Install from Repository (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x, CentOS 8.x)

This guide is for EL8 only. There is a separate CentOS 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 guide.

This guide is based on a RPM software repository available for Red Hat-based Linux distributions provided by Osnabrück University. This repository provides preconfigured Opencast installations and all necessary 3rd-Party-Tools. Using this method, you do not have to compile the software by yourself.

Availability

Note that it may take some time (usually about two weeks after a new release is out) before the RPMs are available. Watch for announcements on the users list or just check which versions are available in the repository.

Currently Supported

Other architectures like i386, i686, arm, … are not supported!

Java version support

The only supported Java version for Opencast 8 is JDK 8. Newer versions will not work with Opencast 8, nor will older versions.

Activate Repository

First you have to install the necessary repositories so that your package manager can access them:

dnf install -y https://pkg.opencast.org/rpms/release/el/8/noarch/opencast-repository-8-0-1.el8.noarch.rpm

It might take some time after the release of a new Opencast version before the RPMs are moved to the stable repository. Until then, you can use /etc/yum.repos.d/opencast-testing.repo instead to get the latest version. Note that the testing repository is an additional repository and still requires the stable repository to be active.

If you get an error saying that the package epel-release is not available, please enable this repository manually. To do that, follow the instructions in the EPEL documentation.

You can check if the repositories were sucessfully enabled using:

dnf repolist enabled

Install Apache ActiveMQ

The Apache ActiveMQ message broker is required by Opencast. It can be installed on the same machine as Opencast. ActiveMQ can be installed by running:

dnf install activemq-dist

A prepared configuration file for ActiveMQ can be found at /usr/share/opencast/docs/scripts/activemq/activemq.xml after Opencast itself has been installed and should replace /etc/activemq/activemq.xml. For an all-in-one installation the following command should suffice:

cp /usr/share/opencast/docs/scripts/activemq/activemq.xml /etc/activemq/activemq.xml

ActiveMQ should be started prior to Opencast.

More information about how to properly set up ActiveMQ for Opencast can be found in the message broker configuration documentation.

Install Opencast

Basic Installation

For a basic installation (All-In-One) just run:

dnf install opencast<version>-allinone

…where <version> is the major version number of the Opencast release you want to install, e.g. opencast8-allinone. This will install the default distribution of Opencast and all its dependencies.

Don't forget to start configure and start ActiveMQ first as described in the ActiveMQ installation section .

Then start Opencast by running:

systemctl start opencast.service

While Opencast is preconfigured, it is strongly recommended to follow at least the Basic Configuration guide . It will help you to set your hostname, login information, …

Advanced Installation

The basic installation will give you an all-in-one Opencast distribution on a single server. For productions, most users prefer deploying Opencast over several machines, which allows for a better workload distribution. You can list all available Opencast packages with:

dnf search opencast

This will list all available Opencast distributions in the form opencast<version>-<dist-type>. Some commonly used distributions are:

Upgrading Major Versions

Packages will automatically upgrade to the latest minor version in a release series. They do not automatically upgrade the latest major version. This is intentional since additional migration steps might be necessary for that. For example, if you install opencast7-admin you get the latest 7.x release, not the latest 8.x release. To upgrade from one major version to another, please consult the upgrade guide for each major version. Still, here is a short overview of the required steps:

First, stop Opencast:

systemctl stop opencast.service

As a reminder, these instructions will upgrade your Opencast installation to a new version which is likely incompatible with older versions, and cannot be rolled back. If you are performing this on a production system, please ensure you have valid backups prior to taking the next steps.

Uninstall your current Opencast package:

dnf remove opencast

Then install the new version:

dnf install opencast<version>-<distribution>

At this point you must follow the relevant upgrade instructions, prior to starting Opencast again.

Uninstall Opencast

To uninstall Opencast, you can run:

dnf remove opencast

This will not touch your created media files or modified configuration files. If you want to remove them as well, you have to do that by yourself.

# Remove media files (default location)
sudo rm -rf /srv/opencast

# Remove local db, search indexes and working files
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/opencast

# Remove configuration files
sudo rm -rf /etc/opencast

# Remove logs
sudo rm -rf /var/log/opencast