For the Impatient

Since some users might want to get their test version up and running as fast as possible, offered below is an unsupported outline of getting DSpace to run quickly in a Unix-based environment using the DSpace source release.

Only experienced unix admins should even attempt the following without going to the detailed Installation Instructions

useradd -m dspace
gzip xzf dspace-6.x-src-release.tar.gz
createuser --username=postgres --no-superuser --pwprompt dspace
createdb --username=postgres --owner=dspace --encoding=UNICODE dspace
psql --username=postgres dspace -c "CREATE EXTENSION pgcrypto;"
cd [dspace-source]/dspace/config/
cp local.cfg.EXAMPLE local.cfg
vi local.cfg
mkdir [dspace]
chown dspace [dspace]
su - dspace
cd [dspace-source]
mvn package
cd [dspace-source]/dspace/target/dspace-installer
ant fresh_install
cp -r [dspace]/webapps/* [tomcat]/webapps
/etc/init.d/tomcat start
[dspace]/bin/dspace create-administrator

Hardware Recommendations

You can install and run DSpace on most modern PC, laptop or server hardware. However, if you intend to run DSpace for a large community of potential end users, carefully review the Hardware Recommendations in the User FAQ

Prerequisite Software

The list below describes the third-party components and tools you'll need to run a DSpace server. These are just guidelines. Since DSpace is built on open source, standards-based tools, there are numerous other possibilities and setups.

Also, please note that the configuration and installation guidelines relating to a particular tool below are here for convenience. You should refer to the documentation for each individual component for complete and up-to-date details. Many of the tools are updated on a frequent basis, and the guidelines below may become out of date.

UNIX-like OS or Microsoft Windows

Java JDK 7 or 8 (OpenJDK or Oracle JDK)

OpenJDK download and installation instructions can be found here http://openjdk.java.net/install/.  Most operating systems provide an easy path to install OpenJDK. Just be sure to install the full JDK (development kit), and not the JRE (which is often the default example).

Oracle's Java can be downloaded from the following location: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html. Make sure to download the appropriate version of the Java SE JDK.

 At this time, DSpace requires the full JDK (Java Development Kit) be installed, rather than just the JRE (Java Runtime Environment).  So, please be sure that you are installing the full JDK and not just the JRE.

Be aware that Tomcat 7 uses Java 1.6 to compile JSPs by default. See information about Tomcat below on how to configure it to use Java 1.7 for JSPs. Tomcat 8 uses Java 1.7 for JSPs by default. If you use another Servlet Container please refer to its documentation on this matter.

If you plan to use the (optional) Elasticsearch Usage Statistics feature in DSpace, the ElasticSearch backend provides its own recommendations regarding Java version.

http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/setup.html

"Elasticsearch is built using Java, and requires at least Java 7 in order to run. Only Oracle’s Java and the OpenJDK are supported. We recommend installing the Java 8 update 20 or later , or Java 7 update 55 or later . Previous versions of Java 7 are known to have bugs that can cause index corruption and data loss."

(However, if you plan to use the Solr-based Usage Statistics that are enabled by default within DSpace, you can ignore these additional requirements.)

Apache Maven 3.0.5 or above (Java build tool)

Maven is necessary in the first stage of the build process to assemble the installation package for your DSpace instance. It gives you the flexibility to customize DSpace using the existing Maven projects found in the [dspace-source]/dspace/modules directory or by adding in your own Maven project to build the installation package for DSpace, and apply any custom interface "overlay" changes.

If you will be building the Mirage 2 theme, you will need Maven 3.1 or above.

Maven can be downloaded from the following location: http://maven.apache.org/download.html

Configuring a Proxy

You can configure a proxy to use for some or all of your HTTP requests in Maven. The username and password are only required if your proxy requires basic authentication (note that later releases may support storing your passwords in a secured keystore‚ in the mean time, please ensure your settings.xml file (usually ${user.home}/.m2/settings.xml) is secured with permissions appropriate for your operating system).

Example:

<settings>
  .
  .
  <proxies>
   <proxy>
      <active>true</active>
      <protocol>http</protocol>
      <host>proxy.somewhere.com</host>
      <port>8080</port>
      <username>proxyuser</username>
      <password>somepassword</password>
      <nonProxyHosts>www.google.com|*.somewhere.com</nonProxyHosts>
    </proxy>
  </proxies>
  .
  .
</settings>

Apache Ant 1.8 or later (Java build tool)

Apache Ant is required for the second stage of the build process (deploying/installing the application). First, Maven is used to construct the installer ([dspace-source]/dspace/target/dspace-installer), after which Ant is used to install/deploy DSpace to the installation directory.

