These are the instructions to get Avalon up and running on a clean RHEL machine. Your mileage may vary for other Linux distributions.

Install Avalon

Install developer tools

Install packages required for dependencies to build properly.

yum install gcc-c++ zlib-devel readline-devel openssl-devel java-1.7.0-openjdk

Install RVM to manage Ruby (http://rvm.io/) If it doesn't download right away it might ask you to download signatures.

curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby

Reload shell environment using the instructions given in rvm's installation output.

Make sure ruby installed correctly

rvm list

Update rubygem

gem update --system

Install bundler for managing dependencies

gem install bundler

Install & setup Git

Install Git

yum install git

Create an account on github and set up SSH keys. For more help see the detailed instructions

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@youremail.com"
cat id_rsa.pub #Add the output to your github account's list of keys

Install Matterhorn dependencies

You'll need a couple Matterhorn dependencies installed: ffmpeg and MediaInfo.

FFMPEG

yum install ffmpeg

If installing ffmpeg with yum doesn't work, or you have dependency problems, you can try installing it from source.

yum install libfaac-devel
git clone git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg
./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb \
  --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-librtmp --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis \
  --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab
make

That configure statement might need to change. It worked for me, but it seems puppet has more options enabled.

If you're still having trouble, check felix/log/opencast.log and see if there are any exceptions. Also, go to felix/etc/config.properties and make sure matterhorn is pointing to the correct ffmpeg.

Mediainfo

Go to MediaInfo's website to install MediaInfo. #Someone should fill more out here.

Setup Avalon

Add the required dependencies so that all gems will install properly.

yum install ruby-devel libxml2-devel libxslt libxslt-devel libcurl-devel sqlite-devel

Go to your workspace. This command will download avalon source from github.  Run bundle install to install all of the necessary dependency gems.

git clone git@github.com:avalonmediasystem/avalon.git
cd avalon
bundle install --gemfile=Gemfile.first
QMAKE=/usr/bin/qmake-qt4 bundle install

Prepare the databases

rake db:migrate
rake db:test:prepare

Install the hydra-jetty, avalon-felix, and avalon-red5 submodules.  The hydra-jetty submodule contains Fedora and Solr and can be managed via jettywrapper rake tasks.  The avalon-felix submodule is a custom instance of Matterhorn. avalon-red5 is a custom instance of Red5 with Matterhorn integration. These two servers can also be controlled with rake tasks.  After installing them, force them to track the master branch for their respective repositories.

git submodule init
git submodule update
cd jetty/ 
git fetch --tags 
git checkout 4.x 
cd ..  
cd felix/
git fetch --tags
git checkout 1.4.x
cd ..  

Config avalon based upon the Configuration Files page.  Note that Matterhorn config files can be put in the felix_conf directory and copied over with the felix:config rake task.

To configure Devise and Blacklight Secret Key, in your avalon directory run the following command:

rake secret

Copy the output, then create and open the file config/secrets.yml. Like the other yml files, you can have separate sections for development, test and production. Here is a template:

development:
    secret_key_base: <Paste the hash>

Start all services

rake jetty:config
rake felix:config
rake avalon:services:start

To make the startup of avalon easier after a git pull, you can add these functions to your .bashrc script.

Test Avalon

From your avalon installation execute

rails server

Navigate to http://localhost:3000