Configuration orientation

This page is under development as part of the EPrints 3.4 manual. It may still contain content specific to earlier versions.

You've just installed EPrints 3 and created a repository, and now you're keen to get started on customising it. Before diving into the how-tos, take some time to read through this brief orientation guide and familiarise yourself with the EPrints configuration landscape.

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Where are the configuration files?

The default installation directory for EPrints is:

/opt/eprints3/

(you may have chosen a different installation directory when you installed EPrints).

There are several sub-directories at this level, but this guide covers only those relevant to repository configuration - the lib and archives directories. Before looking at the contents of these directories, we need to understand the concepts of global and repository-specific (or local) configuration.

What about everything else? The EPrints installation directory contains several other files and directories, which are described in the EPrints Directory Structure section.

Global vs Local configuration

A single installation of EPrints can run multiple repositories, each potentially very different in style and functionality. Therefore, EPrints configuration files are divided into two default sets: global configuration and repository-specific configuration. Each repository shares the global configuration settings, whilst keeping its own set of local (private) configuration settings.

EPrints tries to strike a sensible balance between the two sets. The global set contains the configuration options that you are probably least likely to need to change (although they are by no means unchangeable - you can override a global setting for a specific repository if you need to). On the other hand, the repository-specific set contains the most often tweaked settings.

The lib directory

The lib directory is where the global configuration files are kept. This directory should be considered read only. Best practice when changing a global setting for a particular repository is to override the setting at the repository level rather than edit the global configuration files directly. The configuration files in lib are organised into subdirectories according to their function, which should help make locating a specific configuration setting intuitive.

Exercise: Take a moment to explore the contents of the lib directory.

Note that the defaultcfg subdirectory contains the default set of configuration files that are copied into each new repository's local configuration directory. These local configuration directories are covered in the next section.

The archives directory

Each repository under the same installation of EPrints has its own subdirectory (named after the repository ID specified when creating the repository) under the archives directory. Each of these subdirectories contain the repository-specific configuration files (amongst other files) for that particular repository.