Ant can be downloaded from the following location: http://ant.apache.org

Relational Database: (PostgreSQL or Oracle)

PostgreSQL 9.4 or later (with pgcrypto installed)

PostgreSQL users MUST ensure they are running 9.4 or above AND have the pgcrypto extension installed and enabled.

The pgcrypto extension allows DSpace to create UUIDs (universally unique identifiers) for all objects in DSpace, which means that (internal) object identifiers are now globally unique and no longer tied to database sequences.

Oracle 10g or later

Servlet Engine (Apache Tomcat 7 or later, Jetty, Caucho Resin or equivalent)

Tomcat 8.0.32 (found e.g. in Debian 9 Stretch and Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial) has a bug which will cause PropertyBatchUpdateException or StringIndexOutOfBoundsException.  This was fixed in 8.0.33.  More information can be found in DS-3142.

If you are using Tomcat 7, we recommend running Tomcat 7.0.30 or above. Tomcat 7.0.29 and lower versions suffer from a memory leak. As a result, those versions of tomcat require an unusual high amount of memory to run DSpace. This has been resolved as of Tomcat 7.0.30. More information can be found in DS-1553

Installation Instructions

Overview of Install Options

Two different distributions are available for DSpace, both of which require you to build the distribution using Apache Maven 3. The steps that are required to execute the build are identical. In a nutshell, the binary release build will download pre-compiled parts of DSpace, while the building the source release will compile most of DSpace's source code on your local machine. 

It's important to notice that both releases will require outgoing internet connections on the machine or server where you are executing the build, because maven needs to download 3rd party dependencies that are not even included in the DSpace source release distribution.

Overview of DSpace Directories

Before beginning an installation, it is important to get a general understanding of the DSpace directories and the names by which they are generally referred. (Please attempt to use these below directory names when asking for help on the DSpace Mailing Lists, as it will help everyone better understand what directory you may be referring to.)

DSpace uses three separate directory trees. Although you don't need to know all the details of them in order to install DSpace, you do need to know they exist and also know how they're referred to in this document:

  1. The installation directory, referred to as [dspace]. This is the location where DSpace is installed and running.  It is the location that is defined in the dspace.cfg as "dspace.dir". It is where all the DSpace configuration files, command line scripts, documentation and webapps will be installed.
  2. The source directory, referred to as [dspace-source] . This is the location where the DSpace release distribution has been unpacked. It usually has the name of the archive that you expanded such as dspace-<version>-release or dspace-<version>-src-release. Normally it is the directory where all of your "build" commands will be run. 
  3. The web deployment directory. This is the directory that contains your DSpace web application(s).This corresponds to [dspace]/webapps by default. However, if you are using Tomcat, you may decide to copy your DSpace web applications from [dspace]/webapps/ to [tomcat]/webapps/ (with [tomcat] being wherever you installed Tomcat‚ also known as $CATALINA_HOME).
    For details on the contents of these separate directory trees, refer to directories.html. Note that the [dspace-source] and [dspace] directories are always separate!

If you ever notice that many files seems to have duplicates under [dspace-source]/dspace/target do not worry about it. This "target" directory will be used by Maven for the build process and you should not change any file in it unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Installation

This method gets you up and running with DSpace quickly and easily. It is identical in both the Default Release and Source Release distributions.

  1. Create the DSpace user. This needs to be the same user that Tomcat (or Jetty etc.) will run as. e.g. as root run:

    useradd -m dspace
  2. Download the latest DSpace release. There are two version available with each release of DSpace: (dspace-n.x-release. and dspace-n.x-src-release.zzz); you only need to choose one. If you want a copy of all underlying Java source code, you should download the dspace-n.x-src-release.xxxWithin each version, you have a choice of compressed file format. Choose the one that best fits your environment.
    1. Alternatively, you may choose to check out the latest release from the DSpace GitHub Repository.  In this case, you'd be checking out the full Java source code.  You'd also want to be sure to checkout the appropriate tag or branch. For more information on using / developing from the GitHub Repository, see: Development with Git
  3. Unpack the DSpace software. After downloading the software, based on the compression file format, choose one of the following methods to unpack your software:
    1. Zip file. If you downloaded dspace-6.x-release.zip do the following:

