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See also the EndUserFaq.
The most recent stable version of DSpace, recommended for production use, is available from the SourceForge 'DSpace Stable' download page. To see what's in store for the future, see Next+Release+Status.
DSpace is freely available as open-source software from SourceForge.
If you are a developer, DSpace is also available to be checked out using Subversion (SVN) at http://scm.dspace.org/svn/repo/dspace/
You're in the right place. First, you'll want to search this FAQ to see if your question has been asked/answered already. Next, try searching the DSpace System Documentation and the DSpace-Tech mailing list archives. Still need help?
Post your questions to the DSpace-tech mailing list, where members of the DSpace community will offer their assistance.
And once you find the answer, if you think others will be asking the same question post them here in the FAQ page
Yes, the DSpace System Documentation includes a section on Installation. Read through this FAQ and also see Installation.
If you run into any problems or have further questions, send an email to the DSpace-Tech mailing list for help.
If you think you've found a bug, we recommend taking the following steps.
Thanks for being willing to help locate and report bugs! An active community helps us make more stable, bug-free software.
Before putting in a new feature request, you should make sure that the feature would be useful to the broader DSpace community and isn't institutional specific. It's also worth mentioning that since the DSpace developers are all volunteers, you may want to work to locate an interested developer who can help you scope out and begin to develop this new feature.
If you've come up with a new feature idea, we recommend taking the following steps.
See BackupRestore.
See SecuringDspace,
also ServletSecurity for more details.
See DSpaceOnWindows
A couple of things to try:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" src="<%= request.getContextPath() %>/utils.js"></script> |
That needs to be in the <HEAD> element. It's in jsp/layout/header-default.jsp but if you have a locally modified version, your modified copy might not have this line.
Many people have two installs of DSpace: a test server and a production server. The problem is how to take data from the test server and integrate (move, append, migrate, etc.) it into the production server. The most common example is when you are ready to move a new collection from test into production. Note that this is a somewhat different problem than the need to move all data from a test server and completely overwrite any data on the production system, which may happen when first moving out of test and into production. RichardJones covers that scenario more completely here, along with a number of other DSpace-related topics.
The main problem in accomplishing this task easily is that some of the metadata will be duplicated if the export from your test server is imported directly and without modification into the production server. In particular, the following metadata elements will be affected:
Many people have run into trouble getting DSpace running on Redhat/Fedora Core Linux, specifically, encountering CLASSPATH errors and relating to 'libgcj'.
The easiest way to resolve this is to remove all the PM-based Java components, and install the original binary packages: Java SDK from Sun, and Ant and Tomcat from Apache.org.
To remove the PM Java stuff, do:
rpm -e libgcj |
This will probably throw up a load of dependency errors. You'll need to remove the packages that depend on libgcj too.
Another useful list from ichardJones of packages he had to remove from Fedora Core 2:
libgcj |
Clive Gould has published a very useful blog explaining how to get DSpace working with a default install of CentOS 5.x, including Apache/Tomcat integration.
The Post Street Archives in Midland, Michigan with funding from the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation worked with a team of students at Michigan Technological University to install DSpace for their digital archives. They produced http://www.poststreetarchives.org/DSpaceInstall.pdf this set of installation instructions for novice users on Fedora Core 4.
You also may wish to check Installation for additional installation tips/suggestions relating to specific operating systems.
If filter-media appears to hang after it creates the thumbnails and indexes text content, you may consider running filter-media as root. For some reason, certain users report that =filter-media= will hang after printing the following message:
Creating search index:
My personal experience shows that this happens when I run it as dspace, but not as root. Not sure yet why this happens, but this may be a quick fix until it is sorted out. Also, bear this potential "problem" in mind when setting up cron jobs for filter-media, index-all, and others.
Also note that running index-all as dspace does not hang, even though it does (apparently) the same thing.
If something doesn't seem to be working, you can often find out more by upping the logging level of DSpace. To do this:
1. Edit dspace/config/log4j.properties.
2. Change the level by changing this line:
log4j.rootCategory=INFO, A1 |
to this:
log4j.rootCategory=DEBUG, A1 |
3. Restart Tomcat (or Resin, etc.).
Now you'll find there's a lot more information in dspace/log/dspace.log. You can switch on and off logging for particular DSpace classes. For example, if you just want to know about SQL queries going to the database, you could leave the main level above as INFO, and instead add the following line (then restart Tomcat):
log4j.logger.org.dspace.storage.rdbms.DatabaseManager=DEBUG, A1 |
More information about DSpace log files is available in the DSpace System Documentation.
Adding a new Dublin Core field can be done from the Administrative User Interface of DSpace. Login as an Administrator, and look for the page called "Metadata Schema Registry".
After you've added a new field, you can add it to the Search (Lucene) Index or Browse Index by following the directions in the "Configuration and Customization" chapter of the DSpace System Documentation.
In that chapter you'll also find hints/tips on customizing your User Interface display to show this new field.
Additional help can be found in the on this wiki.
The DSpace System Documentation includes a chapter titled "Customizing and Configuring Submission User Interface" which details how to make this and many other Submission UI customizations.
The DSpace System Documentation includes a section on "Configuring Lucene Search Indexes" in the chapter on "Configuration and Customization".
See the on this wiki for more help.
What if you have a team that wants to collaborate on a DSpace modification? You can all check the code out of SourceForge CVS anonymously and pass patches around, but this will get very complicated (and probably produce errors) very quickly. What you really need is your own CVS repository.
This is also useful for managing any minor customisations your organisation has made to DSpace.
See SeparateCvsRepository
This error message is shown if DSpace has encountered an error. To find out what caused the error, there are two options:
## In Linux, run the following command then reproduce the internal error state ## use the pathname prefix appropriate to your DSpace installation tail -F /var/logs/dspace.log ## and you should see something of the kind 2009-05-18 12:52:45,935 WARN org.dspace.app.webui.servlet.DSpaceServlet @ name\ @place:session_id=F32DD4066DD475B8841A2A2204961B9A:ip_addr=1.2\ .3.4:database_error:org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: ERROR: duplicate key \ violates unique constraint "metadatafieldregistry_pkey" org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: ERROR: duplicate key violates unique constra\ int "metadatafieldregistry_pkey" at org.postgresql.core.v3.QueryExecutorImpl.receiveErrorResponse(QueryE\ xecutorImpl.java:1525) |
After setting up the DSpace database and properly setting up the application, most functionality appears normal. However, when adding content all the fields are null when it comes time to review a content submission. The Java errors thrown revolve around a null pointer exception.
See ModJk.
If you want to use an encoding other than UTF-8 you can edit the file src/org/dspace/storage/rdbms/DatabaseManager.java and modify the next lines
else if ((jdbctype == Types.CLOB && "oracle".equals(dbName)) || jdbctype == Types.VARCHAR) { // Support CLOBs in place of TEXT columns in Oracle row.setColumn(name, results.getString(i)); } /*else if (jdbctype == Types.VARCHAR) { try { byte[] bytes = results.getBytes(i); if (bytes != null) { String mystring = new String(results.getBytes(i), "UTF-8"); row.setColumn(name, mystring); } else { row.setColumn(name, results.getString(i)); } } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { // do nothing, UTF-8 is built in! } }*/ |
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