The SwiftRiver engine has a few moving parts. This guide covers what you need to do to get a basic SwiftRiver installation going. Mix and match these instructions to match what you know you need.

Recommended Platforms

• Ubuntu 10.04 TLS +
• Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)

This guide does not cover installation under Windows systems. If you want to do that, please use the SwiftRiver windows instructions and update them with anything you learn.

Requirements

• Java JDK 1.5 or greater: preferably Java 1.6 (also known as Java 6)

• MySQL Server version 5.1 or greater

• Apache Solr

• Apache Tomcat (version 6.0 or greater) or other servlet container

• Apache HTTP server with mod_rewrite enabled

• PHP version 5.3 or greater

• Python version 2.6 or version 2.7

• RabbitMQ version 3.0 or greater

• Sendmail or other Mail Transfer Agent

• Git

• Maven

Handy guides

• Install Solr 4.6 with Tomcat 7 on Debian 7: gives you Java, Tomcat, Solr (but don’t secure the admin page as suggested). This guide works for Ubuntu too. Note that this script doesn't install the Java JDK required to install Swiftriver.

Notes

• These instructions assume that you’re installing Swiftriver on localhost. Please change the steps below if you’re using a different hostname for your machine.
• We'll use /opt/swiftriver as the base directory to install all the Swiftriver files. If you want to use a different base directory, make sure that you use the correct path consistently as you follow these instructions.
• These instructions are based on a script written by Emmanuel Kala, which is a more compact version of this guide.
• Always check the /var/log/tomcat7/catalina.out log file during installation, to watch for any weird exceptions that might stall SwiftRiver's initialisation.

• Some of the paths used in this guide might differ from your environment: please adapt accordingly. We recommend adding these paths to your bash, as a few services might benefit from that:
  

  
  

Installing the API

Set up API war file in Tomcat

1. Checkout API

2. Compile API and copy resources to the correct directories

3. Update the entries below in file swiftiver-api.xml. You shouldn't need to change any other values (More details are in the file below)

Setting up the database

Log into your MySQL database and execute the following commands:

Then exit the MySQL prompt and import the mysql schema into the database:

Tomcat, Java and JDBC

If your application fails to start later on, it might be because it's not connecting to the MySQL database. To solve that, you'll need to make sure that the JDBC driver is installed on Tomcat.

Setting up Solr

To get Solr going, we need to move some files around:

Once that's done, navigate to http://localhost:8080/solr, Go to Core Admin > Add core and fill in the fields as shown below.

Get it going!

With all that in place, all you have to do is:

If that's what you got, do a little dance! You're half way there!

(If not, check your logs, and battle it kid!)

SwiftRiver UI Client

As you can see from the architecture, the UI client is separate from the API. If you're feeling Rambo, just jump straight into interacting with the API.

If not, here's what you have to do to get the UI going.

(Assuming that your DocumentRoot is on /var/www)

Once that's done, update the following files:

You shouldn't need to change any other files.

Once that's done, do an apache2ctl restart for good measure and you should be good to go. Visit http://localhost and do another dance.

mod_rewrite

If you get a "Not Found" response when the system redirects you to /login, maybe mod_rewrite is getting in the way. If that's the case:

• Check that mod_rewrite is installed and enabled. (run a2enmod rewrite in case it isn't)
• Make sure you have AllowOverride All (as opposed to None) for your directory on the apache conf file (restart Apache after that!)

Indexing / Crawling / Messaging services

If you've done everything above, you should be able to log into the UI, but nothing much else. Let's change that! There's quite a bit to be done, so get a cup of coffee and hold tight.

Please make sure the RabbitMQ server is installed before proceeding - you shouldn't need to change any configurations for it.

1. First, install all the requirements for the services below

   Services requirements

2. Check out the Swiftriver Core

3. Configure services

   RSS Service
   Media Extractor service
   Semantics Queue service
   Twitter service

4. Copy lib folder to services folder

5. Build and install the Swiftriver API Client

   API client config

6. Install the dropqueue processor

   Dropqueue config

7.  Install rules processor

   Rules processor
8. This is everything to configure for now. Well done for making it to here! You are a champion!

Installing Swiftriver as a service

Now that we configured everything, all you have to do is copy and paste the lines below on your command line so that Swiftriver runs as a service

Now, all you have to do is run service swiftriver start, and enjoy your success!

More info

Logs to watch

If during installation, anything doesn't behave as expected, here are the logs you should check (double points if you paste log dumps into bug reports!):

• Apache logs (/var/logs/apache2, mainly error.log)
• Tomcat logs (/var/logs/tomcat7, mainly catalina.out)
• Application logs (i.e.: /var/www/application/logs)
• MySQL logs - enable the general log if you want to really get to the thick of what's going on
• Service logs - each service will have logs being written on their respective logs directory. Keep an eye on those!

We can't stress enough how helpful these are. 

Issues with RabbitMQ

If you run rabbitmqctl status and you see something like Error: unable to connect to node 'rabbit@swiftriver-dev': nodedown as a response, RabbitMQ is having problems starting.

Run sudo service rabbitmq-server restart and RabbitMQ should be good again.

Example swiftriver-api.xml

swiftriver-api.xml properties