Page History

Instructions

1. Create and log into a CentOS 6.x or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x system as a user with sudo rights

   Warning
   The current Puppet script has issues if executed on a clean, "minimal" CentOS. A "minimal desktop" CentOS is recommended.

   
   

2. Become root

   Code Block
   sudo -s

   
   

3. Disable SELinux (which we're not currently set up to support)

   Code Block
   echo 0 > /selinux/enforce sed # Edit `-ie "s/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=permissive/" /etc/selinux/config` and change the value of `SELINUX` from `enforcing` to `permissive` config

   
   

4. Install puppet from the Puppet Labs repository

   Code Block
   rpm -ivh http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/products/i386/puppetlabs-release-6-610.noarch.rpm yum install puppet

   
   

   Info
   title On CentOS 7
   rpm -ivh http://yum.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-el-7.noarch.rpm

   
   

5. Install git

   Code Block
   yum install git

   Download and extract the Avalon install script

   
   

6. Code Blockwget http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/downloads/avalon-installer-flat.tar.gz -O flat.tar.gz tar xzf flat.tar.gz tar xzf flat.tar.gz

   Install Ruby 2.2.5 if ruby current version is lower

   Code Block
   ruby -v #The following command won't work the first time.  # It will request you download the signatures first  # and provide the command to download it. curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s source /usr/local/rvm/scripts/rvm rvm install 2.2.5 rvm use 2.2.5 gem install bundler

   
   

7. Install json extensions for the system ruby

   Code Block
   gem install ruby-json

   
   

8. Clone the Avalon install script

   Code Block
   git clone --recursive --depth 1 https://github.com/avalonmediasystem/avalon-installer.git -b 5.x-stable cd avalon-installer-flat

   
   

9. Set up the installation variables

   Code Block
   export INSTALL_DIR=`pwd` ln -s $INSTALL_DIR/files /etc/puppet/avalon_files; cd $INSTALL_DIR/manifests

   
   

10. Collect facts about your installation to feed to puppet

    Fact	Description	Default
    avalon_admin_user	an email address for the initial avalon collection/group manager	archivist1@example.com
    avalon_dropbox_password	the plaintext password for the dropbox user	nil
    avalon_dropbox_password_hash	the pre-hashed password for the dropbox user	nil
    avalon_dropbox_user	the login for the Avalon dropbox user	avalondrop
    avalon_public_address	the hostname clients should connect to	Output of hostname -f
    rails_env	the Rails environment to run avalon under	production

    NOTE: Either avalon_dropbox_password or avalon_dropbox_password_hash is required. All other facts are optional.

    Execute the puppet script, passing selected facts as environment variables prefixed with FACTER_, e.g.

    Code BlockFACTER_avalon_public_address=avalon.example.edu FACTER_avalon_dropbox_password=dropithere FACTER_rails_env=development \

    about your installation, the following will create hiera/data/custom.yaml

    Code Block
    ruby -r './fact_gatherer.rb' -e 'FactGatherer.gather_facts'

     

    Info
    title Facter can't detect some early CentOS 7 versions, if so run
    yum update

    
    

11. Execute the puppet script

    Code Block
    rvm system do puppet apply --fileserverconfig=$INSTALL_DIR/fileserver.conf \ --modulepath=$INSTALL_DIR/modules \ --hiera_config=$INSTALL_DIR/hiera/hiera.ymlyaml \ --templatedir=$INSTALL_DIR/templates .manifests/init.pp --detailed-exitcodes

    
    

    Info
    It is important to give a hostname when asked, otherwise Avalon/Fedora may not work. If you see errors like "Could not prefetch firewall provider 'iptables'", then running `iptables --flush` will help.

    
    Be patient. The manifest needs to download, install and configure a whole lot of dependencies and servers. This could take 30 minutes or more even with a fast connection.

12. When the script finishes, open a web browser and connect to the public address you configured above for your server (e.g.,http://avalon.example.edu/) Create a new user with email archivist1@example.com, this is the default collection_manager and group_manager.

NOTE: Puppet needs to download dozens of system packages, software distributions, source files, and other information, largely from trusted third party repositories. Sometimes, one or more repositories might be offline, unresponsive, or otherwise unavailable, causing Puppet to display a series of errors about failed dependencies. Fortunately, Puppet can usually figure out how to make things right. Simply repeat the puppet apply ... command in step 10 11 to try to repair the install.

Ports

The Avalon Media System requires several ports to be open to client browsers. The Vagrant Install handles all the port forwarding for local access automatically, but the manual install will require attention to make sure the required ports are open and accessible. Here are the manual instructions.

Using the System

• You can find specific information about using the system in the Collection Manager's Guide.

...

•  
• Configure additional features
• Install sample content
• Known Issues - a list of bugs, workarounds, and cautions

...