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1. First, attempt to determine if it really is a bug by asking on the DSpace-Tech mailing list to see if others have encountered this same problem.
2. Once you've verified it with someone else, please submit a bug report to GitHub Issues. Try to be as descriptive as you can, and detail the steps that someone else would need to take to encounter this same problem.
   • Frontend (User Interface) issues: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues
   • Backend  (REST API) issues: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues
   • (If you aren't sure where to report it, choose either one. We can move it to a different location as needed.)
3. One of the developers will review this bug and get back to you. Don't be surprised if he/she asks some followup questions. The developer may need to figure out exactly how you encountered the bug so that he/she can figure out the best way to fix it.

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1. First, attempt to determine if this feature will be useful to everyone using DSpace. The best way to do this is to describe this feature in an email to the DSpace-Tech mailing list in order to begin the discussion.
2. Once you've determined your feature would be useful to all, please submit a feature request to GitHub Issues. Try to be as descriptive as possible. Describe the feature in as much detail as you can. Make sure to also describe why you feel this feature would be useful (i.e. what is the use case?)
   1. Frontend (User Interface) issues: https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues
   2. Backend  (REST API) issues: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues
   3. (If you aren't sure where to report it, choose either one. We can move it to a different location as needed.)
3. Once your feature request is made, the DSpace developers will begin to review it and determine if a volunteer would step up to help developing it. Please be patient. Sometimes a volunteer can be found quickly. Other times it can take a while. If you can help us locate a volunteer developer, it is even more likely that the feature can be developed relatively quickly. If you don't hear anything for a while, follow-up with the DSpace developers by posting a comment to your initial feature request in Jira.

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From the Documentation, see Storage Layer (which describes the basics for backing up your database and file storage). Also see AIP Backup and Restore, which describes how to backup your DSpace to a set of Archival Information Packages (AIPs).

Finally, there is a somewhat outdated summary at BackupRestore.

How do I run DSpace on port 80/443?

The official Installation Documentation provides a section on "DSpace over HTTPS" which describes how to configure Apache HTTPD (responding on ports 80 and 443) to redirect to a DSpace running on Apache Tomcat.  There are many other guides out on the web for redirecting requests from Apache HTTPD (running on ports 80/443) to Apache Tomcat (usually this redirect is configured via either mod_proxy_ajp or mod_jk). Those guides should also work for DSpace, as DSpace requires no special configurations for Apache HTTPD + Apache Tomcat.Also see Running DSpace on Standard Ports for further examples for how this could be achieved.

Do I need HTTPS (SSL)?

The official Installation Documentation provides  provides a section on "DSpace over HTTPS" which describes enable HTTPS either in Tomcat directly, or in Apache HTTPD (and redirecting requests to Tomcat).

Also see SecuringDspace,

Also ServletSecurity for more details.

How do I run DSpace on Windows?

See Installing DSpace on Windows

How do you append data from a test server to a production environment?

Many people have two installs of DSpace: a test server and a production server. The problem is how to take data from the test server and integrate (move, append, migrate, etc.) it into the production server. The most common example is when you are ready to move a new collection from test into production. Note that this is a somewhat different problem than the need to move all data from a test server and completely overwrite any data on the production system, which may happen when first moving out of test and into production. RichardJones covers that scenario more completely here, along with a number of other DSpace-related topics.

The main problem in accomplishing this task easily is that some of the metadata will be duplicated if the export from your test server is imported directly and without modification into the production server. In particular, the following metadata elements will be affected:

• identifier.url
• description.provenance
• date.accessioned
• date.available
• date.issued
• format.extent
• format.mimetype
  All of these values should be deleted to avoid duplication, except for date.issued if the items have been published or publicly distributed before. However, Cody Green has written a bash shell script that will traverse a DSpace export (e.g., from your test server) and fix the metadata. Here is the link to that script: http://sunsite.utk.edu/diglib/dspace/dspace_migrate.sh (please note that the script will remove the date.issued field for all records).
  Also, the script is now included in the latest release.

Are there any tips on running DSpace on RedHat/Fedora Core Linux?

