Installing Atom 2.0 with Apache instead of Nginx

[José Santos]

Hello everyone,

 

I am trying to install Atom 2.0 on my pc for running some tests in order to determine the advantages of upgrading from IAtoM 1.3.0.

 

Since in the installation instructions Nginx is the recommended server (with which I have no experience), I was wondering if it is not possible to install over Apache.

If so, I just ignore the instruction parts regarding Nginx, or the process is more complicated than that?

 

By the way, why do you continue developing  Atom 1.4 alongside 2.0 version?

Are there reasons for this? Are they responding to diferent needs/users?

I want to understand if I should wait for 1.4 or try to "jump" to 2.0...

 

Thank you. Best regards,

José Pedro

[Edgar Rodríguez Silva]

Hello José Pedro;

I have installed AtoM 2.0 over Apache without problem. The difference with the official installation instrucctions of AtoM are in NGINX and PHP section. There are many sites with information about Apache and PHP installation on Internet. If you want to make installation over Linux (debian), you only need to type this:

# apt-get install apache2

# apt-get install php5-common libapache2-mod-php5

# apt-get install php5-cli php5-fpm php5-curl php5-mysql php5-xsl php-apc

# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

The rest of the installation doesn't change.

Best regards

Edgar Rodríguez

[Dan Gillean]

Hello José,

Edgar, thank you very much for your helpful comments! José, I hope this helps you get 2.0.0 up and running - let us know how it goes.

As for 1.4 vs 2.0.0 - AtoM was originally developed in partnership with the International Council on Archives to create a light-weight, open-source tool for archives that would assist with the implementation of standards-based description practices.

With the advent of 2.0.0, the focus of our development became the improvement of AtoM's multi-institution functionality - we recieved support from the Canadian Council on Archives, so that it could be used as the new Canadian national archival portal. Similarly, many of our provincial portals in Canada are using AtoM.

This development added some further dependencies/complexity to the code, and it also was moving away from the initial goals of the ICA in supporting the project. Though we maintain a strong relationship with the ICA, and we continue to ensure that AtoM supports standards-based description, we have amiably parted ways with the Council as we move forward on 2.0.0, and hope to work with them in the future on other projects, or other aspects of AtoM, that fit their mandate more exactly.

That said, we realize that there are some users (specifically, smaller individual archives with limited resources) who may not want or need the functionality that 2.0.0 adds - and the additional dependencies may make it harder for them to maintain.

In the spirit of goodwill to our community, and wanting to leave the ICA-AtoM project on solid ground as we continue forward with AtoM 2.x, we began a comprehensive review of existing bugs, as well as the data mapping and roundtripping in ICA-AtoM 1.3.1 last year. We want to ensure that anyone using ICA-AtoM will be able to get their data in and out easily, in a standards-compliant way, and that the branch is stable and free of major bugs before we leave it.

As such, while we review and improve our data mapping (EAD, EAC, SKOS, DC, MODS, etc.), we are applying any of these fixes that we can to the 1.x branch, as well as the 2.x branch. Eventually, when we have done what we can, we will release 1.4 for those users who choose to stay on the legacy branch. It will be the last major release for 1.x, as Artefactual will continue to develop the 2.x branch going forward - but we hope that we leave any users who do not choose to move forward with us in a good place.

Because it is a side project we are doing on our own time for the benefit of our user community, the 1.4 release is unscheduled. Once our data mapping and roundtripping analysis is complete, and we have applied all the necessary fixes to both branches (1.x and 2.x) wherever possible, we will package 1.4 as the last major release of ICA-AtoM.

We feel that AtoM 2.0.0 is a major improvement to ICA-AtoM, and offers many benefits (new features, cleaner interface, better performance and scalability, etc.) to users even if they are not using it as a multi-repository portal, and we hope that our users will follow us and upgrade to 2.x. However, recognizing that not all users will choose to do so means we feel a responsibility to provide the best possible solution for them that we can, with the resources we have available. It is the spirit of generosity, of openness, and sharing that inspires us within both the open-source development community and the archival community, and we hope to demonstrate our belief in, and support of this spirit by doing this work.

Regards,

Dan Gillean
AtoM Product Manager / Systems Analyst,
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

[José Santos]

Hello Edgar and Dan,

 

Thank you very much for both. I will try to install with Apache and post here the result.

 

Regarding the 1.4 and 2.0 strategy, thank for the explanation Dan. Now I understand the "double work" you are undertaking and I can only thank you for your concern in leaving the ICA-AtoM users with a stable version.

 

Best regards,

José Pedro