Installing the Evergreen server

Preamble: referenced user accounts

In subsequent sections, we will refer to a number of different accounts, as follows:

  • Linux user accounts:

    • The user Linux account is the account that you use to log onto the Linux system as a regular user.

    • The root Linux account is an account that has system administrator privileges. On Debian you can switch to this account from your user account by issuing the su - command and entering the password for the root account when prompted. On Ubuntu you can switch to this account from your user account using the sudo su - command and entering the password for your user account when prompted.

    • The opensrf Linux account is an account that you create when installing OpenSRF. You can switch to this account from the root account by issuing the su - opensrf command.

    • The postgres Linux account is created automatically when you install the PostgreSQL database server. You can switch to this account from the root account by issuing the su - postgres command.

  • PostgreSQL user accounts:

    • The evergreen PostgreSQL account is a superuser account that you will create to connect to the PostgreSQL database server.

  • Evergreen administrator account:

    • The egadmin Evergreen account is an administrator account for Evergreen that you will use to test connectivity and configure your Evergreen instance.

Preamble: developer instructions

Skip this section if you are using an official release tarball downloaded from http://evergreen-ils.org/egdownloads

Developers working directly with the source code from the Git repository, rather than an official release tarball, must perform one step before they can proceed with the ./configure step.

As the user Linux account, issue the following command in the Evergreen source directory to generate the configure script and Makefiles:

autoreconf -i

Installing prerequisites

  • PostgreSQL: The minimum supported version is 13.

  • Linux: Evergreen has been tested on Debian Bookworm (12), Debian Bullseye (11), Debian Buster (10), Ubuntu Noble Numbat (24.04), and Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish (22.04). If you are running an older version of these distributions, you may want to upgrade before upgrading Evergreen. For instructions on upgrading these distributions, visit the Debian or Ubuntu websites.

  • OpenSRF: The minimum supported version of OpenSRF is 3.3.0.

Evergreen has a number of prerequisite packages that must be installed before you can successfully configure, compile, and install Evergreen.

  1. Begin by installing the most recent version of OpenSRF (3.3.0 or later). You can download OpenSRF releases from http://evergreen-ils.org/opensrf-downloads/

  2. Issue the following commands as the root Linux account to install prerequisites using the Makefile.install prerequisite installer, substituting debian-bookworm,debian-bullseye,debian-buster,ubuntu-jammy, or ubuntu-noble for <osname> below:

    make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install <osname>

  3. OPTIONAL: Developer additions

    To perform certain developer tasks from a Git source code checkout, additional packages are required. As the root Linux account:

    • To install packages needed for retrieving and managing web dependencies, use the <osname>-developer Makefile.install target. Currently, this is only needed for building and installing the web staff client.

    • To optionally run Angular and AngularJS tests you will need to manually install Firefox and your choice of Chromium or Chrome.

      make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install <osname>-developer

    • To install packages required for building Evergreen translations, use the <osname>-translator Makefile.install target.

      make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install <osname>-translator

    • To install packages required for building Evergreen release bundles, use the <osname>-packager Makefile.install target.

      make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install <osname>-packager

Extra steps for web staff client

Skip this entire section if you are using an official release tarball downloaded from http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads. Otherwise, ensure you have installed the optional developer additions before proceeding.

Install AngularJS files for web staff client

  1. Building, Testing, Minification: The remaining steps all take place within the staff JS web root:

    cd $EVERGREEN_ROOT/Open-ILS/web/js/ui/default/staff/

  2. Install Project-local Dependencies. npm inspects the 'package.json' file for dependencies and fetches them from the Node package network.

    npm install   # fetch JS dependencies

  3. Run the build script.

    npm run build-prod

  4. OPTIONAL: Test web client code if the <osname>-developer packages and the necessary browsers are installed. CHROME_BIN should be set to the path to chrome or chromimum, e.g., /usr/bin/chromium:

    CHROME_BIN=/path/to/chrome npm run test

Install Angular files for web staff client

  1. Building, Testing, Minification: The remaining steps all take place within the Angular staff root:

    cd $EVERGREEN_ROOT/Open-ILS/src/eg2/

  2. Install Project-local Dependencies. npm inspects the 'package.json' file for dependencies and fetches them from the Node package network.

