CaltechAUTHORS
This is the source repsository for CaltechAUTHORS, Caltech's Institutional Publications Repository. It is an instance of the InvenioRDM repository
platform.
Table of contents
Introduction
This repository was initialized following the InvenioRDM
instructions. It was then
customized to meet the needs of the Caltech community. This is only one
deployment example, and may or not be appropriate for your specific
institution and IT setup.
Installation
We currently deploy CaltechAUTHORS on a m7i.xlarge AWS EC2 instance with Ubuntu
24.04. We use this cloud-init
file
to do most of the initial setup.
Install InvenioRDM
cd caltechauthors
invenio-cli install
invenio-cli services setup --no-demo-data
You'll need a .env file in /Sites/caltechauthors, which includes secrets.
Copy .env.example, which documents each variable, and fill in
the blanks:
cp .env.example .env
chmod 600 .env
Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add vm.max_map_count=262144
This configuration uses S3 for storage. You need to change the bucket name with
pipenv run invenio files location s3-default s3://caltechauthors --default
Vocabularies
Load affiliations and funders with the built-in jobs settings in the administration panel.
We have a local awards list, generated by https://github.com/caltechlibrary/irdmtools awards2vocabulary.py. Load into RDM with
pipenv run invenio vocabularies import --vocabulary awards --filepath ./vocabularies-future.yaml
We have a local CaltechPEOPLE list, which is loaded with
pipenv run invenio vocabularies import --vocabulary names --filepath ./vocabularies-future.yaml
Domain Configuration
You'll need a domain name, and set an A record to point the domain name to your
AWS instance.
Install the nginx configuration with ./nginx-deploy.bash (see docs/nginx.md).
It renders nginx/ for the host, checks it with nginx -t and logagent check
before copying anything, and leaves the packaged /etc/nginx/nginx.conf alone.
For a Let's Encrypt certificate on a test instance see docs/Adding-a-Certbot-Hostname.md (certbot certonly, never
certbot --nginx).
docs/nginx.md covers the verbs, rolling back, migrating a host that was configured by hand,
the IIIF cache and refreshing the Cloudflare address list.
Systemctl
We need three services to run InvenioRDM. Set them up with
sudo cp rdm_rest.service /etc/systemd/system/.
sudo cp rdm.service /etc/systemd/system/.
sudo cp rdm_celery.service /etc/systemd/system/.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start rdm
sudo systemctl start rdm_rest
sudo systemctl start rdm_celery
You should now have a InvenioRDM repository fully running!
Usage
Stopping InvenioRDM
cd /Sites/caltechauthors
sudo systemctl stop nginx
sudo systemctl stop rdm
sudo systemctl stop rdm_rest
sudo systemctl stop rdm_celery
invenio-cli services stop
Starting InvenioRDM
cd /Sites/caltechauthors
invenio-cli services start
sudo systemctl start rdm_celery
sudo systemctl start rdm_rest
sudo systemctl start rdm
sudo systemctl start nginx
Known issues and limitations
These insttallation instructions are intended for this specific Caltech
deployment, and you may need to modify them to work for your specific
configuration.
Getting help
Please open an issue or pull request if you notice any problems or have
questions.
Contributing
Please see our Contributing
guidelines
License
Software produced by the Caltech Library is Copyright © 2024-2025 California Institute of Technology. This software is freely distributed under a BSD/MIT type license. Please see the LICENSE file for more information.
Authors and history
Tom Morrell led the CaltechDATA InvenioRDM development. Tommy Keswick helped with themeing and site design. Robert Doiel managed our v12 upgrade and backup processes. TUGraz and all the other
InvenioRDM partners were instrumental in getting all the customizations working.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the California Institute of Technology Library.
