Installing DSpace on Elementary OS Latest

DSpace is an open source digital repository that can help you to store, share and preserve digital content such as articles, papers, images, and multimedia files. In this tutorial, we will be installing DSpace on Elementary OS latest.

Prerequisites

Before we start with the installation of DSpace, we need to ensure that the following prerequisites are met:

  1. Elementary OS latest is installed and updated
  2. Java (version 8 or higher) is installed and configured on the system

Step 1: Install PostgresSQL Database

DSpace requires a PostgreSQL database to store metadata and other related information. We can install PostgreSQL by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

During the installation, we have to set up the PostgreSQL database by creating a new user and password for the database.

Step 2: Install Apache Tomcat

We also need an Apache Tomcat server to run DSpace. To install Apache Tomcat, run the following command:

sudo apt-get install tomcat8 tomcat8-admin

After installation, make sure that the Tomcat service is running:

sudo service tomcat8 status

Step 3: Install Apache Ant

We will require Apache Ant for building DSpace from the source code. Run the following command to install Apache Ant:

sudo apt-get install ant

Step 4: Download and Install DSpace

We can download the latest version of DSpace from the official website at https://duraspace.org/dspace/. After downloading the package, extract the files to a directory of your choice. For example:

cd /opt
sudo tar -xzvf dspace-6.x.x.tar.gz

Next, change to the dspace-6.x.x directory and build DSpace by running the following commands:

cd dspace-6.x.x
sudo mvn package

Step 5: Configure DSpace

After the build process is complete, we need to configure DSpace. Change to the dspace-6.x.x/dspace/config directory and create a copy of the local.cfg.EXAMPLE file:

cp local.cfg.EXAMPLE local.cfg

Edit the local.cfg file and customize the properties to fit your environment. Some properties you may want to configure include:

  • db.url - this should be set to the URL of your PostgreSQL database, e.g. jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/dspace
  • db.username - the username of the PostgreSQL database user
  • db.password - the password of the PostgreSQL database user
  • dspace.hostname - this should be set to the hostname or IP address of your server

Step 6: Install DSpace

We can now install DSpace by running the following command:

sudo ant fresh_install

After the installation is complete, restart the Tomcat service:

sudo service tomcat8 restart

Step 7: Configure Apache and Access DSpace

Finally, we need to configure Apache to allow access to DSpace. Open the default Apache configuration file by running:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Add the following lines to the end of the <VirtualHost> block:

ProxyPass /dspace http://localhost:8080/spring-rest/
ProxyPassReverse /dspace http://localhost:8080/spring-rest/

Save and close the file, then restart the Apache service:

sudo service apache2 restart

You can now access DSpace by going to http://localhost/dspace in your web browser.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have installed and configured DSpace on Elementary OS latest. You should now be able to start using DSpace to store, manage and share digital content.