Installing CollectionSpace

Owned by Penelope Madry (Unlicensed)
Feb 01, 2018
2 min read

Installing CollectionSpace

CollectionSpace must be installed and run on a server and is accessed by users via a web browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. As of release v4.5, CollectionSpace does not support the Internet Explorer web browser.  No additional software needs to be installed on an end-user's computer.

Using the Automated Installer

We've created an Automated Installer for performing an unattended installation of CollectionSpace on selected Linux systems. Using the automated installer on VPS or a VirtualBox server is the simplest way to get a CollectionSpace instance installed and running.

Manual Steps

If you decide not to use the Automated Installer (and a VPS or VirtualBox), keep in mind that manually installing CollectionSpace on a server requires advanced knowledge and familiarity with command-line tools, networking settings, etc.  If you don't have experience with these tools, please consider using the Automated Installer.

For detailed instructions on manually installing CollectionSpace onto an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server, click on this link: Installing on an Ubuntu LTS Linux Server

Elasticsearch (Advanced and Optional)

Beginning with version v4.3, you can configure CollectionSpace to work with an Elasticsearch cluster. To learn more about Elasticsearch follow this link: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/1.7/getting-started.html

To use CollectionSpace with Elasticsearch, you'll first need to download and install Elasticsearch 1.7.x.  As of v4.3, CollectionSpace works with Elasticsearch v1.7.x (does not work yet with v2.x of Elasticsearch).  You can download it here: https://www.elastic.co/downloads/past-releases/elasticsearch-1-7-4 You can learn how to setup an Elasticsearch cluster by following this link: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/1.7/setup.html.  The default configuration will create a cluster named "elasticsearch" which is the cluster CollectionSpace will attempt to work with by default.

By default, CollectionSpace will attempt to connect to an Elasticsearch cluster named "elasticsearch" running on the same server.  After you've done the basic installation of CollectionSpace, you can point CollectionSpace to a different cluster by changing the configuration file at '$CSPACE_JEESERVER_HOME/cspace/config/services/proto-elasticsearch-config.xml' and restarting the CollectionSpace server.

Be sure your Elasticsearch cluster is running before you start the CollectionSpace server.  This will ensure that all your CollectionSpace collection data will be indexed by Elasticsearch.

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