      unzip dspace-6.x-release.zip
    2. .gz file. If you downloaded dspace-6.x-release.tar.gz do the following:

      gunzip -c dspace-6.x-release.tar.gz | tar -xf -
    3. .bz2 file. If you downloaded _dspace-6.x-release.tar.bz do the following:

      bunzip2 dspace-6.x-release.tar.bz | tar -xf -

      For ease of reference, we will refer to the location of this unzipped version of the DSpace release as [dspace-source] in the remainder of these instructions. After unpacking the file, the user may wish to change the ownership of the dspace-6.x-release to the "dspace" user. (And you may need to change the group).

  4. Database Setup
  5. Initial Configuration (local.cfg):  Create your own [dspace-source]/dspace/config/local.cfg configuration file (you may wish to simply copy the provided [dspace-source]/dspace/config/local.cfg.EXAMPLE). This local.cfg file can be used to store any configuration changes that you wish to make which are local to your installation (see local.cfg configuration file documentation). ANY setting may be copied into this local.cfg file from the dspace.cfg or any other *.cfg file in order to override the default setting (see note below).  For the initial installation of DSpace, there are some key settings you'll likely want to override, those are provided in the [dspace-source]/dspace/config/local.cfg.EXAMPLE. (NOTE: Settings followed with an asterisk (*) are highly recommended, while all others are optional during initial installation and may be customized at a later time)
  6. DSpace Directory: Create the directory for the DSpace installation (i.e. [dspace]). As root (or a user with appropriate permissions), run:

    mkdir [dspace]
    chown dspace [dspace]

    (Assuming the dspace UNIX username.)

  7. Build the Installation Package: As the dspace UNIX user, generate the DSpace installation package.

    cd [dspace-source]
    mvn package
    

    Without any extra arguments, the DSpace installation package is initialized for PostgreSQL. If you want to use Oracle instead, you should build the DSpace installation package as follows:
    mvn -Ddb.name=oracle package

    Mirage 2 is a responsive theme for the XML User Interface, added as a new feature in DSpace 5. It has not yet replaced the Mirage 1 theme as the XMLUI default theme.
    The Mirage 2 build requires git to be installed on your server. Install git before attempting the Mirage 2 build. 

    To enable Mirage 2, add the following to the  <themes>  section of  [dspace-source]/dspace/config/xmlui.xconf , replacing the currently active theme:

               
        <theme name="Mirage 2" regex=".*" path="Mirage2/" />
            

    It is important to do this before executing the maven build.

    Mirage 2 is not yet activated in the default "mvn package" build. To include it as part of the build, run:

     

        mvn package -Dmirage2.on=true
    

    The speed of this specific step of the build can be increased by installing local copies of the specific dependencies required for building Mirage 2. The Mirage 2 developer documentation provides detailed instructions for these installations. After the installation of these dependencies, you can choose to run:

        
    mvn package -Dmirage2.on=true -Dmirage2.deps.included=false

    Warning: The Mirage 2 build process should NOT be run as "root". It must be run as a non-root user. For more information see: Mirage 2 Common Build Issues

  8. Install DSpace: As the dspace UNIX user, install DSpace to [dspace]:

    cd [dspace-source]/dspace/target/dspace-installer
    ant fresh_install

    To see a complete list of build targets, run: ant help The most likely thing to go wrong here is the test of your database connection. See the Common Problems Section below for more details.

  9. Decide which DSpace Web Applications you want to install. DSpace comes with a variety of web applications (in [dspace]/webapps), each of which provides a different "interface" to your DSpace.  Which ones you install is up to you, but there are a few that we highly recommend (see below):

    1. "xmlui" = This is the XML-based User Interface (XMLUI), based on Apache Cocoon. It comes with a variety of out-of-the-box themes, including Mirage 1 (the default) and Mirage 2 (based on Bootstrap). Between the "xmlui" and "jspui", you likely only need to choose one.

    2. "jspui" = This is the JSP-based User Interface (JSPUI), which is based on BootstrapBetween the "xmlui" and "jspui", you likely only need to choose one.

    3. "solr" (required) = This is Apache Solr web application, which is used by the "xmlui" and "jspui" (for search & browse functionality), as well as the OAI-PMH interface. It must be installed in support of either UI.

