OpenConext Virtual Machine

These are the resources required to build an OpenConext Virtual Machine.

OpenConext is the completely Open Source version of the educational collaboration platform that is used in the Netherlands, SURFconext. For more information regarding OpenConext, refer to the documentation at http://www.openconext.org

How to use this OpenConext VM?

You can either:

1. Install OpenConext on your own server / VM. This option is recommended if you already have a target machine for OpenConext.
2. Let Vagrant install and manage a new virtual machine for you. This option is recommended if you already use Vagrant.

Option 1. I already have a machine I want to install OpenConext on.

Prerequisites:

• a VM running CentOS 6 or RedHat EL 6 (other operating systems may work, but are not supported).

1.1. Download installer

From within the VM, download this repo:

curl https://codeload.github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-vm/tar.gz/v62 | tar zx

1.2. Run the installer

Run the install script:

bash OpenConext-vm-62/scripts/install_openconext.sh

By default, the installer will run an 'unattended' setup, choosing sensible defaults. If you want to install a specific version of the platform, install a subset of components or change the default domain (demo.openconext.org), run the installer with a -i flag:

bash OpenConext-vm-62/scripts/install_openconext.sh -i

Option 2. Letting Vagrant set up a new virtual machine.

Prerequisites:

• Recent version of Vagrant

2.1. Make a new directory for all OpenConext code

Example for OS X:

mkdir ~/Sites/OpenConext
cd ~/Sites/OpenConext

2.2. Download the VM project there

curl https://codeload.github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-vm/tar.gz/v62 | tar zxv

2.3 Up, up and away!

You should now have a directory called OpenConext-vm-v62, go there and run vagrant up.

cd OpenConext-vm-v62 && vagrant up

Vagrant will download the basebox, set it up with NFS and install OpenConext for you.

Once installed...

Change your hosts-file

The installer ends with a message suggesting to add an entry to your hosts-file (that is: of the VM-host). Follow this suggestion if you want to use the OpenConext service from outside of the VM.

Visit Welcome URL

Point your browser to the welcome-URL, as mentioned by the installer. Install the CA's certificate in your browser as mentioned on that page.

Platform usage

You can now use the following OpenConext components:

• OpenConext Profile
• OpenConext Manage
• OpenConext ServiceRegistry
• OpenConext Teams
• OpenConext Api
• OpenConext Mujina-SP

To login in on the several Service Providers you can choose OpenConext Mujina IdP from the WAYF and login with admin / secret.

Samba share

If you want to make modifications to the components a Samba share is available at:

smb://address/www
username: openconext
password: openconext

where address is the ip address of your VM.

MySQL access

If you want to query or update the database you will have to open up port 3306. Type in a VM shell:

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m tcp  --dport 3306 -j ACCEPT && service iptables save

The MySQL root-password is c0n3xt.

Upgrades

From OpenConext release 45 onwards, upgrades are supported. Refer to the available releases and release notes.

1. Get the latest version of the OpenConext VM installer

For one time installations, getting a tarball from the Github repo suffices, as described above in the installation instructions. But to upgrade your OpenConext instance, it's better to have a clone of the repository.

Run within the VM:

git clone https://github.com/OpenConext/OpenConext-vm

(or pull in the latest changes if you cloned before):

cd OpenConext-vm
git pull

2. Run the upgrade installer

Note upgrades rely on git branches, you need to have a git checkout of the repository before you start upgrading your OpenConext VM.

From version v57 onwards every version in OpenConext is represented by a git branch with the same name (v57, v61 etc). In order to upgrade your v57 VM you first need to checkout the correct git branch:

git fetch
git checkout v57

After this you can upgrade with the following command:

bash OpenConext-vm/scripts/upgrade_openconext.sh

The installer will ask which version you want to upgrade to.

If you have an older version of OpenConext you should first check out the tag 'upgrade_v57' to upgrade to v57 of openconext and then use the branching structure of git to move your version forwards.

git checkout upgrade_v57
bash OpenConext-vm/scripts/upgrade_openconext.sh