    npm install   # fetch JS dependencies

  3. Run the build script.

    ng build --configuration=production

    This can be a memory-intensive build. If the process does not finish, and you get the message "Killed" in the console, try running it with an explicit max-old-space-size option to encourage more garbage collection. For example, on a machine with 4GB of memory, you can limit max-old-space-size to 3GB with:

    NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=3072 ng build --configuration=production

  4. OPTIONAL: Test eg2 web client code if the <osname>-developer packages and the necessary browsers are installed: CHROME_BIN should be set to the path to chrome or chromimum, e.g., /usr/bin/chromium:

    CHROME_BIN=/path/to/chrome npm run test
MOZ_HEADLESS=1 ng e2e

Install OPAC skin dependencies

  1. The following steps take place within the OPAC dependencies root:

    cd $EVERGREEN_ROOT/Open-ILS/web/opac/deps

  2. Install Project-local Dependencies. npm inspects the 'package.json' file for dependencies and fetches them from the Node package network.

    npm install   # fetch JS and CSS dependencies

    Note that there is no build step.

  3. OPTIONAL: Test OPAC javascript code:

    npm run test

Configuration and compilation instructions

For the time being, we are still installing everything in the /openils/ directory. From the Evergreen source directory, issue the following commands as the user Linux account to configure and build Evergreen:

PATH=/openils/bin:$PATH ./configure --prefix=/openils --sysconfdir=/openils/conf
make

These instructions assume that you have also installed OpenSRF under /openils/. If not, please adjust PATH as needed so that the Evergreen configure script can find osrf_config.

Installation instructions

  1. Once you have configured and compiled Evergreen, issue the following command as the root Linux account to install Evergreen and copy example configuration files to /openils/conf.

    make install

Change ownership of the Evergreen files

All files in the /openils/ directory and subdirectories must be owned by the opensrf user. Issue the following command as the root Linux account to change the ownership on the files:

chown -R opensrf:opensrf /openils

Run ldconfig

On Ubuntu or Debian, run the following command as the root user:

ldconfig

Additional Instructions for Developers

Skip this section if you are using an official release tarball downloaded from http://evergreen-ils.org/egdownloads

Developers working directly with the source code from the Git repository, rather than an official release tarball, need to install the Dojo Toolkit set of JavaScript libraries. The appropriate version of Dojo is included in Evergreen release tarballs. Developers should install the Dojo 1.3.3 version of Dojo by issuing the following commands as the opensrf Linux account:

wget https://download.dojotoolkit.org/release-1.3.3/dojo-release-1.3.3.tar.gz
tar -C /openils/var/web/js -xzf dojo-release-1.3.3.tar.gz
cp -r /openils/var/web/js/dojo-release-1.3.3/* /openils/var/web/js/dojo/.

Configure the Apache Web server

  1. Use the example configuration files to configure your Web server for the Evergreen catalog, web staff client, Web services, and administration interfaces. Issue the following commands as the root Linux account:

    cp Open-ILS/examples/apache_24/eg_24.conf       /etc/apache2/sites-available/eg.conf
cp Open-ILS/examples/apache_24/eg_vhost_24.conf /etc/apache2/eg_vhost.conf
cp Open-ILS/examples/apache_24/eg_startup    	/etc/apache2/
# Now set up SSL
mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl
cd /etc/apache2/ssl

  2. The openssl command cuts a new SSL key for your Apache server. For a production server, you should purchase a signed SSL certificate, but you can just use a self-signed certificate and accept the warnings in the and browser during testing and development. Create an SSL key for the Apache server by issuing the following command as the root Linux account:

    openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out server.crt -keyout server.key

  3. As the root Linux account, edit the eg.conf file that you copied into place.

    1. To enable access to the offline upload / execute interface from any workstation on any network, make the following change (and note that you must secure this for a production instance):

      • Replace Require host 10.0.0.0/8 with Require all granted

  4. Change the user for the Apache server.

    • As the root Linux account, edit /etc/apache2/envvars. Change export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data to export APACHE_RUN_USER=opensrf.

  5. As the root Linux account, configure Apache with KeepAlive settings appropriate for Evergreen. Higher values can improve the performance of a single client by allowing multiple requests to be sent over the same TCP connection, but increase the risk of using up all available Apache child processes and memory.

    • Edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.

      1. Change KeepAliveTimeout to 1.

      2. Change MaxKeepAliveRequests to 100.

  6. As the root Linux account, configure the prefork module to start and keep enough Apache servers available to provide quick responses to clients without running out of memory. The following settings are a good starting point for a site that exposes the default Evergreen catalog to the web:

    /etc/apache2/mods-available/mpm_prefork.conf
    <IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
   StartServers            15
   MinSpareServers          5
   MaxSpareServers         15
   MaxRequestWorkers       75
   MaxConnectionsPerChild 500
</IfModule>

  7. As the root user, enable the mpm_prefork module:

    a2dismod mpm_event
a2enmod mpm_prefork

  8. As the root Linux account, enable the Evergreen site:

    a2dissite 000-default  # OPTIONAL: disable the default site (the "It Works" page)
a2ensite eg.conf

  9. As the root Linux account, enable Apache to write to the lock directory; this is currently necessary because Apache is running as the opensrf user:

    chown opensrf /var/lock/apache2

Learn more about additional Apache options in the following sections:

Configure OpenSRF for the Evergreen application

There are a number of example OpenSRF configuration files in /openils/conf/ that you can use as a template for your Evergreen installation. Issue the following commands as the opensrf Linux account:

cp -b /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml.example /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml
cp -b /openils/conf/opensrf.xml.example /openils/conf/opensrf.xml

When you installed OpenSRF, you created four Jabber users on two separate domains and edited the opensrf_core.xml file accordingly. Please refer back to the OpenSRF README and, as the opensrf Linux account, edit the Evergreen version of the opensrf_core.xml file using the same Jabber users and domains as you used while installing and testing OpenSRF.

OPTIONAL: Configure Evergreen for OpenSRF+Redis

If using the Redis variant of OpenSRF, modify /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml to use the Redis settings instead of the Ejabberd settings.

Several sections of the file have 2 configuration blocks, one for Ejabberd and one for Redis. Example:

<!-- Ejabberd -->
<passwd>password</passwd>
<port>5222</port>
<!-- ===  -->

<!-- Redis -->
<!--
<passwd>456fc340-beba-4489-9070-0d6b49e9952b</passwd>
<port>6379</port>
-->
<!-- ===  -->

For each occurrence of such block, commente out the Ejabberd sections and un-comment the Redis sections. Example:

<!-- Ejabberd -->
<!--
<passwd>password</passwd>
<port>5222</port>
-->
<!-- ===  -->

<!-- Redis -->
<passwd>456fc340-beba-4489-9070-0d6b49e9952b</passwd>
<port>6379</port>
<!-- ===  -->
The -b flag tells the cp command to create a backup version of the destination file. The backup version of the destination file has a tilde (~) appended to the file name, so if you have forgotten the Jabber users and domains, you can retrieve the settings from the backup version of the files.

eg_db_config, described in Creating the Evergreen database, sets the database connection information in opensrf.xml for you.

Configure action triggers for the Evergreen application

Action Triggers provide hooks for the system to perform actions when a given event occurs; for example, to generate reminder or overdue notices, the checkout.due hook is processed and events are triggered for potential actions if there is no checkin time.

To enable the default set of hooks, issue the following command as the opensrf Linux account:

cp -b /openils/conf/action_trigger_filters.json.example /openils/conf/action_trigger_filters.json

For more information about configuring and running action triggers, see Notifications / Action Triggers.

Creating the Evergreen database

Setting up the PostgreSQL server

For production use, most libraries install the PostgreSQL database server on a dedicated machine. Therefore, by default, the Makefile.install prerequisite installer does not install the PostgreSQL database server that is required by every Evergreen system. You can install the packages required by Debian or Ubuntu on the machine of your choice using the following commands as the root Linux account:

Installing PostgreSQL server packages

Each OS build target provides the postgres server installation packages required for each operating system. To install Postgres server packages, use the make target 'postgres-server-<OSTYPE>-<POSTGRESVERSION>'. Choose the most appropriate command below based on your operating system and desired PostgreSQL Version.

