Installing EPrints on Debian/Ubuntu

Requirements

• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (non-LTS versions not recommended)
• Debian 10 (Buster), Debian 11 (Bullseye) or Debian 12 (Bookworm) - These are not as comprehensively tested as Ubuntu LTS versions.

Installing EPrints from Source

Dependencies and Pre-configuration

The ideal way to install from source is via git using the Core Git repositories EPrints 3.4 or EPrints 3.3, and installing from a source tarball is generally discouraged.

Installing from source via git is now the recommended way to install EPrints for production repositories, after having proved to be a useful installation method to those seeking to develop the EPrints code, develop a plugin or develop a Bazaar package too.

First, as the root user install all the dependencies for EPrints (N.B. Some dependencies may not be able in certain versions of Debian/Ubuntu. See Operating System Version Specific Requirements towards the end of this page):

apt-get install perl libncurses5 libselinux1 apache2 libapache2-mod-perl2 libxml-libxml-perl \
  libunicode-string-perl libterm-readkey-perl libmime-lite-perl libmime-types-perl libdigest-sha-perl \
  libdbd-mysql-perl libxml-parser-perl libxml2-dev libxml-twig-perl libarchive-any-perl libjson-perl \
  liblwp-protocol-https-perl libtext-unidecode-perl lynx wget ghostscript poppler-utils antiword elinks \
  texlive-base texlive-base-bin psutils imagemagick adduser tar gzip unzip libsearch-xapian-perl \
  libtex-encode-perl libio-string-perl libdbd-mysql-perl python3-html2text make libexpat1-dev libxslt1-dev

If you are installing on Ubuntu, install MySQL server and client:

 apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev

If you are installing on Debian, install MariaDB server and client:

 apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client libmariadb-dev

Next, create the eprints user

adduser eprints

Now, update Apache configuration to set it up to use the eprints user and group, by ensuring the following lines are set thus in /etc/apache2/envvars:

export APACHE_RUN_USER=eprints
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=eprints

Downloading and Deploying EPrints Source

EPrints 3.4.x for GitHub

apt install git
mkdir /opt/eprints3
chown eprints:eprints /opt/eprints3
chmod 2775 /opt/eprints3
su eprints
git clone https://github.com/eprints/eprints3.4.git /opt/eprints3
cd /opt/eprints3/
git checkout tags/v3.4.5

EPrints 3.3.x for GitHub

apt install git
mkdir /opt/eprints3
chown eprints:eprints /opt/eprints3
chmod 2775 /opt/eprints3
su eprints
git clone https://github.com/eprints/eprints.git /opt/eprints3
cd /opt/eprints3/
git checkout tags/v3.3.16

EPrints 3.4.x from files.eprints.org

cd /tmp/
wget https://files.eprints.org/2789/7/eprints-3.4.5.tar.gz
tar -xzvf eprints-3.4.5.tar.gz

Then put in the source code in place:

mv eprints-3.4.5 /usr/share/eprints
chmod 2775 /usr/share/eprints
chown -R eprints:eprints /usr/share/eprints

If you want a publications flavoured repository, then also:

wget https://files.eprints.org/2789/2/eprints-3.4.5-flavours.tar.gz
tar -xzvf eprints-3.4.5-flavours.tar.gz
mv eprints-3.4.5/flavours/pub_lib /usr/share/eprints/flavours
chmod -R g+w /usr/share/eprints/flavours/pub_lib
chown -R eprints:eprints /usr/share/eprints/flavours/pub_lib

Installing from Debian package

As of EPrints 3.4.5 Debian (.deb) packages will no longer be produced. Due to the complexity of the installation process there are a number of inherent problems with installing using a Deb package. As new operating systems (e.g. Debian and Ubuntu) are released the available packages have changed. This often leads to packages upon which that EPrints depends ceasing to be available. This makes it very difficult or impossible to install the Debian package, as well as requiring retrospective effort to install packages using other sources, (e.g. additional APT repositories or using CPAN). However, the main concern of installation the Debian package, particularly through EPrints' APT repository, is that it can lead to EPrints being upgraded automatically to a new version. Upgrading EPrints using a Debian package is likely to lead to EPrints producing errors, as configuration changes are often required as part of the upgrade process. Automating these changes within the Debian package would be all but impossible due to EPrints' high level of customisability.