    4. "oai" = This is the DSpace OAI interface. It allows for Metadata and Bitstream (content-file) harvesting, supporting OAI-PMH (Protocol for Metadata Harvest) and OAI-ORE (Object Reuse and Exchange) protocols
    5. "rdf" = This is the DSpace RDF interface supporting Linked (Open) Data.
    6. "rest" = This is the DSpace REST API
    7. "sword" = This is the DSpace SWORDv1 interface. More info on SWORD protocol and its usage.
    8. "swordv2" = This is the DSpace SWORDv2 interface. More info on SWORD protocol and its usage.
  10. Deploy Web Applications: Please note that in the first instance you should refer to the appropriate documentation for your Web Server of choice. The following instructions are meant as a handy guide. You have two choices or techniques for having Tomcat/Jetty/Resin serve up your web applications: 
  11. Administrator Account:  Create an initial administrator account from the command line:

    [dspace]/bin/dspace create-administrator


  12. Initial Startup!  Now the moment of truth! Start up (or restart) Tomcat/Jetty/Resin. Visit the base URL(s) of your server, depending on which DSpace web applications you want to use. You should see the DSpace home page. Congratulations! Base URLs of DSpace Web Applications:

In order to set up some communities and collections, you'll need to login as your DSpace Administrator (which you created with create-administrator above) and access the administration UI in either the JSP or XML user interface.

Advanced Installation

The above installation steps are sufficient to set up a test server to play around with, but there are a few other steps and options you should probably consider before deploying a DSpace production site.

'cron' jobs / scheduled tasks

A few DSpace features require that a script is run regularly (via cron, or similar):

For much more information on recommended scheduled tasks, please see Scheduled Tasks via Cron.

Multilingual Installation

In order to deploy a multilingual version of DSpace you have to configure two parameters in [dspace-source]/dspace/config/local.cfg:

The Locales might have the form country, country_language, country_language_variant.

According to the languages you wish to support, you have to make sure that all the i18n related files are available.  See the Configuring Multilingual Support section for the JSPUI or the Multilingual Support for XMLUI in the configuration documentation.

DSpace over HTTPS

If your DSpace is configured to have users login with a username and password (as opposed to, say, client Web certificates), then you should consider using HTTPS. Whenever a user logs in with the Web form (e.g. dspace.myuni.edu/dspace/password-login) their DSpace password is exposed in plain text on the network. This is a very serious security risk since network traffic monitoring is very common, especially at universities. If the risk seems minor, then consider that your DSpace administrators also login this way and they have ultimate control over the archive.

The solution is to use HTTPS (HTTP over SSL, i.e. Secure Socket Layer, an encrypted transport), which protects your passwords against being captured. You can configure DSpace to require SSL on all "authenticated" transactions so it only accepts passwords on SSL connections.

The following sections show how to set up the most commonly-used Java Servlet containers to support HTTP over SSL.

Enabling the HTTPS support in Tomcat itself (running on ports 8080 and 8443)

Loosely based on http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/ssl-howto.html.

  1. For Production use: Follow this procedure to set up SSL on your server. Using a "real" server certificate ensures your users' browsers will accept it without complaints. In the examples below, $CATALINA_BASE is the directory under which your Tomcat is installed.
    1. Create a Java keystore for your server with the password changeit, and install your server certificate under the alias "tomcat". This assumes the certificate was put in the file server.pem:

      $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -import -noprompt -v -storepass changeit
      	-keystore $CATALINA_BASE/conf/keystore -alias tomcat -file
      	myserver.pem
    2. Install the CA (Certifying Authority) certificate for the CA that granted your server cert, if necessary. This assumes the server CA certificate is in ca.pem:

      $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -import -noprompt -storepass changeit
      	-trustcacerts -keystore $CATALINA_BASE/conf/keystore -alias ServerCA
      	-file ca.pem
      
    3. Optional – ONLY if you need to accept client certificates for the X.509 certificate stackable authentication module See the configuration section for instructions on enabling the X.509 authentication method. Load the keystore with the CA (certifying authority) certificates for the authorities of any clients whose certificates you wish to accept. For example, assuming the client CA certificate is in client1.pem:

      $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -import -noprompt -storepass changeit
      	-trustcacerts -keystore $CATALINA_BASE/conf/keystore  -alias client1
      	-file client1.pem
      
