Installing DSpace on CentOS 5

Installing DSpace is a reatively long and involved process due to the requirement to build the software using Maven and Ant. The installation is additionally complicated if you want to proxy DSpace through Apache, which will be probably the case if you wish to run any other web software on the server and don’t want to have to enter port numbers to access DSpace. This article will step through the installation process on CentOS 5.5 although some elements with be relevant to other linux distributions and Unix-like OSes.

Installing MePrints on Windows

MePrints is an extension to the EPrints repository software that adds functionality for personal home pages for users with profile information and details of uploaded documents, most popular eprints etc.

The MePrints documentation is quite *nix centric but I have found that it is not impossible to get the extension running under Windows. Doing so requires installing a tool to process patch files and a small tweak to the MePrints code. You should also be comfortable with running programs and scripts using the Windows command prompt.

Installing EPrints on Windows

EPrints provide a Windows installer for their product. However, because it is a Perl based web application it cannot be installed by running this installer file alone. There is a set of required software that is somewhat outside what might be considered the ‘normal’ range for Windows. Part of this includes running the Apache web server. If the machine on which you are intending to run EPrints has other applications that depend on the IIS web server then we would recommend choosing a different server for EPrints and, preferably, a Linux platform. If Linux is not an option and the server you are using does not run IIS (or you are comfortable with running Apache alongside IIS on different ports) then this article, in conjunction with the official EPrints documentation may prove useful.