Payola requires a Scala environment, which is supported on virtually any platform capable of running Java code - both Unix and Windows-based systems are fully supported. The system should have at least 1GB of memory dedicated to Payola itself.
Aside from the actual Payola server, you need to have a running Squeryl-compatible relational database for storing user data, a Virtuoso server for storing personal RDF data and an SMTP server for the plugin approval process. The Virtuoso server needs to be running on the same server as Payola is, or at least share the same file system - when uploading private data, a path to a temporary file is passed to Virtuoso. The SMTP server and the relational database may be running on a different server (this is configurable in the payola.conf file as described later on).
To work with Payola, a web browser capable of displaying HTML5 web pages is required. Payola takes an advantage of many HTML5 features - keep your web browser up-to-date all the time. Recommended are the latest versions of WebKit-based browsers (e.g. Chrome, Safari), Firefox, Opera, or IE. A 1440x900 or larger display is highly recommended.
First of all, clone the Payola git repository: git://github.com/siroky/Payola.git to a local folder.
Payola comes pre-configured to work with default settings of a Virtuoso server and an H2 database installed on the same server as Payola is running (i.e. localhost). To change this configuration, edit payola/web/shared/src/main/resources/payola.conf - it’s a regular text file with various key-value options separated by an equal sign (=) on each line. Comment lines start with a hash symbol (#).
virtuoso.server - address of the Virtuoso server
virtuoso.endpoint.port - port of the Virtuoso server's SPARQL endpoint
virtuoso.endpoint.ssl - enter true if the connection to the Virtuoso SPARQL endpoint should use SSL
virtuoso.sql.port - port of the Virtuoso server's SQL database
virtuoso.sql.user - SQL database login name
virtuoso.sql.password - SQL database login password
database.location - JDBC URL of the database
database.user - database login name
database.password - database login password
admin.email - Email of the admin user. A user with this email address also gets created when the initializer project is run. When a user uploads a plugin an email is sent to this address for the admin to approve the plugin, as well.
web.url - URL of the website, by default http://localhost:9000. The URL must start with http:// or https:// and mustn't end with a trailing /.
web.mail.noreply - Email that will be used as a no-reply email address of the web application.
mail.smtp.server - Mail server.
mail.smtp.port - Mail server port.
mail.smtp.user - Username.
mail.smtp.password - Password.
lib.directory - storage for 3rd-party libraries
plugin.directory - where to store plugins uploaded by users
Payola will not start Virtuoso or H2 on its own. You need to configure them and run them by yourself.
As the cloned repository contains just source code, it is necessary to compile Payola in order to run it. Open a command line (console, terminal) and make payola subdirectory the current working directory (e.g. by cd payola). Launch SBT (using the sbt.sh command or the sbt.bat on Windows) ...
You can edit these commands in a text editor to change the amount of memory given to Payola. By default, Payola uses 1GB of memory (the
-Xmxargument), 512MB of memory for the permgen (the-XX:MaxPermSizeargument) and 2MB stack size (the-Xssargument).
... and enter the following commands:
> cp
...
> project initializer
> run
...
> project server
> run
Voilà! Your Payola server is running. The initializer project sets up your database to include an admin user (login [email protected], password payola!), a sample analysis and some data sources. You can, of course, remove those and create your own later.
Warning: The
initializerproject drops and recreates all tables in the database - hence all previous data will be lost. Run this project only when installing Payola for the first time or if you want to reset Payola to factory settings.
Payola allows users to store their own private RDF data using Virtuoso graph groups that are identified by a generated 128-bit UUID (and the H2 database is secured by a username-password combination). Both the Virtuoso server and H2 database allow incoming connections from outside of your network, or localhost, by default.
While a simple guess of another user's group identifier is unlikely (and a brute-force attack on the username-password combination for the relational database is highly noticeable), it is advisable to secure your local Virtuoso storage and your relational database by denying all incoming and outgoing connections outside of localhost, or if on a secure company network, outside of that particular network. This is up to each administrator to correctly set up the server's firewall.
To launch Payola, open SBT just like when you were compiling it and enter these three commands (you do not need to run the cp command unless you have modified the source code since the last compilation):
> cp
...
> project server
...
> run
Warning: Do not run the
initializerproject. All users, analyses, data sources, etc. would be lost. (See this note for details.)
Once the server is running, enter the following address in your web browser:
Of course, the port may vary depending on your configuration file (see section Configuration for details).