Installing Access to Memory (AtoM) on Debian

Access to Memory (AtoM) is an open-source web-based application designed to provide access to archival descriptions and digital objects. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation of AtoM on Debian latest.

Prerequisites

  • A Debian-based system
  • A webserver (Apache or Nginx)
  • A database system (MySQL or PostgreSQL)
  • PHP version 7.2 or higher
  • PHP extensions (gd, mysqli, xml, zip)

Step 1: Install Required Packages

We need to install required packages to set up the environment for accessing archives in memory.

sudo apt update

sudo apt install php-cli php-fpm php-gd php-mysql php-xml php-zzip php-bz2 php-curl php-imagick php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-intl php-json php-ldap php-imap libapache2-mod-php unzip wget curl git

Step 2: Install and Configure a Webserver

We will use the Apache webserver in this tutorial, but you can use Nginx if you prefer.

sudo apt install apache2

Start the Apache service and enable it to start at boot time using the commands below:

sudo systemctl start apache2.service
sudo systemctl enable apache2.service

Step 3: Install and Configure a Database System

We will use MySQL as our database system in this tutorial. You can use PostgreSQL if you prefer.

sudo apt install mysql-server

During the installation process, you will be prompted to set a root password for MySQL.

Create a database and a user with privileges on that database using the commands below:

sudo mysql -u root -p

mysql> CREATE DATABASE atomdb;
mysql> CREATE USER 'atomuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '[password]';
mysql> GRANT ALL ON atomdb.* TO 'atomuser'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> EXIT;

Step 4: Download and Extract AtoM

We will download the latest version of AtoM from the official website using the wget command as shown below:

wget https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-downloads/v2/code.google.com/ica-atom/ica-atom-1.3.2.zip

Extract the downloaded file:

unzip ica-atom-1.3.2.zip

The extracted files should now be in a directory called 'atom'.

Step 5: Configure AtoM

Rename the 'config-sample.php' file to 'config.php':

cd atom
mv config-sample.php config.php

Open the config.php file in a text editor and modify the following settings:

'dsn' => 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=atomdb',
'db_username' => 'atomuser',
'db_password' => '[password]',

Set the timezone:

'timezone' => 'America/New_York',

Save and close the file.

Copy the contents of the 'atom' folder to the web server's document root:

sudo cp -r * /var/www/html/

Grant permission to the web user to write to the following directories:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/cache/ /var/www/html/plugins/ /var/www/html/uploads/
sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/cache/ /var/www/html/plugins/ /var/www/html/uploads/

Step 6: Access AtoM

Browse to your server's IP or domain name. You should see the AtoM login page.

http://[server-ip-or-domain]/atom/

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed AtoM on Debian latest. You can now use it to manage archival descriptions and digital objects.