    4. Now add another Connector tag to your server.xml Tomcat configuration file, like the example below. The parts affecting or specific to SSL are shown in bold. (You may wish to change some details such as the port, pathnames, and keystore password)

      <Connector port="8443"
                    URIEncoding="UTF-8"
                    maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25"
                    enableLookups="false"
                    disableUploadTimeout="true"
                    acceptCount="100"
                    scheme="https" secure="true" sslProtocol="TLS"
                    keystoreFile="conf/keystore" keystorePass="changeit"
                    clientAuth="true" - ONLY if using client X.509 certs for authentication!
                    truststoreFile="conf/keystore" truststorePass="changeit" />
      

      Also, check that the default Connector is set up to redirect "secure" requests to the same port as your SSL connector, e.g.:

      <Connector port="8080"
                    maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25"
                    enableLookups="false"
                    redirectPort="8443"
                    acceptCount="100" />
      
  2. Quick-and-dirty Procedure for Testing: If you are just setting up a DSpace server for testing, or to experiment with HTTPS, then you don't need to get a real server certificate. You can create a "self-signed" certificate for testing; web browsers will issue warnings before accepting it, but they will function exactly the same after that as with a "real" certificate. In the examples below, $CATALINA_BASE is the directory under which your Tomcat is installed.
    1. Create a new key pair under the alias name "tomcat". When generating your key, give the Distinguished Name fields the appropriate values for your server and institution. CN should be the fully-qualified domain name of your server host. Here is an example:

      $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -genkey \
        -alias tomcat \
        -keyalg RSA \
        -keysize 1024 \
        -keystore $CATALINA_BASE/conf/keystore \
        -storepass changeit \
        -validity 365 \
        -dname 'CN=dspace.myuni.edu, OU=MIT Libraries, O=Massachusetts Institute of Technology, L=Cambridge, S=MA, C=US'
      

      You should be prompted for a password to protect the private key.

      Since you now have a signed server certificate in your keystore you can, obviously, skip the next steps of installing a signed server certificate and the server CA's certificate.

    2. Optional – ONLY if you need to accept client certificates for the X.509 certificate stackable authentication module See the configuration section for instructions on enabling the X.509 authentication method. Load the keystore with the CA (certifying authority) certificates for the authorities of any clients whose certificates you wish to accept. For example, assuming the client CA certificate is in client1.pem:

      $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -import -noprompt -storepass changeit \
        -trustcacerts -keystore $CATALINA_BASE/conf/keystore -alias client1 \
        -file client1.pem
      
    3. Follow the procedure in the section above to add another Connector tag, for the HTTPS port, to your server.xml file.

Using SSL on Apache HTTPD in front of Tomcat (running on ports 80 and 443)

When using Apache 2.4.2 (and lower) in front of a DSpace webapp deployed in Tomcat, mod_proxy_ajp and possibly mod_proxy_http breaks the connection to the back end (Tomcat) prematurely leading to response mixups. This is reported as bug CVE-2012-3502 ( http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2012-3502 ) of Apache and fixed in Apache 2.4.3 (see  http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/CHANGES_2.4) . The 2.2.x branch hasn't shown this problem only the 2.4.x branch has.

Before following these instructions, it's HIGHLY recommended to first get DSpace running in standalone Tomcat on port 8080. Once DSpace is running, you can use the below instructions to add Apache HTTP Server in front of Tomcat in order to allow DSpace to run on port 80 and optionally port 443 (for SSL).

One of the easiest routes to both running DSpace on standard ports (80 and 443) as well as using HTTPS is to install Apache HTTP Server as your primary HTTP server, and use it to forward requests to Tomcat.

  1. Install Apache HTTP Server alongside your Tomcat instance
  2. In your Tomcat's server.xml, ensure that the AJP Connector is UNCOMMENTED.  Usually this runs on port 8009, but you can decide to change the port if you desire

