Running DSpace: Technical overview, lessons learned, workflows and essential skills

Running Dspace

Technical overview, lessons learned, workflows

and essential skills

Alan Orth and Sisay Webshet

Dspace Ethiopia Interest Group Meeting

Addis Ababa, 28 October 2013

DSpace Instances

Hosted at CGNET in California, USA

CGSpace DSpace Test

One server, two instances...

Instance Overview

CGSpace(cgspace.cgiar.org)

● “Production”● Should always be up &

stable● Is the “reference”

implementation

DSpace Test(dspacetest.cgiar.org)

● “Development”● Changes to style,

functionality, DSpace etc are tested here first

● Sometimes wiped clean

Two DSpaces, one server!

Living With Legacy Decisions...

CGSpace and DSpace Test on the same machine…

● In 2010 CGSpace had a fraction of the content, users, etc, so it didn’t affect the running of the system

● Not true anymore!● 100s of 1000s of monthly views...● Large assetstore, log files, RAM / CPU usage, etc

(Near) Future Plans

cgspace.cgiar.org dspacetest.cgiar.org

Separate instances on Amazon EC2!

CGSpace Code Is 100% Open

Source code is on github: github.com/ilri/DSpace

How The Code Is Organized

Production code lives in the 3_x-prod branch; this is stable, tested code. Updates (if any) come from the development branch on Monday.

Development code lives in the 3_x-dev branch; this is semi-tested code! Changes throughout the week.

“Social Coding” on GitHub

● Anyone can “fork” the code repository to their own GitHub account

● Source code repositories can share code via “pull requests”

● Developers can comment on changes and discuss issues

GitHub “OctoCat”

“Pull request” from @mire introducing the CUA module

All changes were not created equal...

● Sending changes is good, but leaves the burden of merging to me

● Sending patches is better, but requires sender to know how to generate them

● Sending a pull request is best, but requires sender knows how to use git, branches, etc

Workflow Lessons Learned

Go Forth And Fork!

… and send pull requests!

Scenario: Create A New Theme

Creating an XMLUI theme for a new community

1. Create community in DSpace (ie, 10568/38440)2. Add custom metadata (ie, cg.subject.bioversity)3. Add custom submission template (input-forms.xml)4. Copy existing XMLUI theme (ie ILRI) as a reference, and

customize for center-specific metadata, look & feel, etc5. Update search & browse indexes (dspace.cfg)6. Update XMLUI config for new theme (xmlui.xconf)

DSpace Sysadmin Crashcourse

DSpace...● is a Java application● builds using maven and ant● uses PostgreSQL as a database backend● stores PDFs and other blobs in the filesystem

(“assetstore”)● runs best on Linux

CGSpace Stack

Apache httpd

Apache Tomcat

PostgreSQL Bitstreams

Debian GNU/Linux

Why Not Use Tomcat Directly?

Any sysadmin will tell you that working with Tomcat is a joy*. Surprisingly**, these things are annoying in Tomcat:● Virtual hosting● SSL● redirects● caching and manipulating headers

*for some definitions of “joy”**not surprising, actually

Essential Technical Skills

Managing a DSpace instance doesn’t require “programmers” or “developers” (but it doesn’t hurt).

Mainly, you’ll need:● Linux experience (Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu)● Administration experience (web servers, log files, cron jobs,

security)● Software development concepts (git, patches,

branching/merging)

The presentation has a Creative Commons licence. You are free to re-use or distribute this work, provided credit is given to ILRI.

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