Many people have run into trouble getting DSpace running on Redhat/Fedora Core Linux, specifically, encountering CLASSPATH errors and relating to libgcj.
The easiest way to resolve this is to remove all the PM-based Java components, and install the original binary packages: Java SDK from Sun, and Ant and Tomcat from Apache.org.
To remove the PM Java stuff, do:

rpm \-e libgcj

This will probably throw up a load of dependency errors. You'll need to remove the packages that depend on libgcj too.
Another useful list from RichardJones of packages he had to remove from Fedora Core 2:

libgcj
gcc-java-3.3.3-7
libgcj-devel-3.3.3-7
gettext-0.14.1-2.1
gcc34-java-3.4.0-1
ant-1.5.2-26
tomcat-4.1.27-13

Clive Gould has published a very useful blog explaining how to get DSpace working with a default install of CentOS 5.x, including Apache/Tomcat integration.

The Post Street Archives in Midland, Michigan with funding from the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation worked with a team of students at Michigan Technological University to install DSpace for their digital archives. They produced http://www.poststreetarchives.org/DSpaceInstall.pdf this set of installation instructions for novice users on Fedora Core 4.

You also may wish to check Installation Guides for additional installation tips/suggestions relating to specific operating systems.

filter-media Hangs While Creating Search Index

If filter-media appears to hang after it creates the thumbnails and indexes text content, you may consider running filter-media as root. For some reason, certain users report that filter-media will hang after printing the following message:
Creating search index:

My personal experience shows that this happens when I run it as dspace, but not as root. Not sure yet why this happens, but this may be a quick fix until it is sorted out. Also, bear this potential "problem" in mind when setting up cron jobs for filter-media, index-all, and others. 

Also note that running index-all as dspace does not hang, even though it does (apparently) the same thing.

Setting logging level up to DEBUG

If something doesn't seem to be working, you can often find out more by upping the logging level of DSpace. To do this:

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Change the level by changing this line:

log4j.rootCategory=INFO, A1

to this:

log4j.rootCategory=DEBUG, A1

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Now you'll find there's a lot more information in [dspace]/log/dspace.log. You can switch on and off logging for particular DSpace classes. For example, if you just want to know about SQL queries going to the database, you could leave the main level above as INFO, and instead add the following line (then restart Tomcat):

log4j.logger.org.dspace.storage.rdbms.DatabaseManager=DEBUG, A1

More information about DSpace log files is available in the DSpace System Documentation.

How do I add/index/display another Dublin Core field?

Adding a new Dublin Core field can be done from the Administrative User Interface of DSpace.

• Login as an Administrator, and look for the page called "Metadata Schema Registry".

After you've added a new field, you can add it to the Search (Lucene) Index or Browse Index by following the directions in the "Configuration and Customization" chapter of the DSpace System Documentation.

In that chapter you'll also find hints/tips on customizing your User Interface display to show this new field.

Additional help can be found in the on this wiki.

How do I add a field to the submission UI?

The DSpace System Documentation includes a chapter titled "Customizing and Configuring Submission User Interface" which details how to make this and many other Submission UI customizations.

How do I add a field to the Lucene search index?

The DSpace System Documentation includes a section on "Configuring Lucene Search Indexes" in the chapter on "Configuration and Customization".

How do I add a field to the simple item display page?

See the on this wiki for more help.

I've made a lot of modifications to DSpace, and I want to bring my code up to date with a later version of DSpace. What's the easiest way to do that?

We recommend using Git's merge features to help manage this. See Development with Git for some sample workflows.

When trying to add content to DSpace, all of the fields filled out appear null.

After setting up the DSpace database and properly setting up the application, most functionality appears normal. However, when adding content all the fields are null when it comes time to review a content submission. The Java errors thrown revolve around a null pointer exception.

• The root cause of the problem is that the database is set up using some character encoding other than UTF-8. The database must be set up using UTF-8 character encoding.

How do I run DSpace with Apache and Tomcat using the mod_jk connector?

See ModJk.

How do I run multiple instances of DSpace in one Tomcat Server?

See MultipleDspaceOneServer

How do localise the Creative Commons license?

See LocaliseCreativeCommons

DSPACE with ISO-8859-1 and others encodings

If you want to use an encoding other than UTF-8 you can edit the file src/org/dspace/storage/rdbms/DatabaseManager.java and modify the next lines

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Use the same instructions as the Installation Documentation.  DSpace can be installed on any Operating System.  For Windows, though you may need to use backslashes (\) in paths instead of forward slashes (/).

Setting logging level up to DEBUG

See our Troubleshoot an error guide for details

I've made a lot of modifications to DSpace, and I want to bring my code up to date with a later version of DSpace. What's the easiest way to do that?

We recommend using Git's merge features to help manage this. See Development with Git for some sample workflows.

Clearing Cocoon (XMLUI) cache

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