To install PostgreSQL version 13, use the following command for your operating system:

PostgreSQL 12+ includes a feature called "JIT" (Just-in-Time compilation). Do not turn on Postgres' JIT capabilities. Evergreen’s queries, especially complex ones used for search, are intentionally tuned for non-JIT execution and JIT has been shown to be harmful in some circumstances. Recommended minimum tweak to postgresql.conf: jit_above_cost = -1

 
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bookworm-13
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bullseye-13
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-buster-13
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-jammy-13
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-noble-13

To install PostgreSQL version 14, use the following command for your operating system:

PostgreSQL 12+ includes a feature called "JIT" (Just-in-Time compilation). Do not turn on Postgres' JIT capabilities. Evergreen’s queries, especially complex ones used for search, are intentionally tuned for non-JIT execution and JIT has been shown to be harmful in some circumstances. Recommended minimum tweak to postgresql.conf: jit_above_cost = -1

 
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bookworm-14
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bullseye-14
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-buster-14
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-jammy-14
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-noble-14

To install PostgreSQL version 15, use the following command for your operating system:

PostgreSQL 12+ includes a feature called "JIT" (Just-in-Time compilation). Do not turn on Postgres' JIT capabilities. Evergreen’s queries, especially complex ones used for search, are intentionally tuned for non-JIT execution and JIT has been shown to be harmful in some circumstances. Recommended minimum tweak to postgresql.conf: jit_above_cost = -1

 
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bookworm-15
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bullseye-15
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-buster-15
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-jammy-15
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-noble-15

To install PostgreSQL version 16, use the following command for your operating system:

PostgreSQL 12+ includes a feature called "JIT" (Just-in-Time compilation). Do not turn on Postgres' JIT capabilities. Evergreen’s queries, especially complex ones used for search, are intentionally tuned for non-JIT execution and JIT has been shown to be harmful in some circumstances. Recommended minimum tweak to postgresql.conf: jit_above_cost = -1

 
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bookworm-16
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-bullseye-16
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-debian-buster-16
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-jammy-16
make -f Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install postgres-server-ubuntu-noble-16
Create the Evergreen PostgreSQL user

You need to create a PostgreSQL superuser to create and access the database. Issue the following command as the postgres Linux account to create a new PostgreSQL superuser named evergreen. When prompted, enter the new user’s password:

createuser -s -P evergreen
Enabling connections to the PostgreSQL database

Your PostgreSQL database may be configured by default to prevent connections, for example, it might reject attempts to connect via TCP/IP or from other servers. To enable TCP/IP connections from localhost, check your pg_hba.conf file, found in the /etc/postgresql/ directory on Debian and Ubuntu. A simple way to enable TCP/IP connections from localhost to all databases with password authentication, which would be suitable for a test install of Evergreen on a single server, is to ensure the file contains the following entries before any "host …​ ident" entries:

host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5

When you change the pg_hba.conf file, you will need to reload PostgreSQL to make the changes take effect. For more information on configuring connectivity to PostgreSQL, see http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/auth-pg-hba-conf.html

Creating the Evergreen database and schema

Once you have created the evergreen PostgreSQL account, you also need to create the database and schema, and configure your configuration files to point at the database server. Issue the following command as the root Linux account from inside the Evergreen source directory, replacing <user>, <password>, <hostname>, <port>, and <dbname> with the appropriate values for your PostgreSQL database (where <user> and <password> are for the evergreen PostgreSQL account you just created), and replace <admin-user> and <admin-pass> with the values you want for the egadmin Evergreen administrator account:

perl Open-ILS/src/support-scripts/eg_db_config --update-config \
       --service all --create-database --create-schema --create-offline \
       --user <user> --password <password> --hostname <hostname> --port <port> \
       --database <dbname> --admin-user <admin-user> --admin-pass <admin-pass>

This creates the database and schema and configures all of the services in your /openils/conf/opensrf.xml configuration file to point to that database. It also creates the configuration files required by the Evergreen cgi-bin administration scripts, and sets the user name and password for the egadmin Evergreen administrator account to your requested values.