Installing publications flavour

EPrints 3.4 DEBs only come with the in-built 'zero' flavour and not the typical publications flavour. Before trying to set up you archive you will need to (as the eprints user) download the latest publications flavour tarball from https://files.eprints.org/ and unpack it into /usr/share/eprints/:

wget https://files.eprints.org/2789/2/eprints-3.4.5-flavours.tar.gz
tar -xzvf eprints-3.4.5-flavours.tar.gz -C /usr/share/eprints/
mv /usr/share/eprints/eprints-3.4.5/flavours /usr/share/eprints/
rmdir /usr/share/eprints/eprints-3.4.5/

Configuration

Next, as the eprints user copy EPRINTS_PATH/perl_lib/EPrints/SystemSettings.pm.tmpl to EPRINTS_PATH/perl_lib/EPrints/SystemSettings.pm

EPRINTS_PATH will be either /usr/share/eprints3/ or /usr/share/eprints depending on which instructions you followed above.

EPrints is now fully installed at EPRINTS_PATH/. However, you will not yet have a running archive. Follow the Getting Started with EPrints 3 instructions to set this up.

Post-configuration

Next, add the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/eprints.conf with the following line:

Include EPRINTS_PATH/cfg/apache.conf

To enable this as root run the command:

a2ensite eprints

Also it may be necessary to disable the default site otherwise the default Apache page will still be shown:

a2dissite 000-default

Finally, restart Apache:

service apache2 restart

You should now be able to access your vanilla repository at the hostname you specified when running epadmin create from the Getting Started with EPrints 3 instructions. You should then login as the admin user you created during this process and turn on the indexer. This can be done by clicking on the Admin link under the Logged in menu, then clicking on the System Tools tab and finally the Start Indexer button.

Useful commands for source development and testing

The following commands may be useful for those developing or testing EPrints but are not necessary for installing EPrints.

Install EPrints build dependencies

apt-get build-dep eprints

Get EPrints source

apt-get source eprints

Rebuilding

To change the way the eprints builds you can edit the debian/rules file (the only line you will want is the configure one). Once done you can then type dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot from the root dir of the extracted tarball.

This will build you a .deb in the directory above your current location, which can then be installed usinging dpkg:

dpkg -i ../eprints-X.X.X_all.deb

Alternatively you can configure and install it yourself (a non debian specific version) by configuring manually and then running install.pl:

$ ./configure --with-smtp-server=smtp.yourdomain
$ sudo ./install.pl

Operating System Version Specific Requirements

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

N.B. It is assumed that you are installing the latest version of 3.4. Earlier versions may have issues not listed here.

Previous issues

xpdf Deb package no longer exists 

This has been removed as a dependency since EPrints 3.4.3, as it is no longer specifically required by EPrints.

MySQL deprecated syntax 

GRANT PRIVILEGES command used by epadmin has been modified to avoid using deprecated syntax since EPrints 3.4.3.

MySQL root user cannot be used 

This is now explained under EPrints' Getting Started instructions. as it is typical for most modern Linux operating systems.

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

N.B. It is assumed that you are installing the latest version of 3.4. Earlier versions may have issues not listed here.

MySQL root user cannot be used

On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS rather than prompting you to set a password for MySQL server when installing this as a dependency, it just installs it without. However, this means on the root user can login to MySQL to add a database. As "epadmin create" runs at the eprints user, this will not be able to create a database for EPrints. The get round this as the root user connect to MySQL (just type "mysql" at the command line) and type the following two commands. You will want to set your own password (i.e. not 'changeme') , you may also want to restrict which databases the eprints user has control over. If you know the "Archive ID" you are going to use.

CREATE USER 'eprints'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED by 'changeme';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'eprints'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Previous issues

libsepol1 Deb package no longer exists 

This has been removed as a dependency on 29th May 2022, as it is not specifically required by EPrints.

MySQL root user cannot be used 

This is now explained under EPrints' Getting Started instructions. as it is typical for most modern Linux operating systems.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

N.B. It is assumed that you are installing the latest version of 3.4. Earlier versions may have issues not listed here.

libncurses5 no longer available

libncurses5 APT package dependency no longer exists in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, install libncurses6 instead.

Previous Issues

MySQL root user cannot be used 

This is now explained under EPrints' Getting Started instructions. as it is typical for most modern Linux operating systems.

Debian Known Issues

See Debian Known Issues