    <!-- Define an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 -->
    <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" />
  3. Choose how you'd like to redirect requests from Apache HTTP Server to Tomcat. There are two primary options (mod_proxy OR mod_jk), just choose ONE. (NOTE: "mod_proxy" is often the easier of the two):
    1. OPTION 1: Use "mod_proxy" and "mod_proxy_ajp" Apache modules to redirect requests to Tomcat (via AJP Connector) - RECOMMENDED
      1. Install "mod_proxy" and "mod_proxy_ajp" (usually they are installed by default with Apache HTTP Server)
      2. Enable both "mod_proxy" and "mod_proxy_ajp" modules. How you do this is often based on your operating system
        1. In Debian / Ubuntu, there's an "a2enmod" command that enables Apache 2 modules.  So, you can just run: sudo a2enmod proxy proxy_ajp
        2. In other operating systems, you may need to find the appropriate "LoadModule" configurations (in Apache HTTP Server's main config) and uncomment it. You'll then need to restart Apache HTTP Server
      3. Create a new Virtual Host in Apache HTTP Server to represent your DSpace site. Here's a basic example of a Virtual Host responding to any port 80 requests for "my.dspace.edu":

        <VirtualHost *:80>
           # Obviously, replace the ServerName with your DSpace site URL
           ServerName my.dspace.edu
        
           ## Apache HTTP Server Logging Settings - modify how you see fit
           ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/my.dspace.edu-error.log
           CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/my.dspace.edu-access.log combined
        
           # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, alert, emerg.
           LogLevel warn
        
           # There are many more configurations available for Virtual Hosts,
           # see the documentation for more details
           # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/vhosts/
        </VirtualHost>
      4. If you want your site to also respond to SSL requests, you'll need to install and enable "mod_ssl" and create a second Virtual Host to respond to port 443 requests. An example is provided below. But much more details are available in the Apache HTTP SSL Documentation and the mod_ssl documentation

        <VirtualHost *:443>
           # Obviously, replace the ServerName with your DSpace site URL
           ServerName my.dspace.edu
        
           # You can have SSL Apache logging settings here too (see the port 80 example above)
        
           # Configure your SSL Certificate (you must create one, obviously)
           # See the "keytool" instructions above for examples of creating this certificate
           # There are also many good guides on the web for generating SSL certificates for Apache
           SSLEngine on
           SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/your/chainfile.crt
           SSLCertificateFile      /path/to/your/public-cert.crt
           SSLCertificateKeyFile   /path/to/your/private-key.key
           
           # More information on SSL configurations can be found in the mod_ssl documentation
           # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html
        </VirtualHost>

          If you are using X.509 Client Certificates for authentication: add these configuration options to the appropriate httpd configuration file, e.g. ssl.conf, and be sure they are in force for the virtual host and namespace locations dedicated to DSpace:

        ## SSLVerifyClient can be "optional" or "require"
        SSLVerifyClient optional
        SSLVerifyDepth 10
        SSLCACertificateFile /path/to/your/client-CA-certificate
        SSLOptions StdEnvVars ExportCertData

      5. In each of your Apache HTTP Virtual Hosts (see above), use "ProxyPass" configurations to configure the redirects from Apache HTTP Server to Apache Tomcat. The exact configurations depend on whether you want to redirect ALL requests to Tomcat, or just certain paths. Here's a basic example. But much more information and examples can be found in the mod_proxy documentation

        # These are just examples. THEY LIKELY WILL NEED MODIFICATION.
        # Again, remember to add these to your EXISTING <VirtualHost> settings
        
        <VirtualHost>
        
          ... (existing settings) ...
        
          # If there's a single path you do NOT want redirected, you can use ! to ignore it
          # In this case any requests to "/ignored_path" will be handled by Apache HTTPD and NOT forwarded to Tomcat
          ProxyPass  /ignored_path  !
        
          # These configurations say: By default, redirect ALL requests to port 8009
          # (The port MUST match the port of your Tomcat AJP Connector. By default this usually is 8009)
          ProxyPass         /  ajp://localhost:8009/
          ProxyPassReverse  /  ajp://localhost:8009/
        
          # You may also wish to provide additional "mod_proxy" configurations, 
          # for more examples and details see the documentation at
          # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy.html
        </VirtualHost>
    2. OPTION 2: Alternatively, use "mod_jk" Apache module to redirect requests to Tomcat (via AJP Connector).  For information on configuring mod_jk, please see the Apache Tomcat Connector documentation (specifically the "How To" on using the Tomcat Connector with Apache HTTP Server). You may also refer to our wiki guide for installing DSpace with ModJk.
  4. Finally, restart your Apache HTTP Server and test things out.
    1. If you hit any issues, it is recommended to search around for guides to running Apache HTTP Server and Apache Tomcat using either "mod_proxy" or "mod_jk".  DSpace does not require any unique configurations with regards to this redirection from Apache to Tomcat. So, any guides that generally explain how to redirect requests from Apache to Tomcat should also work for DSpace.

