Installing on Amazon Web Services¶
To make it easier for you to get an OppiaMobile server up and running, we have created an Amazon Web Services machine image that you can copy and comes pre-packaged with the latest version of the OppiaMobile Server so will run ‘out of the box’.
Launch an AWS Machine Image¶
Once you have created your account on AWS:
- Go into your instances page
- Select ‘launch instance’
- Select ‘Community AMIs’
- Search for ‘oppia’ and you should see the most recent version of the OppiaMobile AMI listed
- Launch your new instance - you can alter the instance configuration (security groups etc) during the rest of the launch instance process.
Note
When you search the OppiaMobile server AMI will only appear in the search results if you have selected the ‘EU (Ireland)’ zone
Once your instance is up and running you will be able to assign a static IP, access via your web browser and log into the server using SSH. It is beyond the scope of this guide to give the full information about how to connect and configure your AWS account instances.
Passwords¶
When you install and launch your instance it is set up with a default set of usernames/passwords:
- MySQL root password: ‘default’
- MySQL oppia user password: ‘default’ - this is the user that Django uses to
connect to your database. When you have changed this password you should also
update the django settings.py file (at:
/home/oppiamobile/oppia_web/oppia_web/settings.py
) to reflect the new database password. - Django super user: username ‘admin’ and password ‘default’
Warning
You are very strongly advised to change these passwords as soon as you have set up your instance
Directories and location of files¶
All the required files are stored in the /home/oppiamobile directory, which has the following structure:
- django-oppia (dir): the OppiaMobile server application files
- env (dir): root of the virtualenv
- media (dir): the media directory for Django (this directory served directly by Apache)
- oppia-cron.sh (file): a shell script for running the OppiaMobile cron task - it’s unlikely you’ll ever need to do anything with this file.
- oppia_web (dir): the Django project files (containing settings.py and urls.py etc)
- static (dir): the static directory for Django (this directory is served directly by Apache)
- upload (dir): stores the course uploads
Please note that on this machine the django-oppia server is installed as a clone from GitHub (rather than using the pip install method described in the standard installation instructions).
Updating django-oppia server code from core¶
The code is based on a ‘point-in-time’ version of the OppiaMobile server code, so once you have set up your instance, you should try to keep it up to date. Fortunately it’s straightforward to update to the latest version:
- Go into the
/home/oppiamobile/django-oppia/
directory - Run
git pull
This will update your server to the latest version of the django-oppia server. If any new updates were made, run the following commands (when the virtualenv is active):
python manage.py migrate oppia
python manage.py migrate oppia.quiz
python manage.py migrate oppia.viz
python manage.py collectstatic
Creating your own version of django-oppia¶
If you have created your own fork of django-oppia (for example to customise the
look and feel), then you can point git to the fork of your code by editing the
/home/oppiamobile/django-oppia/.git/config
file and pulling the code from
your fork instead.
Environment information¶
The current version of the instance (OppiaMobile Server 0.4.3) is running:
- Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS Server
- Apache 2.4
- Mysql 5.5
- Django 1.6.1
- TastyPie 0.11.0
- South 0.8.4
- OppiaServer 0.4.3
Email configuration¶
By default your AWS OppiaServer instance is not configured to send email, any
emails generated by the system (for example reset password messages) are just
saved as plain text files in the /tmp
directory.
To enable sending email you will need to:
- configure your AWS account to enable email sending (using SES service)
- comment out or remove the
EMAIL_BACKEND
andEMAIL_FILE_PATH
directives in the/home/oppiamobile/oppia_web/oppia_web/settings.py
file. - update the
SERVER_EMAIL
directive insettings.py
to use an email address that is authorised to send via your SES.