1. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Sakai 2.4.x System Administrator’s Guide Tony Atkins 7th Sakai Conference Amsterdam, Netherlands June12th, 2007 Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

2. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Introduction What is the 2.4.x Admin Guide? –A collection of tips for administrators to assist in moving Sakai from an out-of-the-box installation to production. –An evolving document reflecting the diverse practices of admins running 2.4 in production.

3. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Prerequisites The guide assumes that you’ve completed a full installation (preferably from source). For help in getting to that point, see the Sakai 2.4 Install Guide or the Developer’s Walkthrough Guide, both in Confluence.

4. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam The sakai.properties file Central text file used to override configuration defaults. Controls the behaviour of tools and components. Stored in TOMCAT_HOME/sakai Simple Examples: sampleboolean=true samplestring=set to a string value with one or more spaces, ending in a new line Hierarchical Property Example: sampleproperty.count=3 sampleproperty.1=peas sampleproperty.2=porridge sampleproperty.3=hot

5. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam sakai.properties (continued) Start with reference/docs/sakai.properties At a minimum, review and edit: –Branding –Database Settings –Content Settings –Email Settings 6th Sakai Conference - Atlanta, Georgia December 12th, 2006

6. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Config Viewer Tool A tool to display settings and usage information. For more information, see the tech demo on Thursday from 14:05-14:35

7. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Branding and Identity Branding options for sakai.properties (text): –ui.institution The name of the organization associated with this Sakai installation (such as "My University"). –ui.service The local brand for Sakai within the institution. Among other things, this text is displayed at the root of the bread crumb bar that appears within Sakai. –serverId A unique identifier for the particular application server Sakai is running on. This is used to distinguish nodes in a clustered environment from one another. – serverUrl The full service URL for this installation of Sakai –serverName The server name for this installation of Sakai (this should match the value for serverUrl).

8. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Skinning All style sheets and images are stored in a skin directory under webapps/library/skin To get started, copy one of the bundled skins to a new directory name and make your changes The default skin and site icons are controlled through sakai.properties: –skin.default The default skin to use. This directory must exist in webapps/library/skin/. –iconName, iconURLs, iconSkins Together make it possible for users to select a skin for their site. For more info, visit: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/oA8

9. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Database Configuration and Tuning Database settings: # MySQL settings - make sure to alter as appropriate vendor@org.sakaiproject.db.api.SqlService=mysql driverClassName@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect url@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/sakai?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF- 8 validationQuery@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=show variables like 'version' defaultTransactionIsolationString@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED username@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=sakai password@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=******** Uncomment the appropriate block for your database Edit the username and password properties

10. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Binary Content and Filesystem Settings Filesystem settings: –bodyPath@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService The directory in which content will be stored in the filesystem. Leave unset to store in the db. –bodyVolumes@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService A comma-delimited list of subdirectories under the above with NO SPACES. –siteQuota@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService The site quota, in bytes, with no commas. –convertToFile@org.sakaiproject.content.api.ContentHostingService Use to migrate content from the db to the filesystem. One way. –storagePath@org.sakaiproject.archive.api.ArchiveService The directory in which site archives are stored.

11. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Email Configuration sakai.properties entries: # enable James smtp.enabled=true # configuring the port on which James listens. smtp.port=8025 # James will only accept messages for this hostname serverName=service.my.edu # You'll get more meaningful feedback if you configure serverID serverID=node.my.edu James or another MTA needs to listen on port 25 Admin Guide contains information on integrating with Postfix and Sendmail Admin Guide has tips on using telnet to troubleshoot

12. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Configuring Sakai from within the Web Application Changing the Admin password Adding Administrative Users Manually adding a Tool (stealthed or otherwise) to a site Permissions

13. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam JVM Tuning Default JVM options are not adequate to run Sakai. At a minimum, you need to increase the Heap and PermGen size, by editing TOMCAT_HOME/setenv.bat (or.sh) and adding something like: –Windows (all one line): set JAVA_OPTS=-server -XX:+UseParallelGC -Xmx768m -XX:MaxPermSize=160m -Djava.awt.headless=true –Unix (all one line): export JAVA_OPTS="-server -XX:+UseParallelGC -Xmx768m - XX:MaxPermSize=160m -Djava.awt.headless=true"

14. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Load Balancing and Scaling Approaches to server scaling: –Standalone –Thin Client –Load Balanced Thin Client –Thicker Client –Big Iron

15. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Standalone server configuration Server Apache* Tomcat Database File Storage*

16. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Thin client configuration Server Apache* Tomcat Database File Storage* ServerServer*

17. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Load balanced thin client Server Apache* Tomcat Database File Storage* ServerServer* Server Apache* Tomcat Server Apache* Tomcat Load Balancer

18. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Thicker client Database File Storage* ServerServer* Server Apache Tomcat Load Balancer Tomcat Server Apache Tomcat Server Apache Tomcat

19. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam “Big Iron” Database File Storage* ServerServer* Virtual Server Apache Load Balancer Tomcat Virtual Server Apache Tomcat Virtual Server Tomcat “Big Iron” Server

20. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Scaling and Tuning Estimate Load Establish Metrics (load level, response time, etc.) Test Configuration (Jmeter, Load Runner) Analyze Revise Configuration Repeat Monitor once you move to production More Info: –https://content.cc.vt.edu/confluence/display/DEV/Tomcat+JVM+tuning+tipshttps://content.cc.vt.edu/confluence/display/DEV/Tomcat+JVM+tuning+tips

21. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Advanced Tomcat (and Apache) Configuration Redirecting tomcat traffic to the portal Configuring tomcat to use APR Configuring tomcat to handle SSL Configuring tomcat to require SSL Configuring Apache to proxy connections for tomcat using mod_jk and mod_proxy

22. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Advanced Configuration Topics Web Services Quartz Authorization/Authentication Providers –LDAP –CAS –Shibboleth/Guanxi

23. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Verifying and Troubleshooting Your Sakai Installation As with any subsequent change, it is critical to test your initial Sakai configuration QA test cases Automated testing Troubleshooting/Logging

24. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Operations Best Practices Maintenance Schedules Test Instance Monitoring Hot Deployment of Changes Patches/SVN Automated Deployment

25. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Joining the Community Confluence http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/ JIRA http://issues.sakaiproject.org/ Collab Mailing Lists http://collab.sakaiproject.org/ Registering Your Installation http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/AL

26. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Questions?

27. June 12th, 2006 7th Sakai Conference - Amsterdam Contact Information and Links tony.atkins@uhi.ac.uk Sakai 2.4.x Admin Guide http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/9Z4 Sakai 2.4.x Install Guide http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/IKQ SakaiPedia Admin Guide http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/WwM Config Viewer –More extensive demo on Thursday from 14:05-14:35 –https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/config-viewer/