How to Deploy CKAN Environment with Document and GIS Data Plugins

Updated October 10, 2017

deploy CKANThis guide will walk you through the deploy and setup of a CKAN repository using a Ubuntu 16.04 VPS. CKAN is an open source dataset repository used to collect and distribute large data collections from all kinds of sources including census data, spreadsheets, geographical data, government and research data.

Once you have completed this guide you will have a production server running CKAN 2.7 that is ready to import a new dataset, but if you want to get started to CKAN then you must check the official documentation to setup a development environment.

To complete this guide you will need:

  • A cloud VPS or virtual machine running Ubuntu 16.04 64bits with a Public IP
  • A domain name associated to your VPS ( you can use a subdomain as well )
  • Some experience working with Python virtual environments and the command line shell
  • Some knowledge about Apache, Nginx, and Tomcat
  • A sample dataset with structured in CSV or Excel format ( Optional )

1. Update the System packages

a. Update the server

ssh root@$REMOTE_SERVER

apt update && apt upgrade

b. Create a backup script

cat > /usr/bin/backme.sh

#! /bin/bash  -e

backme () {
  TIMESTAMP=$( date +'%s')
  for SOURCE_FILE in $*
  do
    cp -av $SOURCE_FILE ${SOURCE_FILE}-${TIMESTAMP}
  done
}

backme $*

exit $?

chmod +x /usr/bin/backme.sh

c. Update the server hostname configuration, you will need to replace "x.x.x.x" with your server IP address, also replace yourdomain.com with the domain assigned to your server.

backme.sh /etc/hosts /etc/hostname

echo "ckanproduction.yourdomain.com" > /etc/hostname

echo -e "\nx.x.x.x ckanproduction.yourdomain.com ckanproduction" >> /etc/hosts

sudo hostname ckanproduction.yourdomain.com

exit

ssh root@$REMOTE_SERVER

d. Setup a user account to deploy CKAN

adduser ckanadmin  

# USE THE INTERACTIVE PROGRAM TO SETUP A NEW USER AND PASSWORD TO MANAGE CKAN

echo -e "\nckanadmin ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL" >> /etc/sudoers

Also, you may use "visudo" to setup the user permissions.

su - ckanadmin

mkdir .ssh 

cat > .ssh/authorized_keys
# INSERT A PUBLIC KEY TO ACCESS YOUR SERVER AS THE USER ckanadmin

chmod 700 .ssh

exit

ssh ckanadmin@$REMOTE_SERVER

e. Install the software package dependencies for CKAN

cat > packagelist

apache2
build-essential
git
git-core
jq
libapache2-mod-rpaf
libapache2-mod-wsgi
libffi-dev
libgeos-c1
libgeos-dev
libjts-java
libpq5
libpq-dev
libtomcat6-java
libxml2-dev
libxslt1-dev
links
openjdk-7-jdk
postgresql
postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1
python-dev
python-jinja2
python-pastescript
python-pip
python-virtualenv
python-werkzeug
redis-server
solr-tomcat
tomcat6
tomcat6-common
unzip
virtualenvwrapper
zlib1g-dev
postfix
unzip
unrar
p7zip-full
python-gdal

sudo apt install -y $( cat packagelist )

sudo service apache2 stop

sudo apt install nginx -y

sudo service nginx stop

2. Download and Install the CKAN package for production

We have to download the respective file from ckan packaging website using wget command.

wget http://packaging.ckan.org/python-ckan_2.7-trusty_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i python-ckan_2.7-trusty_amd64.deb

3. Setup a PostgreSQL database

a. Check that PostgreSQL was installed correctly, Check that the encoding of databases is UTF8

sudo -u postgres psql -l

b. Next you’ll need to create a database user ( Please use a different password )

sudo -u postgres createuser -S -D -R -P ckan_default    

password: f!+hRnztXgDtKSLW9kY

c. Create a new PostgreSQL database,

sudo -u postgres createdb -O ckan_default ckan_default -E utf-8

database: ckan_default

5. Setup Solr

a. Edit the Tomcat configuration file

sudo backme.sh  /etc/tomcat6/server.xml

sudo sed -r -i "/Connector port=\"8080\"/ s/$/address=\"127.0.0.1\"/" /etc/tomcat6/server.xml

sudo sed -r -i "/port=.8080./ s/8080/8983/g" /etc/tomcat6/server.xml

diff /etc/tomcat6/server.xml /etc/tomcat6/server.xml.last   

sudo service tomcat6 restart

b. Replace the default schema.xml file with a symlink to the CKAN schema

sudo mv -v /etc/solr/conf/schema.xml /etc/solr/conf/schema.xml.orig.back

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan/ckan/config/solr/schema.xml /etc/solr/conf/schema.xml

sudo service tomcat6 restart

c. Change the solr_url setting in your CKAN configuration file

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/solr_url/ s/^#//" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff /etc/ckan/default/production.ini /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/rotatelogs /usr/sbin/rotatelogs

sudo service tomcat6 restart

sudo service apache2 restart

links http://localhost:8983/solr/

ssh -L 8983:localhost:8983 ckanadmin@ckanproduction.yourdomain.com

use a web browser to check http://localhost:8983/solr/

6. Update the configuration and initialize the database

d. Setup ckan.site_id

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -i "/ckan.site_id/ s/default/tenosolution/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff /etc/ckan/default/production.ini /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

e. Setup ckan.site_url

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.site_url/ s/\$/ http\:\/\/ckanproduction.yourdomain.com/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  

diff /etc/ckan/default/production.ini /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

c. Edit the sqlalchemy.url setting ( sqlalchemy.url = postgresql://ckan_default:pass@localhost/ckan_default )

