The famed Sakaiger - bred for its skills in coding - invented at CARET

Sakai Apple Installer (Experimental)

This is a very simple release page for the Experimental Sakai installer for the Apple. This installer is not an official Sakai distribution and has not gone through the Sakai QA process.

The basic idea of this installer is to make it easy to put Sakai up for a demo or for a really small pilot.

This installer uses HSQL as a database. The database size is limited to 2GB total. Uploaded files in the Resources are stored in the file system in the folder /Library/Sakai/sakai as are the database files. Uploaded files do not count toward the 2GB maximum database size.

Installation

When you get to the configuration screen for a simple desktop demo which will not be used over the network - accept the defaults.

Cluster Host Name is the domain name for this server. Sometimes a system is behind an IP sprayer and its actual hostname is not what the end users see. This is the host name that your users will know, etudes.foothill.edu. If this is a demo to be used across a network and you do not know the DNS name of your system, simply use the IP address here.

Service Name is what you call your service (i.e. Branding) - you could call it "Sakai" or you could call it "ScholarNet" or a cool acronym like "TRACS".

You can configure which ports Sakai will operate on. If there are more than one Tomcat or JBoss running on this server, then make sure to pick free ports. If this is the only Tomcat running on this server, then the defaults are OK.

Starting and Stopping Sakai

Once the installation and configuration is complete you can start and stop Sakai using the following scripts in a terminal window: 
  cd /Library/Sakai

  start-sakai.sh  (run this in the background)
  stop-sakai.sh

Backup and Restore

To back this up - simply back up the entire /Library/Sakai - this backs up code, data, files, everything. To restore - restore it all.

Upgrading this Version (not)

There is no automated upgrade path for this installation at this time. We do not (yet) release HSQL upgrade scripts nor are there automated processes to take your Sakai data stored in HSQL into MySQL or Oracle. Remember that this is early code and it is intended for small installations. If you want to help develop support for either migrating HSQL to Oracle/MySQL or help build and QA conversion scripts for HSQL - please join the developer list.

In a pinch you can move files using WebDav and use the Sakai import/export to move some critical information. But if you are planning on making this a real long-term production system - you should do a real install from a supported distribution and using an officially supported DB like Oracle or MySQL.

Tweaking this Version

You can do a bit of customization of this version. You can change properties in 
    /Library/Sakai/sakai/sakai.properties
You can play with skins at 
   /Library/Sakai/webapps/library/skin/default
See the standard Sakai documentation for how to change properties or make skins. Remember that a new installation wll wipe out your changes - so make sure to keep a separate copy of any of your changes.

Download Versions

This install process does *not* configure the E-Mail capabilities of Sakai. Sakai will operate but neither send nor receive E-Mail.

If you have any questions, please join the Developer list on collab.sakaiproject.org or just send E-Mail to csev@sakaifoundation.org. You can submit bugs on bugs.sakaiproject.org and assign them to Charles Severance. You are welcome to help work on this - it is a very much part time effort for me.

This is a very early idea and we need your feedback to see what works and what does not work. We would eventually like to make this kind of one-click install the standard way to install Sakai - but we need to try this out for a while and get some experience and feedback.