NMI Portal Installation Instructions

Prerequisite Software/Hardware
 

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. MySQL JDBC Connector 2.0.14.  You can get both the jar and the source from here.  Download either the .zip or the .tar.gz. 
     
  4. 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. 

Minimum recommended hardware requirements include:
 

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".
    4. Copy mysql-connector-java-2.0.14-bin.jar into the directory portal/chef-1.0.7.
       

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".  You should not edit the properties labeld "DERIVED."  If doing the optional build with MySQL, you should also edit the properties labeled "OPTIONAL", and see the portal/chef-1.0.7/readme.mysql file for building and installing the portal with MySQL (in which case, skip steps 3 and 4, and go to step 5 after completing the steps in readme.mysql).
     
  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>:10081/nmi 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.
 

Notes for Cygwin Users

Cygwin users wishing to use the Grid portlets (proxy manager, grid ftp, etc.) must edit their build.properties file carefully, and there is also one additional step after deploying the portal.
 
  1. Open build.properties with a text editor.
  2. Change the property user.home.directory to be something like C:/Documents and Settings/<username>,  where <username> is your account name.
  3. Change the property nmi.home.directory to be something like C:/cygwin/home/<username>/portal , where <username> is your cygwin user name.  This assumes that you are using Cygwin directories for your installation.
     
  4. Run "ant deploy" as usual.
  5. Open the file C:/Documents and Settings/<username>/.globus/cog.properties with a text editor and change all path separators (slashes) to /.  When correctly edited, the file should contain a line similar to this:
It is acceptable to have spaces in <username>, so for example C:/Documents and Settings/Liang Fang  is an acceptable value for user.home.directory.
 

Installation Problems and Solution

See InstallFAQ.html for some specific examples of error messages that you may encounter.  Most errors occur because the build.properites file has been incorrectly edited.  See particularly "Notes for Cygwin Users".
 
  1. The Tomcat web server included in the NMI portal release uses port 10081 to listen for HTTP requests and port 10005 for shutdown messages.  You are free to change these port values.  However, both of these ports must be unused on your portal server.  To change these port numbers, you must edit the $HOME/portal/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/conf/server.xml file.  See the Tomcat website for detailed instructions.
  2. You MUST edit the build.properties file's user.home.directory to point to your real home directory if you want to use the Grid portlets.  The build script copies cog.properties and certificates into the .globus directory, and the location of this directory is based on user.home.directory.  The .globus directory must be located in your home directory for these portlets to work.
     
  3. The nmi.home.directory property in build.properties by default assumes you are building the portal somewhere under your home.  If you wish to build the portal in some other directory, you must edit nmi.home.directory value to be the explicit path.  This must typically be done when using Cygwin.
  4. You get an error like the following:  BUILD FAILED file:/.../portal/chef-1.0.7/build.xml:83: Warning: Could not find file /.../portal/chef-1.0.7/mysql-connector-java-2.0.14-bin.jar to copy.   This means that a) you have not downloaded the mysql jdbc connector jar, b) you have not put it in the correct location, or c) you have not correctly specified the user home and nmi home properties in the build.properties file.  See Preparing the Installation at the top of this document. 
Thanks--

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