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -i "/sqlalchemy/ s/pass/f!+hRnztXgDtKSLW9kY/"  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff /etc/ckan/default/production.ini /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

c. Initialize your CKAN database

sudo ckan db init

d. Restart the web servers

sudo service apache2 restart

sudo service nginx restart

7. Setting up Admin Account and Test Data

a. Initialize the virt environment

. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan

b. Creating a sysadmin user ( Please setup a different password )

paster sysadmin add mycompanyadmin -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

password: mycompanyadmin

c. Creating test data

paster create-test-data -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

d. Setup CKAN ownership to install extensions later...

cd /usr/lib/ckan

sudo chown -R ckanadmin: default/

8. Setup ckanext-spatial

a. Install PostGIS:

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan

sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1 python-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libgeos-c1

b. create the necessary tables and functions in the database

sudo -u postgres psql -d ckan_default -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.3/contrib/postgis-2.1/postgis.sql

sudo -u postgres psql -d ckan_default -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.3/contrib/postgis-2.1/spatial_ref_sys.sql

c. Change the owner of spatial tables to the CKAN user

sudo -u postgres psql -d ckan_default -c 'ALTER VIEW geometry_columns OWNER TO ckan_default;'

sudo -u postgres psql -d ckan_default -c 'ALTER TABLE spatial_ref_sys OWNER TO ckan_default;'

d. see if PostGIS was properly installed:

sudo -u postgres psql -d ckan_default -c "SELECT postgis_full_version()"

e. Install the extension

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/okfn/ckanext-spatial.git

cd ckanext-spatial

pip install -r pip-requirements.txt

python setup.py develop

f. Configure the extension:

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckanext-spatial

paster --plugin=ckanext-spatial spatial initdb 4326 -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ spatial_metadata spatial_query/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff /etc/ckan/default/production.ini /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

deactivate

9. Configure the FileStore

d. Create the file store directory

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/ckan/default

sudo chown -R www-data: /var/lib/ckan/default

sudo chmod -u+rwx /var/lib/ckan/default

e. Enable FileStore and file uploads

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -i "/ckan.storage_path/ s/^#//" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff /etc/ckan/default/production.ini /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

sudo chown -R www-data: /var/lib/ckan

10. Install extensions

a. Initialize the virt environment

. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate

a. Install ckanext-spatialUI ( http://extensions.ckan.org/extension/spatialui/ )

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/XVTSolutions/ckanext-spatialUI

cd ckanext-spatialUI

python setup.py develop

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ spatialUI/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

b. Install ckanext-pdfview ( http://extensions.ckan.org/extension/pdfview/ )

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/ckan/ckanext-pdfview.git

cd ckanext-pdfview

python setup.py develop

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ resource_proxy pdf_view/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

c. Install ckanext-officedocs ( http://extensions.ckan.org/extension/officedocs/ )

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/jqnatividad/ckanext-officedocs.git

cd ckanext-officedocs

python setup.py install

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ officedocs_view/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

d. Install ckanext-dictionary ( http://extensions.ckan.org/extension/dictionary/ )

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/cmuphillycapstone/ckanext-dictionary.git

cd ckanext-dictionary

python setup.py develop

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ dictionary/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

g. Install ckanext-geoview ( https://github.com/ckan/ckanext-geoview )

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/ckan/ckanext-geoview.git

cd ckanext-geoview

python setup.py develop

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ geo_view geojson_view wmts_view/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.views.default_views =/ s/$/\ geo_view geojson_view wmts_view/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

h. Install ckanext-geopusher ( https://github.com/datacats/ckanext-geopusher )

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src

git clone https://github.com/datacats/ckanext-geopusher.git

cd ckanext-geopusher

backme.sh requirements.txt

sed -r -i "/celery/ s/$/==3.1.25/" requirements.txt

pip install -r requirements.txt

python setup.py develop

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ geopusher/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

sudo sed -i "100ickanext.geoview.ol_viewer.formats = wms kml geojson wfs" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

sudo service apache2 reload

deactivate

11. Setting up the DataStore ( run this in a new terminal )

. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate

a. Enable the datastore plugin

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ datastore/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

b. Set-up the database, Create a database_user called datastore_default. ( Please use a different password )

sudo -u postgres psql -l

sudo -u postgres createuser -S -D -R -P -l datastore_default

password: 7DN4ta2igWVlFj

sudo -u postgres createdb -O ckan_default datastore_default -E utf-8

c. Setup your CKAN config

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i -e "/ckan.datastore.write_url/ s/^#//" -e "/ckan.datastore.write_url/ s/ckan_default\:pass/ckan_default:f!+hRnztXgDtKSLW9kY/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i -e "/ckan.datastore.read_url/ s/^#//" -e "/ckan.datastore.read_url/ s/datastore_default\:pass/datastore_default:7DN4ta2igWVlFj/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

d. Set permissions, use this command for a source code installation

sudo ckan datastore set-permissions | sudo -u postgres psql --set ON_ERROR_STOP=1

e. Setup datapusher

sudo backme.sh /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

sudo sed -r -i "/ckan.plugins =/ s/$/\ datapusher/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini 

sudo sed -r -i "/datapusher/ s/^#ckan/ckan/" /etc/ckan/default/production.ini

diff  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini  /etc/ckan/default/production.ini.last

12. Restart the web services

sudo -i

service tomcat6 restart; service apache2 restart;  service nginx restart

You should be able to access you CKAN repository at http://ckanproduction.yourdomain.com and login with the admin user previously created.

Please refer to ckan docs for further details about how to manage and setup your new site.

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