We are excited to introduce the first Open Semantic Framework installation script. This new installer application will install and configure the entire Open Semantic Framework stack for you. It will take about 10 minutes of your time, and will process in the background for a few hours while everything necessary to build the OSF stack is downloaded and compiled.

The only thing you have to do to run the OSF Installer is to issue the few commands outlined below, and then to answer a few questions in the process (which, since most of them use the standard default values, is pretty easy).

The OSF Installer is a major addition to the Open Semantic Framework since it now enables a greater number of people (mere mortals) to install and use the stack, and it enables much faster deployment of the system.

The full installation manual, where each of the steps performed by the installer is explained in detail, is available as a reference here.

Requirements

The current version of the Open Semantic Framework Installer is fully operational on:

1. Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)
2. 32 Bits Operating System
3. Access to internet from the server
4. 5GIG of disk space on the partition where you are installing OSF

Eventually this installer will be upgraded for 64-bits operating systems, and for other Linux distributions. Also, the current installer should work on newer versions of Ubuntu, but it has only been tested to date on the latest LTS version.

Installing the Open Semantic Framework

The only manual steps need to do to install the Open Semantic Framework are to:

1. Create a folder where to install OSF on your server
2. Download the osf-install.zip installation package
3. Make the osf-install.sh installation script executable
4. Run the osf-install.sh installation script
5. Answer the questions asked by the installer

Here are the commands you have to run:

[cc lang=’bash’ line_numbers=’true’ ]

cd /mnt/
sudo wget https://github.com/downloads/structureddynamics/Open-Semantic-Framework-Installer/osf-installer-v1.0a4.zip
sudo unzip osf-installer-v1.0a4.zip
cd `ls -d structureddynamics*/`
sudo chmod 755 osf-install.sh
./osf-install.sh

[/cc]

conStruct and structWSF Upgrades

In the process, both conStruct and structWSF have been enhanced to enable automatic upgrading in the future. Starting with structWSF version 1.0a92 and conStruct version 6.x-1.0-beta9, future upgrades should be done automatically using automatic upgrading procedures.

However, to enable this, existing users will have to upgrade their current versions manually to establish the new automatic upgrades baseline.

Next Steps

Once you have installed the OSF stack, you next query the structWSF Web service endpoints, and import datasets using conStruct. Here are a few things you can do to start exploring the Open Semantic Framework:

1. Start exploring structWSF
2. Start exploring conStruct
3. Start exploring Ontologies usage in OSF
4. Start importing and manipulating datasets
5. Start exploring the Open Semantic Framework architecture
6. Start playing with the structWSF web service endpoints

Since everything is installed on your server, so you only have to play with the stack now. If you break something, just ping us on the mailing list or re-install it without worrying about each installation steps!

Help

It may be possible that you experience some issues with this new OSF Installer. If that is the case, I would suggest your to make an outreach to the Open Semantic Web Mailing List so that we fix it on the Git repository.

Just write an email that includes the specifications of the server where you are trying to install OSF on. Then tell us where the issue happens in the installation process. Also add any logs that could be helpful in debugging the issue.

Conclusion

This is the first version of the OSF installer, but this is a real balm for installing OSF. As noted, this installer will eventually be upgraded to support 64-bit servers and other Linux distributions. Also, any help improving this installer from Bash wizards would naturally be greatly welcomed.