The Handle Server

First a few facts to clear up some common misconceptions:

A Handle server runs as a separate process that receives TCP requests from other Handle servers, and issues resolution requests to a global server or servers if a Handle entered locally does not correspond to some local content. The Handle protocol is based on TCP, so it will need to be installed on a server that can send and receive TCP on port 2641.

You can either use a Handle server running on the same machine as DSpace, or you can install it on a separate machine. Installing it on the same machine is a little bit easier.  If you install it on a separate machine, you can use one Handle server for more than one DSpace installation.

To install your Handle resolver on the host where DSpace runs:

  1. To configure your DSpace installation to run the handle server, run the following command:

    [dspace]/bin/dspace make-handle-config [dspace]/handle-server

    Ensure that [dspace]/handle-server matches whatever you have in dspace.cfg for the handle.dir property.

    1. If you are using Windows, the proper command is:

      [dspace]/bin/dspace dsrun net.handle.server.SimpleSetup [dspace]/handle-server

      Ensure that [dspace]/handle-server matches whatever you have in dspace.cfg for the handle.dir property.

  2. Edit the resulting [dspace]/handle-server/config.dct file to include the following lines in the "server_config"clause:

    "storage_type" = "CUSTOM"
    "storage_class" = "org.dspace.handle.HandlePlugin"
    

    This tells the Handle server to get information about individual Handles from the DSpace code.

  3. Once the configuration file has been generated, you will need to go to http://hdl.handle.net/4263537/5014 to upload the generated sitebndl.zip file. The upload page will ask you for your contact information. An administrator will then create the naming authority/prefix on the root service (known as the Global Handle Registry), and notify you when this has been completed. You will not be able to continue the handle server installation until you receive further information concerning your naming authority.
  4. When CNRI has sent you your naming authority prefix, you will need to edit the config.dct file. The file will be found in /[dspace]/handle-server. Look for "300:0.NA/YOUR_NAMING_AUTHORITY". Replace YOUR_NAMING_AUTHORITY with the assigned naming authority prefix sent to you.
  5. Now start your handle server (as the dspace user):

    [dspace]/bin/start-handle-server
    1. If you are using Windows, there is a corresponding 'start-handle-server.bat' script:

      [dspace]/bin/start-handle-server.bat
      

Note that since the DSpace code manages individual Handles, administrative operations such as Handle creation and modification aren't supported by DSpace's Handle server.

To install a Handle resolver on a separate machine:

The Handle server you use must be dedicated to resolve Handles from DSpace. You cannot use a Handle server that is in use with other software already. You can use CNRI's Handle Software -- all you have to do is to add to it a plugin that is provided by DSpace. The following instructions were tested with CNRI's Handle software version 7.3.1. You can do the following steps on another machine than the machine DSpace runs on, but you have to copy some files from the machine on which DSpace is installed.

  1. Download the CNRI Handle Software: http://www.handle.net/download.html. In the tarball you'll find an INSTALL.txt with installation instructions -- follow it.
  2. Create the following two files in /hs/srv_1.

    log4j-handle-plugin.properties

     

    log4j.rootCategory=INFO, A1
    log4j.appender.A1=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
    log4j.appender.A1.File=/hs/srv_1/logs/handle-plugin.log
    log4j.appender.A1.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd
    log4j.appender.A1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
    log4j.appender.A1.layout.ConversionPattern=%d %-5p %c @ %m%n
    log4j.logger.org.apache.axis.handlers.http.HTTPAuthHandler=INFO

     

    Change the path in the third line, if necessary.

    handle-dspace-plugin.cfg

     

    dspace.handle.endpoint1 = http://example.org/dspace/handleresolver

     

    If you are using XMLUI take a look in [dspace-install]/config/dspace.cfg, change the URL above to the value of your dspace.url and add /handleresolver to the end of it. If you are using JSPUI take a look in [dspace-install]/config/dspace.cfg, change the URL above to the value of your dspace.url and add /json/hdlresolver to the end of it. If you run more than one DSpace Installation, you may add more DSpace Endpoints.  Just increase the number at the end of the key for each:  endpoint2, endpoint3....

