Hyrax - Installation Instructions

From OPeNDAP Documentation
⧼opendap2-jumptonavigation⧽

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

System Requirements

Hyrax is supported on Linux (our standard build platform is Fedora Core, although we do also test on Ubuntu) and OS/X. It's certainly likely that you can get it to run on virtually any Unix-like operating system. We do not support Hyrax on Window or Vista, although see the Using Virtual Machines to Serve Data project for a solution for Win32 platforms.

Short list:

  1. libdap
    1. libxml2 2.6.16*
    2. libcurl 7.6.10*
    3. pthreads (part of glibc on linux)*
  2. bes
  3. dap-server
  4. OLFS
    1. Tomcat 5.5.x
    2. Java 1.5* run-time (or newer, depending on the requirements of the Tomcat software)

Additional stuff: To serve NetCDF files:

  1. The netCDF handler
    1. libnetcdf 3.x

To serve HDF4 files:

  1. The HDF4 handler
    1. The HDF4 library (4.x) and it's required software (often libjpeg, zlib* and szip)

To serve formatted ASCII using FreeForm:

  1. The FreeForm handler

To serve HDF5 files:

  1. The HDF5 handler
    1. The HDF5 library (1.6.0 or 1.8.x) (and often zlib*)

To provide data responses as NetCDF files:

  1. The Fileout NetCDF handler
    1. libnetcdf 3.x

In general, beside the software needed to build/run the basic framework, to serve data stored in a particular format, you need a handler that can read that format and often you need a that format's software library.

To run Hyrax, all you will need are the regular packaged versions of third-party software like libxml2. If you're going to build our software from source, you will also need the developer versions of these packages.

*Stock on any recent linux or OS/X distribution

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!).