Installation Guide for Obidos Community Edition

https://spenego.com

Installation of Community Edition of Obidos

Obidos is a web application that runs on linux OS. It uses a Mariadb database on the backend. Obidos

application is run on Jetty servlet server. We package all these into a single bundle as an ova distribution.

The ova distribution can be installed in a corporate virtual environment like vmware or xen.

Main Steps

The main steps involved in the installation are as follows:

1. Download the ova ﬁle from https://spenego.com

2. Import the ova ﬁle into your virtual environment

3. Conﬁgure the VM on your corporate network

4. Customize the Obidos web application for your institution

Step 1. Download ova

From https://spenego.com, select ”Community Edition” item from the ”Products” tab.

Figure 1: Products Tab

You will ﬁnd the link to download the ova ﬁle under DOWNLOAD section. Click on that link and a

pop-up window will show up to help you save the ova ﬁle to your local machine.

STEP 2. IMPORT THE OVA FILE INTO YOUR VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT 3

Figure 2: Download Link

Step 2. Import the ova ﬁle into your virtual environment

Using your virtual environment console, import the ova ﬁle into your virtual environment.

The video titled ”Importing Obidos Community OVA” provides a demo of the import process in Virtu-

alBox.

Step 3. Conﬁgure the VM on your corporate network

Now that the ova is imported into your virtual framework, the virtual machine has to be conﬁgured to run

on your network. To make this process easy, the vm comes with a built-in account called ’obidos’ with

a password ’obidos’. Power on the imported VM. Once the VM is up and running, log into the vm using

username as ’obidos’ and password ’obidos’. When the log in process is complete, the system will bring

up a User Interface with EULA. Once you accept the EULA, a screen with various ﬁelds to be ﬁlled in

will show up. You will need the following information to complete this step:

1. Hostname and domain name for the server.

2. IP address, network mask and DNS servers.

3. A linux username (for a new account on the vm).

(This account can be used to do maintenance on the virtual machine.)

4. Temporary password for this account.

5. Login name for the Obidos applcation admin account

(The default name is ’admin’. However, some institutions would like to

change the default value.

6. Temporary password for the admin account

7. Email address of the admin account

Note that the passwords set in this process are temporary. They have to be changed when logging

into the corresponding component for the ﬁrst time.

A video demonstrating this step is provided under the Videos tab. It is titled: ”Conﬁguring Obidos

VM on your network”.

Step 4. Customize Obidos application for your institution

As mentioned in Step 3, the passwords set were temporary. In this step those passwords will be changed

to permanent ones by logging in. On completion of Step 3, the VM will be running on your network.

It will be running with the UTC time zone. This has to be changed to your local time zone.

The fresh instance of the backend database Mariadb will be running without a password for the root

account. So it has to be secured with a strong password.

The Obidos web application will be up and running. But it will be running with a self-signed SSL cer-

tiﬁcate generated during Step 3. You will have to install proper SSL certiﬁcate on the web server.

In order to set up the timezone for the OS and password for Mariadb ’root’ account, you have to log

into the virtual machine using a linux account. ’ssh’ client (like putty on windows) or command line

terminal from Mac/linux can be used to log into the virtual machine.

To set the permanent admin password, email gateway, Active Directory details, etc. for the Obidos

application, you need to connect over a web browser and log into Obidos.

Figure 3: Items to change

ISSUES 5

In a nutshell, you will need the following information handy to complete the conﬁgurations:

1. Access to a web browser on your network

2. ssh client

3. Servername or IP address of the Obidos server

4. Login name of the Obidos admin account set in Step 3 (default is ’admin’)

5. Temporary password for this admin account set in Step 3

6. Permanent password for the Obidos admin account

7. Details of email gateway for your institution

8. Active Directory (LDAP) details if you want to integrate user accounts

with corporate directory

9. Your Time Zone

10. Strong password for Mariadb ’root’ account

A video demonstrating this step titled ”Conﬁguring Obidos Web Application” is available under the

Vidoes tab.

Issues

If you have any issues, feel free to discuss in the Community Forum, which can be accessed from the

’Support’ tab on https://spenego.com.

Figure 4: Community Support Forum