So I’ve been using Fedora-commons for almost a year, first off, no it is NOT the Linux distribution, it is a digital repository used by libraries, museums, etc, worldwide to keep track of their digital collections.  For this Fedora-commons is very good at its job, but there was a steep learning curve when I first jumped in with, a complaint I’ve heard repeated by many who aren’t Java jockeys (just made that up).  Today I had to reinstall Fedora-commons on a new development server, and to be honest I had a couple of missteps along the way as I tried to remember my super cool moves to install this app.  Once something like this happens it’s a prime candidate for a HOWTO, so here is my super, simple HOWTO get Feodora-commons up and running in a development environment in Debian GNU/Linux (I’m running Lenny – 5.0) or Ubuntu Linux.  Notice that for simplicity’s sake, this uses Fedora-commons built in Tomcat implementation, for developing this is fine, for production I highly recommend installing a Tomcat via dpkg/apt-get, or whatever package manager you use, so that any security patches will be available for apt-get to automatically update.  I’ve also set it to use a local MySQL store, change to a different database if you need to.

1. download the latest version of Fedora-commons (my example uses wget, since that’s how I roll, and is with the latest currently available version, modify as needed)

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fedora-commons/fcrepo-installer-3.3.jar

2. create a filed called ‘install30.properties’ so you don’t have to answer all the questions the installer asks.  Read through this example and modify as needed.

# example install.properties
ri.enabled=true
messaging.enabled=true
apia.auth.required=false
database.jdbcDriverClass=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
ssl.available=false
database.jdbcURL=jdbc\:mysql\://localhost/fedora33?useUnicode\=true&characterEncoding\=UTF-8&autoReconnect\=true
messaging.uri=vm\:(broker\:(tcp\://localhost\:61616))
database.password=secret
database.mysql.driver=included
database.username=root
tomcat.shutdown.port=8001
deploy.local.services=true
xacml.enabled=false
database.mysql.jdbcDriverClass=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
tomcat.http.port=8080
fedora.serverHost=localhost
database=mysql
database.driver=included
tomcat.home=/opt/fedora/tomcat
fedora.home=/opt/fedora
rest.enabled=true
install.type=custom
servlet.engine=included
fedora.admin.pass=fedoraAdmin

3. create a database as defined above (NOTE: this could be different for you, if you’re not using a DB, enter database.jdbcDriverClass=com.mcoi.jdbc.Driver and remove the MySQL specfic lines)

mysqladmin -h localhost -u root -p  create fedora33

4. then run the Fedora-commons installer, using the -jar switch with Java and calling out your properties file at the end

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java -jar fcrepo-installer-3.3.jar install.33.properties

1. to start Fedora-commons, define your FEDORA_HOME, JAVA_HOME, etc in your profile, or a simple BASH start script – here’s an example, again modify as needed.

# example start_fedora.sh
export JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"
export FEDORA_HOME="/opt/fedora"
export CATALINA_HOME="$FEDORA_HOME/tomcat"
/opt/fedora/tomcat/bin/startup.sh

2. run the BASH script, watch for any errors

./start-fedora.sh

3. view the Fedora Admin within a web browser (change the URL to suit)

http://localhost.domain.com:8080/fedora/search

4. later, learn how to import stuff
5. ???
6. Profit!

Thanks goes out to all at Fedora-commons, specifically those on the mailing list that walked me through the early steps and made that learning curve just a bit flatter. I’m still planning on working on a Debian ‘deb’ installer to simplify the above process.  If you hit any questions or have issues with the above, leave a message below.

Thanks