN, platform encoding: UTF-8 OS name: "linux", version: "3.13.0-24-generic", arch: "i386", family: "unix"
Open up the /etc/postgresql/9.3/main/pg_hba.conf file:
sudo vi /etc/postgresql/9.3/main/pg_hba.conf
Add the following line shown in red color.
[...]
local all postgres peer
# TYPE DATABASE USER ADDRESS METHOD
# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local all dspace md5
local all all peer
# IPv4 local connections:
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host all all ::1/128 md5
[...]
Make sure the above line is added on the top of the local section. Save and close the file. Restart postgresql service.
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
Create Dspace user
First, create a system user (normal operating system user) called dspace.
sudo useradd -m dspace
Create database user:
Log in to postgresql:
sudo su postgres
Next, we will create a database called “dspace” and database user called “dspace” with password “dspace”. Don’t confuse database user with normal user. Both are different.
createuser -U postgres -d -A -P dspace Enter password for new role: ## Enter password for the user dsapce Enter it again: ## Re-enter password
Create database:
createdb -U dspace -E UNICODE dspace Password: ## Enter dspace user password.
After creating the database and user, type “exit” from the postgresql prompt and return back to normal user.
exit
Download Dspace
Create one new directory called dspace. This is the main directory that will hold the actual dspace application files after compilation. You can choose different directory as your liking.
cd / sudo mkdir dspace
Download the latest version from the official download link. At the time writing this document, the latest stable version is 4.1.
sudo wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/dspace/files/DSpace%20Stable/4.1/dspace-4.1-release.zip
Extract the downloaded zip file.
sudo unzip dspace-4.1-release.zip
The above command will extract the dspace source zip file in the current directory. Change the ownership to the above directories to user “dspace”.
sudo chown dspace.dspace dspace/ -R sudo chown dspace.dspace dspace-4.1-release/ -R
Now, switch to dspace user:
sudo su dspace
Go the the dspace directory:
cd /dspace-4.1-release/
Then, Edit file build.properties,
vi build.properties
And, change the following values to fit into your organization details.
[...] # SERVER CONFIGURATION # ########################## # DSpace installation directory. This is the location where you want # to install DSpace. NOTE: this value will be copied over to the # "dspace.dir" setting in the final "dspace.cfg" file. It can be # modified later on in your "dspace.cfg", if needed. dspace.install.dir=/dspace # DSpace host name - should match base URL. Do not include port number dspace.hostname = localhost # DSpace base host URL. Include port number etc. dspace.baseUrl = http://localhost:8080 dspace.url = ${dspace.baseUrl}/jspui # Name of the site dspace.name = Unixmen Digital Repository # Solr server solr.server=http://localhost:8080/solr # Default language for metadata values default.language = en_US ########################## # DATABASE CONFIGURATION # ########################## # Database name ("oracle", or "postgres") db.name=postgres # Uncomment the appropriate block below for your database. # postgres db.driver=org.postgresql.Driver db.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/dspace db.username=dspace db.password=dspace
Save and close the file.
Now, start compiling the dspace. Make sure your server is connected to Internet. It is must to download all the necessary files during compilation.
Run the following command to start compiling from the dspace source directory (dspace-4.1-src-release):
mvn package
This command will download all necessary files from the Internet. Be patient, It will take a while depending upon the Internet speed.
After completing the build process successfully, you should see the following BUILD SUCCESS message.
Then, go to the build directory,
cd /dspace-4.1-release/dspace/target/dspace-4.1-build/
and enter the following command:
ant fresh_install
Wait for few minutes to complete. After a successful installation, you should see the “BUILD SUCCESSFUL” message.
The DSpace has been installed. To complete installation, you should do the following:
Get back as normal system user:
exit
Setup your Web servlet container (e.g. Tomcat) to look for your DSpace web applications in: /dspace/webapps/ directory.
OR, copy any web applications from /dspace/webapps/ to the appropriate place for your servlet container. For example, ‘$CATALINA_HOME/webapps’ for Tomcat.
First set the environment variables to Tomcat server.
Edit file /etc/profile,
sudo vi /etc/profile
Add the following lines at the end:
[...] export CATALINA_BASE=/var/lib/tomcat7 export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/share/tomcat7
Save and close the file. Then, run the following command to take effect the environment variables settings.
source /etc/profile
Now, copy the dspace/webapps directory contents to the tomcat webapps directory.
sudo cp -r /dspace/webapps/* $CATALINA_BASE/webapps/
Create Administrator Account
Now, make an initial administrator account (an e-person) in DSpace:
sudo /dspace/bin/dspace create-administrator
Enter the email address and password to log in to dspace administrative panel.
Creating an initial administrator account E-mail address: sk@unixmen.com First name: Senthilkumar Last name: Palani WARNING: Password will appear on-screen. Password: dspace Again to confirm: dspace Is the above data correct? (y or n): y Administrator account created
Restart Tomcat service.
sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat7 restart
Access Dspace Home page
Now, You should then be able to access your DSpace home page.
XMLUI interface:
http://ip-address:8080/xmlui
Or,
JSPUI Interface:
http://ip-address:8080/jspui
Congratulations! Dspace is ready now. Start using Dspace. In my next tutorial, I will show you how to upload contents to the Dspace repository. Stay tuned.
Cheers!
