Although the Marketplace package is currently built against Fedora 14, the only requirement is JDK v1.6+. As such it should install on most systems, once this dependency is met.

For persistent storage of the metadata index a relational database is required. Currently either MySQL or Postgresql is supported. This can be on the same host or remote. The metadata files are stored locally as flat files. The Marketplace host should have adequate storage for these.

The default port for the Marketplace service is 8080 for HTTP, and 8443 for HTTPS. The host should be accessible on these ports. Alternatively proxying via an Apache web-server is possible. Please contact support if you require help with this.

StratusLab runs its own YUM repository, so you must add it to your YUM configuration. Drop a file (named say stratuslab-releases.repo) in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ with the following content:

[StratusLab-Releases]
name=StratusLab-Releases
baseurl=http://yum.stratuslab.eu/releases/fedora14
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

With this in place, you can now install the package:

yum install stratuslab-marketplace

This will install the Marketplace, along with a default configuration file /etc/stratuslab/marketplace.cfg. This file should be modified to configure the Marketplace as required.

An important step is to ensure that the two directories data.dir and pending.dir exist and are writeable by the user that will be running the Marketplace instance.

By default the Marketplace will use a Memory store as the backend. This type of store is volatile, and any uploaded metadata will not persist if the Marketplace is restarted. For this reason, for use in a production environment the Marketplace should be configured to use a database as the storage backend.

There are two options for database backend, mysql or postgresql. It has been observed that Postgresql has far better performance than MySQL.

For this MySQL will need to be installed and running. The following configuration parameters can then be set in the marketplace.cfg file to enable MySQL.

store.type=mysql

rdbms.dbname=marketplace
rdbms.host=localhost
rdbms.port=3306
rdbms.dbuser=sesame
rdbms.dbpass=sesame

The Marketplace will need an (empty) database on the MySQL server, as well as a user account that has access to that database. You need to create these manually. In most cases, the encoding of the new database should be set to 'UTF8'. The Marketplace will take care of creating the required tables and indexes when first run.

The following SQL statements can be used to create the required database:

> create database marketplace;
> grant all on marketplace.* to sesame@localhost identified by 'sesame';
> flush privileges;

These assume that the user and password are 'sesame' and that the MySQL server is located on the same host as the Marketplace. Obviously these can be changed as required.

For this Postgresql will need to be installed and running. The following configuration parameters can then be set in the marketplace.cfg file to enable Postgresql.

store.type=postgres

rdbms.dbname=marketplace
rdbms.host=localhost
rdbms.port=3306
rdbms.dbuser=sesame
rdbms.dbpass=sesame

The Marketplace will need an (empty) database on the Postgresql server, as well as a user account that has access to that database. You need to create these manually. In most cases, the encoding of the new database should be set to 'UTF8'. The Marketplace will take care of creating the required tables and indexes when first run.

The following SQL statements can be used to create the required database:

> create database marketplace;
> create user sesame with encrypted password 'sesame';
> grant all privileges on database marketplace to sesame;

These assume that the user and password are 'sesame' and that the Postgresql server is located on the same host as the Marketplace. Obviously these can be changed as required.

It may also be necessary to modify the Postgresql access methods to allow MD5 password based login. This can be done by editing the file /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf and changing the authentication method to MD5.

# TYPE  DATABASE    USER        CIDR-ADDRESS          METHOD
local   all         postgres                          ident

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all         all                               md5
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all         all         127.0.0.1/32          md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all         all         ::1/128               md5

It is possible to configure the Marketplace to require email verification of uploaded metadata. The Marketplace will send an email to the metadata endorser requiring them to verify their uploaded entry. Whilst awaiting verification the metadata will be stored in the pending.dir.

The relevant configuration parameters are:

validate.email=true
admin.email=admin@example.org
mail.host=smtp.example.org
mail.port=465
mail.user=no-reply@example.org
mail.password=xxxxxxx
mail.ssl=true
mail.debug=false

The Marketplace can be started with the following command:

/etc/init.d/marketplace start

This will start the Jetty server. By default this will start on port 8081, meaning the Marketplace can be accessed on http://localhost:8081. The port can be changed by modifying the file /opt/stratuslab/marketplace/etc/jetty-stratuslab.xml.

The following describes the parameters in the Marketplace configuration file.

# Email address for account approvals, etc.
admin.email=admin@example.org

# Host for SMTP server for email notifications.
mail.host=smtp.example.org

Port on SMTP server (defaults to standard ports).
mail.port=465

# Username for SMTP server.
mail.user=no-reply@example.org

Password for SMTP server.
mail.password=xxxxxxx

# Use SSL for SMTP server (default is 'true').
mail.ssl=true

# Debug mail sending (default is 'false').
mail.debug=false

# Directory containing raw metadata data entries.
data.dir=/var/lib/stratuslab/marketplace

# Directory for pending (unconfirmed) entries.
pending.dir=/var/lib/stratuslab/pending

# Flag to determine email must be validated.
validate.email=false

# Storage type for image metadata database (memory, mysql, or postgres)
store.type=mysql

# Database name
rdbms.dbname=marketplace

# RDBMS hostname
rdbms.host=localhost

# Port for RDBMS server.
rdbms.port=3306

# RDBMS username.
rdbms.dbuser=sesame

# RDBMS password.
rdbms.dbpass=sesame

For instructions on how to use the Marketplace please refer to the tutorial

The current snapshot and next release (1.5) contains the code to allow the page style to be changed easily. The instructions are the following:

1. Copy the current web archive (war) for the service to a temporary directory.

$ cp /opt/stratuslab/marketplace/webapps/marketplace-server-war-1.0.13-SNAPSHOT.war . 

2. Extract the contents of the archive. (You must have the java development tools installed.)

$ jar xf marketplace-server-war-1.0.13-SNAPSHOT.war 

3. Create a new directory hierarchy to hold the modified style files. You can choose any path here, but it is best to follow the usual java conventions and use an inverted domain name. This CANNOT be eu/stratuslab/style/css if you want your changes to be visible.

$ mkdir -p eu/egi/style/css 

4. Copy the current style files into your new directory hierarchy.

$ cp WEB-INF/classes/eu/stratuslab/style/css/* eu/egi/style/css/ 

5. Change the CSS and other files as you like. Note that some of the images are used by the javascript for the service, so it is better to replace images or add new ones rather than delete existing ones.

6. Create a new jar file with your modified style files and verify the correct hierarchy within the jar file.

$ jar cf egi-style.jar eu 
$ jar tf egi-style.jar 

7. Drop this jar file into the Marketplace server's extensions directory.

$ cp egi-style.jar /opt/stratuslab/marketplace/lib/ext/ 

8. Modify the server's configuration file by adding the style.path option. NOTE: The path must match the path in the jar file and MUST start and end with a slash!

style.path=/eu/egi/style/css/ 

9. Restart the service.

$ service marketplace restart 

At this point your new style should be active.

If necessary you can also perform the same operation for the service javascript. The configuration option is named js.path and the procedure is complete analogous to the one used for style.path.