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📊 CKAN Setup

In this section we'll go over how to install CKAN v2.10.6 and get it running on your Ubuntu VM.

📝 Written Tutorial​

Prerequisites:

  • New installation of Ubuntu 22.04 (virtual machine, VPS, local device, etc.) connected to the Internet.

For these installation notes we'll assume the username in Ubuntu is rzmk, so change it to yours when applicable.

Upgrade packages​

sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y

Set up SSH (optional)​

If you're using a VM then it may be easier when developing to SSH into the VM from a code editor such as VSCode, VSCodium, or Zed.

To enable SSH on the VM install openssh-server, and to identify the VM IP address to use when using SSH install net-tools:

sudo apt install openssh-server net-tools -y

Run the ifconfig command to identify your IP address, then use SSH on your local device and code editor to access the environment:

ssh rzmk@IPADDRESSHERE

Install Docker​

Notes for this section based on https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-ubuntu-22-04.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common -y
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update
apt-cache policy docker-ce
sudo apt install docker-ce -y

Also add your user to the sudo group to run Docker without sudo:

sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
su - ${USER}

Install docker-compose​

We use docker-compose to set up and run ckan-compose.

sudo apt install docker-compose -y

Download Ahoy and add to $PATH​

We'll be using ckan-compose to handle the PostgreSQL, Redis, and SOLR setup. One of the prerequisites for using ckan-compose is installing Ahoy.

Go to https://github.com/ahoy-cli/ahoy/releases/latest and download the ahoy-bin-linux-amd64 file and move it to your $PATH named as ahoy.

sudo mv ~/Downloads/ahoy-bin-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/ahoy
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/ahoy

Set up ckan-compose​

cd ~/
sudo apt install docker-compose -y
git clone https://github.com/tino097/ckan-compose.git
cd ckan-compose
ahoy generate-env
ahoy up

You may get asked after ahoy generate-env to provide a PROJECT_NAME, this can be anything so we'll put myproject. You may also use the defaults for DATASTORE_READONLY_PASSWORD and POSTGRES_PASSWORD for development.

CKAN steps 1-4 with caveats​

sudo apt-get install python3-dev libpq-dev python3-pip python3-venv git-core redis-server -y
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/ckan/default
sudo chown `whoami` /usr/lib/ckan/default
python3 -m venv /usr/lib/ckan/default
. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -e 'git+https://github.com/ckan/ckan.git@ckan-2.10.6#egg=ckan[requirements]'
deactivate
. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate
sudo mkdir -p /etc/ckan/default
sudo chown -R `whoami` /etc/ckan/
ckan generate config /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini
ln -s /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan/who.ini /etc/ckan/default/who.ini

Next you must modify the CKAN config at /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini:

debug = true
ckan.debug_supress_header = False

Also replace the following values to this:

ckan.devserver.threaded = true
ckan.max_resource_size = 10000
ckan.max_image_size = 5

Continue to step 7 while in the virtual environment (replace rzmk with your group then username for the chown command and your CKAN details for the CKAN sysadmin account generation command). You may be prompted to add a sysadmin username and password (the password may need to be at least 8 characters).

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan
pip install flask-debugtoolbar==0.14.1
cd /var/lib
sudo mkdir -p ckan/default
sudo chown rzmk.rzmk ckan/default
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini db init
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini sysadmin add rzmk email=rzmk@localhost name=rzmk
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini run

Now you should be able to view your locally running CKAN instance at http://localhost:5000.

When restarting your server​

If you shut down your Ubuntu instance and then start it again, you may want to run the following commands to get the CKAN instance running again:

/etc/init.d/redis-server stop
cd ckan-compose
ahoy up

Then run the following (e.g., after you SSH from your preferred terminal):

cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/
. ./bin/activate
cd src/ckan
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini run