Manual Puppet Install

Instructions

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

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

2. Become root

   sudo -s

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

   echo 0 > /selinux/enforce 
   sed -ie "s/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=permissive/" /etc/selinux/config
   

4. Install puppet from the Puppet Labs repository

   rpm -ivh http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/products/i386/puppetlabs-release-6-6.noarch.rpm
   yum install puppet-3.1.1

   Note: This manifest is known not to work with puppet 3.2. Please make sure you have Puppet 3.1.

   
   

5. Install git

   yum install git 

6. Download and extract the Avalon install script

   wget http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/downloads/avalon-installer-flat.tar.gz -O flat.tar.gz 
   tar xzf flat.tar.gz
   cd avalon-installer-release-2.0.0-flat

7. Set up the installation variables

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

8. 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_user	the login for the Avalon Dropbox user	avalondrop
   avalon_dropbox_password	the plaintext password for the Avalon Dropbox user	nil
   avalon_dropbox_password_hash	the pre-hashed password for the Avalon Dropbox user	nil
   avalon_public_address	the hostname clients should connect to	Output of hostname -f
   avalon_root_dir	the base directory for avalon content	/var/avalon
   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.

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

   FACTER_avalon_public_address=avalon.example.edu \
   FACTER_avalon_dropbox_password=dropithere \
   FACTER_rails_env=development \
   puppet apply --fileserverconfig=$INSTALL_DIR/fileserver.conf \
   --modulepath=$INSTALL_DIR/modules --hiera_config=$INSTALL_DIR/hiera/hiera.yml \
   --templatedir=$INSTALL_DIR/templates ./init.pp --detailed-exitcodes

   
   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.

10. When the script finishes, open a web browser and connect to the public address you configured above (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 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. Upload items individually or via batch.  Batch demo content is available for your convenience, which includes the media files and an excel document necessary to run a batch.  You can submit a batch directly via SFTP using the credentials you supplied for avalon_dropbox_user and avalon_dropbox_password above.

Known Issues - a list of bugs, workarounds, and cautions.