How to install CKAN 2.5 from source on Debian 8 "Jessie" [Deprecated] - ckan/ckan GitHub Wiki

We will be using a fresh Debian 8 system with minimum installation options. Without user interface and no web server. This installation is only for testing or development purposes.

Login as root and install the sudo package to run the command line instructions with super user permissions safely:

apt-get install sudo

Logout as root and login with the user that will install and run CKAN. Then install the required packages for CKAN:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install python-dev postgresql libpq-dev python-pip python-virtualenv git-core solr-jetty

It is not necessary to install the openjdk-6-jdk package because Debian 8 comes with open-jdk-7 pre-installed, and has no issue running the solr server

Create a Python virtual environment (virtualenv) to install CKAN into, and activate it. In the following command line text you have to substitute the 'username' with the name of the user that will run the CKAN application, and choose your installation path by setting $ckpath.

ckpath=/usr/lib/ckan/default/
sudo mkdir -p ${ckpath}

sudo chown <username> ${ckpath}

virtualenv --no-site-packages ${ckpath}

. ${ckpath}/bin/activate

The final command above activates your virtualenv. The virtualenv has to remain active for the rest of the installation and deployment process, or commands will fail. You can tell when a virtualenv is active because its name appears in front of your shell prompt, and will look something like this:

(default) $ _

For example, if you close your current terminal session, your virtualenv will no longer be activated. You can always reactivate the virtualenv with this command:

. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate

Install the CKAN source code into your virtualenv. To install the latest stable release of CKAN (CKAN 2.5.2), run:

pip install -e 'git+https://github.com/ckan/[email protected]#egg=ckan'

We will test the installation with the 2.5.2 version. If you want to install another version just change the CKAN version in the previous command line text.

If you’re installing CKAN for development, you may want to install the latest development version (the most recent commit on the master branch of the CKAN git repository). In that case, run this command instead:

pip install -e 'git+https://github.com/ckan/ckan.git#egg=ckan'

Just remember that this version may contain bugs.

Install the Python modules that CKAN requires into your virtualenv:

pip install -r ${ckpath}/src/ckan/requirements.txt

Deactivate and reactivate your virtualenv, to make sure you’re using the virtualenv’s copies of commands like paster rather than any system-wide installed copies:

deactivate

. ${ckpath}/bin/activate

List existing databases:

sudo -u postgres psql -l

Check that the encoding of any existing database is UTF8, else you may run into problems with non-ascii characters (e.g. 蠨,ဂ). Since changing the encoding of PostgreSQL may mean deleting existing databases, it is suggested that you remedy this before continuing with the CKAN install.

If you need to change the encoding of the data bases procede like this:

• First we need to drop template1. As templates cannot be dropped, we first need to change it to an ordinary database:

UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = FALSE WHERE datname = 'template1'; 

• After that, it is possible to drop it:

DROP DATABASE template1;

• The next step is to create a new database from template0 with a new default encoding. (In PostgreSQL, Unicode is synonymous with UTF-8.)

CREATE DATABASE template1 WITH TEMPLATE = template0 ENCODING = 'UNICODE';

• Now we need to change template1 back to the template:

UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = TRUE WHERE datname = 'template1';

• Now you can create a new database by running from regular shell.

Next you’ll need to create a database user if one doesn’t already exist. Create a new PostgreSQL database user called ckan_default, and enter a password for the user when prompted. You’ll need this password later:

sudo -u postgres createuser -S -D -R -P ckan_default

Create a new PostgreSQL database, called ckan_default, owned by the database user you just created:

sudo -u postgres createdb -O ckan_default ckan_default -E utf-8

Note:

If PostgreSQL is run on a separate server, you will need to edit postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf. For PostgreSQL 9.1 on Ubuntu, these files are located in /etc/postgresql/9.1/main.

Uncomment the listen_addresses parameter and specify a comma-separated list of IP addresses of the network interfaces >PostgreSQL should listen on or ‘*’ to listen on all interfaces. For example,

listen_addresses = 'localhost,192.168.1.21'

Add a line similar to the line below to the bottom of pg_hba.conf to allow the machine running Apache to connect to PostgreSQL. Please change the IP address as desired according to your network settings.

host all all 192.168.1.22/32 md5

Create a directory to contain the site’s config files:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/ckan/default

sudo chown -R username /etc/ckan/

Change the username with the name of your user.

paster make-config ckan /etc/ckan/default/development.ini

Edit the development.ini file in a text editor, changing the following options:

sqlalchemy.url

This should refer to the database we created in step 3 Setup a PostgreSQL database above:

sqlalchemy.url = postgresql://ckan_default:pass@localhost/ckan_default

Replace pass with the password that you created in 3. Setup a PostgreSQL database above. If you’re using a remote host with password authentication rather than SSL authentication, use:

sqlalchemy.url = postgresql://ckan_default:pass@<remotehost>/ckan_default?sslmode=disable

Each CKAN site should have a unique site_id, for example:

ckan.site_id = default

Provide the site’s URL (used when putting links to the site into the FileStore, notification emails etc). For example:

ckan.site_url = http://demo.ckan.org

CKAN uses Solr as its search platform, and uses a customized Solr schema file that takes into account CKAN’s specific search needs. Now that we have CKAN installed, we need to install and configure Solr.

