Metacat UNIX Installation Instructions
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***Disclaimer*** |
These installation instructions are meant for a systems administrator/DBA or someone who is an advanced computer user. They are NOT meant for the average computer user. Please realize that by executing these instructions, you may have to trouble shoot many advanced issues yourself. |
The Table of Contents |
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These documents are meant to outline the metacat installation process on specific platforms. They are not a substitute for the below instructions and only meant as a supplemental guideline. |
Minimum Requirements Installing Metacat requires a server running an SQL92 compliant database (Oracle 8i or Postgresql recommended) with at least 128MB RAM, and a Pentium III class processor or higher. The amount of disk space required depends on the size of your RDBMS tablespace (which should be at least 10 MB, however Metacat itself requires only about 1 MB of free space after installation). These instructions assume a Linux environment but may work on other UNIX type environments, however this has not been tested. Additional Required Software The server on which you wish to install Metacat must have the following software installed and running correctly before attempting to install Metacat.
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Java You'll need a recent Java SDK; J2SE 1.4.2 or later is required. The latest metacat release has been tested most extensively with J2SE 5.0 and this is the recommended version. Make sure that JAVA_HOME environment variable is properly set and that both java and javac are on your PATH. Oracle 8i or Postgres Oracle: lsnrctl startYour instance should have a table space of at least 5 MB (10 MB or higher recommended). You should also have a username specific to Metacat created and enabled. This user must have most normal permissions including CREATE SESSION, CREATE TABLE, CREATE INDEX, CREATE TRIGGER, EXECUTE PROCEDURE, EXECUTE TYPE, etc. If an action is unexplainably rejected by Metacat it is probably because the user permissions are not correctly set. Postgres:
Ant Ant is a Java based build application similar to Make on UNIX systems. It takes in installation parameters from a file in the root installation directory named "build.xml". The Metacat CVS module contains a default build.xml file that may require some modification upon installation. Ant should be installed on the system and the "ant" executable shell script should be available in the users path. The latest metacat release was tested with Ant 1.6.5. Tomcat Install Tomcat into the directory of your choice. The directory in which you install Tomcat itself will be referred to as the "$CATALINA_HOME". We recommend that you install Tomcat version 5.5. More details about Tomcat installation are available here. |
Once all of the prerequisite software is installed as described above, the installation of Metacat can begin. First you must have a current version of the source distribution of Metacat. You can get it two ways. Authorized users can check it out of the NCEAS CVS system. You'll need both the "metacat" module and the "utilities" module to be checked out in sibling directories. The command is as follows: mkdir knb-software cd knb-software cvs checkout -P metacat cvs checkout -P utilitiesOr you can download a gzipped tar file from this site.
Once you have either checked out or unzipped and untarred the source
distribution, you can begin the installation process. Change into the
metacat directory and edit the file called "
Other properties in
Metacat has a number of additional settable properties in file
Note: When setting properties, DO NOT add a trailing slash [/] to the end of any paths that are specified. Metacat will not function correctly if you do so. |