You can get a complete set of options for eg_db_config by passing the --help parameter.

Loading sample data

If you add the --load-all-sample parameter to the eg_db_config command, a set of authority and bibliographic records, call numbers, copies, staff and regular users, and transactions will be loaded into your target database. This sample dataset is commonly referred to as the concerto sample data, and can be useful for testing out Evergreen functionality and for creating problem reports that developers can easily recreate with their own copy of the concerto sample data.

If you don’t mind waiting a little longer, you can install the enhanced concerto dataset. Use this flag: --load-concerto-enhanced. This includes all of the data from concerto. Notable differences include:

  1. The organization units have friendly names

  2. Acquisitions data

  3. More billing scenarios

  4. More shelving locations and shelving location settings

  5. Authority data

  6. Japanese, Spanish, French and Czech bib records

  7. Metarecord holds

  8. Item Stat Cats

  9. Bookings data

  10. Pre-created OPAC carousels

  11. Serials data

Creating the database on a remote server

In a production instance of Evergreen, your PostgreSQL server should be installed on a dedicated server.

To create the database instance on a remote database server, simply use the --create-database flag on eg_db_config.

Starting Evergreen

  1. As the root Linux account, start the memcached and ejabberd services (if they aren’t already running):

    /etc/init.d/ejabberd start
/etc/init.d/memcached start

  2. As the opensrf Linux account, start Evergreen. The -l flag in the following command is only necessary if you want to force Evergreen to treat the hostname as localhost; if you configured opensrf.xml using the real hostname of your machine as returned by perl -ENet::Domain 'print Net::Domain::hostfqdn() . "\n";', you should not use the -l flag.

    osrf_control -l --start-all

    • If you receive the error message bash: osrf_control: command not found, then your environment variable PATH does not include the /openils/bin directory; this should have been set in the opensrf Linux account’s .bashrc configuration file. To manually set the PATH variable, edit the configuration file ~/.bashrc as the opensrf Linux account and add the following line:

      export PATH=$PATH:/openils/bin

  3. As the opensrf Linux account, generate the Web files needed by the web staff client and catalog and update the organization unit proximity (you need to do this the first time you start Evergreen, and after that each time you change the library org unit configuration. ):

    autogen.sh

  4. As the root Linux account, restart the Apache Web server:

    /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

    If the Apache Web server was running when you started the OpenSRF services, you might not be able to successfully log in to the OPAC or web staff client until the Apache Web server is restarted.

Testing connections to Evergreen

Once you have installed and started Evergreen, test your connection to Evergreen via srfsh. As the opensrf Linux account, issue the following commands to start srfsh and try to log onto the Evergreen server using the egadmin Evergreen administrator user name and password that you set using the eg_db_config command:

/openils/bin/srfsh
srfsh% login <admin-user> <admin-pass>

You should see a result like:

Received Data: "250bf1518c7527a03249858687714376"
------------------------------------
Request Completed Successfully
Request Time in seconds: 0.045286
------------------------------------
Received Data: {
   "ilsevent":0,
   "textcode":"SUCCESS",
   "desc":" ",
   "pid":21616,
   "stacktrace":"oils_auth.c:304",
   "payload":{
      "authtoken":"e5f9827cc0f93b503a1cc66bee6bdd1a",
      "authtime":420
   }
}
------------------------------------
Request Completed Successfully
Request Time in seconds: 1.336568
------------------------------------

If this does not work, it’s time to do some troubleshooting.

  • As the opensrf Linux account, run the settings-tester.pl script to see if it finds any system configuration problems. The script is found at Open-ILS/src/support-scripts/settings-tester.pl in the Evergreen source tree.

  • Follow the steps in the troubleshooting guide.

  • If you have faithfully followed the entire set of installation steps listed here, you are probably extremely close to a working system. Gather your configuration files and log files and contact the Evergreen development mailing list for assistance before making any drastic changes to your system configuration.

Getting help

Need help installing or using Evergreen? Join the mailing lists at http://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/mailing-lists/ or contact us on the Freenode IRC network on the #evergreen channel.

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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