  3. Edit the file /hs/srv_1/config.dct to include the following lines in the "server_config" clause:

     

    "storage_type" = "CUSTOM"
    "storage_class" = "org.dspace.handle.MultiRemoteDSpaceRepositoryHandlePlugin"
  4. Copy /hs/hsj-7.3.1/bin/hdl-server to /hs/srv_1/start-hdl-server.
  5. Edit /hs/srv_1/start-hdl-server:
    1. Find the last line that begins with HDLHOME=
    2. Below that line add the following one: HDLHOME="/hs/hsj-7.3.1/"
    3. Find a line that contains exec java ... net.handle.server.Main ...
    4. Add "-Dlog4j.configuration=file:///hs/srv_1/log4j-handle-plugin.properties -Ddspace.handle.plugin.configuration=/hs/srv_1/handle-dspace-plugin.cfg" right in front of net.handle.server.Main.
  6. If your handle server is running, stop it.
  7. From now on you should start this handle server using /hs/srv_1/start-hdl-server

Please note: The Handle Server will only start if it is able to connect to at least one running DSpace Installation. It only resolves the handles of the DSpace Installations that were running when it was started.

Updating Existing Handle Prefixes

If you need to update the handle prefix on items created before the CNRI registration process you can run the [dspace]/bin/dspace update-handle-prefix script. You may need to do this if you loaded items prior to CNRI registration (e.g. setting up a demonstration system prior to migrating it to production). The script takes the current and new prefix as parameters. For example:

[dspace]/bin/dspace update-handle-prefix 123456789 1303

This script will change any handles currently assigned prefix 123456789 to prefix 1303, so for example handle 123456789/23 will be updated to 1303/23 in the database.

Google and HTML sitemaps

To aid web crawlers index the content within your repository, you can make use of sitemaps. There are currently two forms of sitemaps included in DSpace: Google sitemaps and HTML sitemaps.

Sitemaps allow DSpace to expose its content without the crawlers having to index every page. HTML sitemaps provide a list of all items, collections and communities in HTML format, whilst Google sitemaps provide the same information in gzipped XML format.

To generate the sitemaps, you need to run [dspace]/bin/dspace generate-sitemaps This creates the sitemaps in [dspace]/sitemaps/

The sitemaps can be accessed from the following URLs (DSpace demo site is provided as example):

When running [dspace]/bin/dspace generate-sitemaps the script informs Google that the sitemaps have been updated. For this update to register correctly, you must first register your Google sitemap index page (/dspace/sitemap) with Google at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/. If your DSpace server requires the use of a HTTP proxy to connect to the Internet, ensure that you have set http.proxy.host and http.proxy.port in [dspace]/config/dspace.cfg

The URL for pinging Google, and in future, other search engines, is configured in [dspace]/config/dspace.cfg using the sitemap.engineurls setting where you can provide a comma-separated list of URLs to 'ping'.

You can generate the sitemaps automatically every day using an additional cron job:

# Generate sitemaps at 6:00 am local time each day
0 6 * * * [dspace]/bin/dspace generate-sitemaps 

More information on why we highly recommend enabling sitemaps can be found at Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Statistics

DSpace uses the Apache Solr application underlaying the statistics. There is no need to download any separate software. All the necessary software is included. To understand all of the configuration property keys, the user should refer to DSpace Statistic Configuration for detailed information.

Windows Installation

Essentially installing on Windows is the same as installing on Unix so please refer back to the main Installation Instructions section.

Checking Your Installation

The administrator needs to check the installation to make sure all components are working. Here is list of checks to be performed. In brackets after each item, it the associated component or components that might be the issue needing resolution.

Known Bugs

In any software project of the scale of DSpace, there will be bugs. Sometimes, a stable version of DSpace includes known bugs. We do not always wait until every known bug is fixed before a release. If the software is sufficiently stable and an improvement on the previous release, and the bugs are minor and have known workarounds, we release it to enable the community to take advantage of those improvements.

The known bugs in a release are documented in the KNOWN_BUGS file in the source package.

Please see the DSpace bug tracker for further information on current bugs, and to find out if the bug has subsequently been fixed. This is also where you can report any further bugs you find.

Common Problems

In an ideal world everyone would follow the above steps and have a fully functioning DSpace. Of course, in the real world it doesn't always seem to work out that way. This section lists common problems that people encounter when installing DSpace, and likely causes and fixes. This is likely to grow over time as we learn about users' experiences.

Common Installation Issues

General DSpace Issues