Hyrax - Installation Instructions

Hyrax is really fairly easy to configure, but because there are several different components involved, it can seem complicated. Essentially you need to configure the BES to load and use one or more data handlers and to look in the right place for your data. The OLFS will work out of the box, but will need configuration to enable THREDDS functionality and Access Logging. Similarly, Tomcat needs no configuration, although you might want to change the port from 8080 to 80 if it's going to be the only web server on your host. You don't need to do that, it's just that you can if you want. Lastly, you can configure an Apache server to hand off requests to the server and, at the same time, have it emulate all your old Server3 URLs. That way catalogs, hot lists and other places where URLs to your data are stored will still work. This is not a complete manual for the BES. Instead of explaining all of the parameters and how their different settings can be used to control the BES, the discussion here is limited to what is used when the BES is run as part of Hyrax. In addition, there are number of parameters that should always be left to their default values for a Hyrax configuration and those will also be skipped. This makes it much easier to focus on those parameters that an installer really must understand.

What you will need:

• 30 minutes
• Java 1.5 Runtime or Development Environment
• Tomcat 5.5.x or newer
• A web browser

Secure Installation Guidelines

Making Hyrax Secure

Install the BES

Install and configure the BES.

Install the OLFS

Next You need to install and configure the OLFS inside of a Tomcat server

Starting and Stopping Hyrax

To correctly start and stop Hyrax, follow these simple recipes.

Starting

1. Start the BES first using the besctl program with the start argument. See Starting and stopping the BES for more information.
2. Start the OLFS using the Tomcat startup script. See Starting Tomcat for more information.

Stopping

1. Stop the OLFS first using the tomcat shutdown script.
2. Stop the BES using the besctl program with the stop argument.

See above for stopping information.

Test the server

To test/use the server, open a web browser and open the URL: http://localhost:8080/ and you should see the Tomcat default page.

Open the URL: http://localhost:8080/opendap/ to see an HTML directory of the top of your data archive.

You can get the HTML view THREDDS catalog by appending "catalog.html" to the end of any URL that returns an HTML directory, like so: http://localhost:8080/opendap/catalog.html But you may need to do some additional configuration that to work.

Configure Your Hyrax Installation

At this point, Hyrax should be working. When you install Hyrax for the first time it is pre-configured to serve test data sets that come with each of the installed data handlers. This will allow you to test the server and make sure it is functioning correctly. After that you will want to configure so that it works with your data.

Miscellaneous

Once opendap.war is expanded, manually copy the file favicon.ico file:

$CATALINA_HOME/webapps/opendap/docs/images/favicon.ico

to

$CATALINA_HOME/webapps/ROOT/

The favicon.ico file is mostly a convenience to keep browsers from constantly asking for it (substitute your own icon if you like!).