These instructions explain how to setup Solr with a single core. If you want multiple applications, or multiple instances of CKAN, to share the same Solr server then you probably want a multi-core Solr setup instead. See Multicore Solr Setup.

These instructions explain how to deploy Solr using the Jetty web server, but CKAN doesn’t require Jetty - you can deploy Solr to another web server, such as Tomcat, if that’s convenient on your operating system.

Edit the Jetty configuration file (/etc/default/jetty) and change the following variables:

NO_START=0 # (line 4)

JETTY_HOST=127.0.0.1 # (line 16)

JETTY_PORT=8983 # (line 19)

This JETTY_HOST setting will only allow connections from the same machine. If CKAN is not installed on the same machine as Jetty/Solr you will need to change it to the relevant host or to 0.0.0.0 (and probably set up your firewall accordingly).

Start the Jetty server:

sudo service jetty8 start

You should now see a welcome page from Solr if you open http://localhost:8983/solr/ in your web browser (replace localhost with your server address if needed).

Replace the default schema.xml file with a symlink to the CKAN schema file included in the sources.

sudo mv /etc/solr/conf/schema.xml /etc/solr/conf/schema.xml.bak

sudo ln -s ${ckpath}/src/ckan/ckan/config/solr/schema.xml /etc/solr/conf/schema.xml

Now restart Solr:

sudo service jetty8 restart

and check that Solr is running by opening http://localhost:8983/solr/.

Finally, change the solr_url setting in your CKAN config file to point to your Solr server, for example:

solr_url=http://127.0.0.1:8983/solr

Now that you have a configuration file that has the correct settings for your database, you can create the database tables:

cd ${ckpath}/src/ckan

paster --plugin=ckan db init -c /etc/ckan/default/development.ini

You should see:

> Initialising DB: SUCCESS.

Note This may fail with ImportError: No module named sanitizer due to https://github.com/ckan/ckan/issues/3257. As mentioned in the link you can pip install --upgrade bleach or install CKAN version 2.5.3 to workaround.

Setting up the DataStore is optional. However, if you do skip this step, the DataStore features will not be available and the DataStore tests will fail.

Follow the instructions in DataStore extension to create the required databases and users, set the right permissions and set the appropriate values in your CKAN config file.

who.ini (the Repoze.who configuration file) needs to be accessible in the same directory as your CKAN config file, so create a symlink to it:

ln -s ${ckpath}/src/ckan/who.ini /etc/ckan/default/who.ini

You can now use the Paste development server to serve CKAN from the command-line. This is a simple and lightweight way to serve CKAN that is useful for development and testing:

cd ${ckpath}/src/ckan

paster serve --daemon /etc/ckan/default/development.ini

Open http://127.0.0.1:5000/ in a web browser, and you should see the CKAN front page.

paster serve /etc/ckan/default/development.ini stop

Now that you’ve installed CKAN, you should:

Run CKAN’s tests to make sure that everything’s working, see Testing CKAN.

If you want to use your CKAN site as a production site, not just for testing or development purposes, then deploy CKAN using a production web server such as Apache or Nginx. See Deploying a source install.

Begin using and customizing your site, see Getting started.

In order to facilitate the start and stop of the ckan application in your debian machine, you can create the following bash scripts:

 #!/bin/bash

sudo service jetty8 start

. ${ckpath}/bin/activate

paster serve /etc/ckan/default/development.ini

#!/bin/bash

paster serve /etc/ckan/default/development.ini stop

deactivate

sudo service jetty8 stop

After the creation of the files you have set permissions for execution:

chmod 755 [path_to_the_script]/start_ckan.sh

chmod 755 [path_to_the_script]/stop_ckan.sh

To start and stop all the ckan services just run this scripts:

. [path_to_the_script]/start_ckan.sh

. [path_to_the_script]/stop_ckan.sh

The start ckan script can be defined to run when the system start. For that just copy the start script to the /etc/init.d/ directory, set permission for execution and execute the following command:

update-rc.d start_ckan.sh defaults