This documentation is being revised for Release 2.0.0. For previous versions of Avalon look in the page history at version XX.
Instructions
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.
Become root
sudo -s
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
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.
Install git
yum install git
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
Set up the installation variables
export INSTALL_DIR=`pwd` ln -s $INSTALL_DIR/files /etc/puppet/avalon_files cd $INSTALL_DIR/manifests
Collect facts about your installation to feed to puppet
Fact Description Default avalon_admin_user an email address for the initial avalon collection/group manager archivist1@example.com avalon_dropbox_user the login for the Avalon Dropbox user avalondrop avalon_dropbox_password the plaintext password for the Avalon Dropbox user nil
avalon_dropbox_password_hash the pre-hashed password for the Avalon Dropbox user nil
avalon_public_address the hostname clients should connect to Output of hostname -f
avalon_root_dir the base directory for avalon content /var/avalon
rails_env the Rails environment to run avalon under production NOTE: Either avalon_dropbox_password or avalon_dropbox_password_hash is required. All other facts are optional.
Execute the puppet script, passing selected facts as environment variables prefixed with
FACTER_
, e.g.FACTER_avalon_public_address=avalon.example.edu \ FACTER_avalon_dropbox_password=dropithere \ FACTER_rails_env=development \ puppet apply --fileserverconfig=$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.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.
Port | Purpose | External? |
---|---|---|
80 | HTTP (Avalon) | Yes |
1935 | RTMP (red5) | Yes |
5080 | HTTP (red5) | No |
8983 | HTTP (Fedora/Solr) | No |
18080 | HTTP (Matterhorn) | Yes |
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.