Basic Configuration
The basic configuration guide will help you to adjust the settings strongly recommended for each Opencast installation. This is what you should do right after installing Opencast. While there are alternatives for some of these settings, this is the recommended setup.
All settings changes are made to files residing in the Opencast configuration directory.
The location of the configuration directory depends on how you installed Opencast.
If you used the Linux packages, the location is /etc/opencast
.
Step 1: Setting the Server URL
Find the property org.opencastproject.server.url
in etc/custom.properties
and set your domain name.
The value must be set to the URL from which the server can be accessed later.
org.opencastproject.server.url=https://example.opencast.org
It is not supported for Opencast to be hosted in a subpath. Opencast needs to be served from the root path element. The RFC 3986 URI path component needs to be empty.
Note: This value will be written to all generated media packages and thus cannot be changed easily for already processed media. Please think about this setting carefully.
Step 2: Setting Authentication Details
Configure authentication and security details of Opencast, including the login credentials.
For this, the important keys in the etc/custom.properties
configuration file are:
org.opencastproject.security.admin.user
- The user for the administrative account. This is set to
admin
by default.
- The user for the administrative account. This is set to
org.opencastproject.security.admin.pass
- The password for the administrative account. This is set to
opencast
by default.
- The password for the administrative account. This is set to
org.opencastproject.security.digest.user
- The user for the communication between Opencast nodes. It is sometimes also used by capture agents.
This is set to
opencast_system_account
by default.
- The user for the communication between Opencast nodes. It is sometimes also used by capture agents.
This is set to
org.opencastproject.security.digest.pass
- The password for the communication between Opencast nodes. It is sometimes also used by capture agents.
This is set to
CHANGE_ME
by default.
- The password for the communication between Opencast nodes. It is sometimes also used by capture agents.
This is set to
karaf.shutdown.command
- The security token used for shutting down Opencast. Set this to a random string.
Make sure that these settings are identical on all nodes of the cluster.
Step 3: Database Configuration
Opencast uses an integrated H2 database by default, which has certain drawbacks:
- It cannot be used for distributed set-ups
- Upgrading Opencast with this database is not possible
The internal database will suffice for testing, however a stand-alone database is required for production uses. Details about the configuration can be found at:
Step 4: Setting up OpenSearch
Opencast requires OpenSearch. Instructions for installing OpenSearch can be found in the installation documentation.
Step 5: HTTPS Configuration
This configuration is required in order to:
- Make Opencast available externally
- Secure connections from/to Opencast
For this, follow one of the
Step 6: Setting the Storage Directory (optional)
If you want to use a specific location for storing media, metadata and other data,
you can set the directory by changing org.opencastproject.storage.dir
.
org.opencastproject.storage.dir=/path/to/data/folder
Often, an NFS mount is used for data storage. Make sure that the user running Opencast has read/write permissions to the storage directory. You can check that, for example, by running:
sudo -u opencast touch /path/to/data/folder/test
sudo -u opencast rm /path/to/data/folder/test
Finish Installation
If you came here as part of an installation, please head back to the installation guide you used for notes on how to run Opencast as a service.