NMI Portal Installation Instructions

Prerequisite Software

You must install the following before proceeding.  To check to see if you have the correct version of Java installed on your server, type "java -version" from the command line. 
  1. Java 2 Standard Edition version 1.4.x or higher.  You can download the Java SDK from here.   Note you will need the Java compiler, so you should get the SDK, not the JRE.
  2. Apache Ant version 1.5.x or higher.  You can download Ant from here. 
  3. For Unix and Linux, we recommend Gnu-tar, available from here. If installing the portal on a Sun host, we specifically recommend that you do not use the version of tar that ships with Solaris. 
See the Apache Ant manual for installation instructions.  After installing the above software, be sure that the executables java, javac, and ant are in your path.  Test these from a command window to verify. 

Preparing the Installation

  1. Optionallly, create a "portal" account on your web server.
  2. Download the portal bundle (either portals.tar.gz or portals.zip).
  3. Put the download bundle into the home directory of your "portal" account.
  4. Untar or unzip the portal bundle. 
    1. To unzip the bundle from the command line, use "jar -xvf portal.zip".
    2. To untar with Gnu-tar from the command line, use "tar -zxf portal.tar.gz".
    3. To unpack with other versions of tar, use "gunzip portal.tar.gz" and then "tar -xf portal.tar".

Install the Portal

  1. Move into the portal/chef-1.0.7 directory.
  2. Open the file "build.properites" with your favorite text editor and change the properties to appropriate values for your system.   You must set properties labeled by "EDIT".  If doing the optional build with MySQL, you should also edit the properties labeled "OPTIONAL".  You should not edit the properties labeld "DERIVED."
  3. Type "ant deploy" to build in and install the portal.
  4. If you are rebuilding a portal, type "ant clean" first before "ant deploy".
  5. Start the Tomcat web server.  From the command prompt, use $HOME/portal/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/bin/startup.sh or startup.bat. 
  6. Point your browser at http://<your host name>:8080/ogce and create an account.

Note on Globus Certificates

The installation process will create the directories .globus and .globus/certificates in the portal account's home directory if these directories do not currently exist.  It will also copy the file cog.properties and Globus, DOE, and Extreme Labs CA certificates and signing policies into these directories.  It will not overwrite these files if they are already present.  You do not need to take any additional steps.

If you already have a cog.properties file, you should add the following line to it by hand:
  
    cacerts=/your/home/dir/.globus/certificates/

If you plan to use host and user certifiicates signed by a CA that is not listed above, you must copy the appropriate .0 and .signing_policy files to your .globus/certificates directory.  See here for more information.

Installation Problems and Solution

  1. The web server by default uses port 8080 to listen for HTTP requests and port 8005 for shutdown messages.  Both of these ports must be unused on your portal server.  If you need to change these port values, you must edit the $HOME/portal/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/conf/server.xml file.  See the Tomcat website for detailed instructions.

Thanks--

The NMI Open Grid Computing Environments Team.
www.ogce.org