Printable Installation Guide

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Step 1 - Install Firefox

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Step 2 - Install Java

  1. Download java 8 release of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
  • For the standalone version you will only need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) not Java Development Kit (JDK)
  • Java 8 isn’t just recommended… it’s required for most releases in the 2.x series.
    To download the application use the this link https://www.oracle.com/in/java/technologies/javase/javase8-archive-downloads.html
  • Accept the license agreement and make sure you download the correct file basing on your operating system, whether its x32 or x64 bit.

Note: If you are unsure about the version please follow this guide http://update.se.wtb.tue.nl/documentation/install/manual-java.html

  • It is recommended to download the executable file (.exe) for a simpler run
  • Execute the downloaded file, accept the license agreement and follow the instructions in the wizard, installing in default installation directories.

Ubuntu

You can install the OpenJDK on it's own as a package

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

or automatically as a dependency of Tomcat

sudo apt-get install tomcat7

Step 3 - Install Tomcat

Windows

  1. Download the latest available version of Tomcat. You can use the .exe version, which installs Tomcat as a service or the .zip archive. (Tomcat 7 is the most preferred )
    1. Execute the file and install running the default settings 
    2. Accept the license agreement
  1. Accept default destination folder
  2. Accept HTTP/1.1 Connector Port 8080
  3. Set Administrator login (username/password)
  4. Accept the Java directory detected
  5. Select Install Tomcat# After installation is complete you will need to change users roles by following this directory on your windows explorer
    1. C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\conf
    2. Locate the file "tomcat-users.xml" and try to open it.
      1. Most likely your operating system will fail to detect the application that opens the file so make a right-click on the file then select down the menu Open With > Notepad
      2. You will notice that a text editor will show up then locate this character set <tomcat-users> The character set is located on line 18 of the file.
  6. Open the Tomcat users file (e.g. C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\conf\tomcat-users.xml) in a text editor.
  7. Create a new user called admin with the roles admin, manager and manager-gui. This file should be protected so you will need to open it as Administrator (right-click on your text editor and select "Run as administrator")
<role rolename="tomcat"/>                                                     
<role rolename="admin"/>                                                      
<role rolename="manager"/>                                                    
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user name="admin" password="XXXXXX" roles="tomcat,admin,manager,manager-gui"/>


Then save the file

  1. Your operating system might bring an error message that indicates that you do not have sufficient privileges to save the file. Then it will ask you to save it in a different directory.
    1. You need to save the file in the current directory, right-click on the file "tomcat-users" and click on Properties, at the bottom of the menu.
    2. Navigate to the "Security" tab
    3. Select the username you are currently using on the machine
    4. Click the "Edit" button
    5. Permissions table will allow you to edit your privileges as a user.
    6. Click on Full Control then click OK and then OK again
    7. Now, you should be able to edit and save the file in the same directory.

(Optional) If you've installed Tomcat as a service, you can configure it to start automatically when the computer boots:

  1. Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services
  2. Right Click "Apache Tomcat" > Properties > Set "Startup Type" to Automatic
  3. Click Start or restart your pc

Other operating systems

  1. Download the zip archive of Tomcat 7.0.29
  2. Unpack the zip file to a suitable location such as /opt on Linux or /Library on Mac OSX
sudo useradd tomcat6
cd /opt
sudo tar zxvf apache-tomcat-7.0.29.tar.gz
sudo ln -s apache-tomcat-7.0.29 tomcat7
sudo chown tomcat7.tomcat7 apache-tomcat-7.0.29

Open the Tomcat users file (e.g. /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml) in a text editor. Create a new user called admin with the roles admin,manager and manager-gui. This file should be protected so you will need to open it as root (e.g. sudo nano /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml)

<role rolename="tomcat"/>                                                     
<role rolename="admin"/>                                                      
<role rolename="manager"/>                                                    
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user name="admin" password="XXXXXX" roles="tomcat,admin,manager,manager-gui"/>

As a package for Debian, Ubuntu & other Unix systems

  1. Run the following command from a terminal
sudo apt-get install tomcat7

Open the Tomcat users file (e.g. /etc/tomcat7/tomcat-users.xml) in a text editor. Create a new user called admin with the roles admin,manager and manager-gui. This file should be protected so you will need to open it as root (e.g. sudo nano __/etc/tomcat/tomcat-users.xml)

<role rolename="tomcat"/>                                                     
<role rolename="admin"/>                                                      
<role rolename="manager"/>                                                    
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<user name="admin" password="XXXXXX" roles="tomcat,admin,manager,manager-gui"/>

Turn off tomcat security flag in /etc/init.d/tomcat7 file: Find "TOMCAT7_SECURITY=yes" and change it to "TOMCAT7_SECURITY=no" For Tomcat 7, it is "no" by default.
Create OpenMRS application data directory and make it writable by Tomcat: (so that the runtime properties file can be written by the webapp during initial startup)

sudo mkdir /usr/share/tomcat7/.OpenMRS
sudo chown -R tomcat7:tomcat7 /usr/share/tomcat7/.OpenMRS/

To know more about the recommended application directory for OpenMRS refer to this discussion on Talk.

To start/stop/restart tomcat7, please type the following commands:

sudo service tomcat7 start
sudo service tomcat7 stop
sudo service tomcat7 restart


Security Enhancements

  • In newest versions of Tomcat(> version 7), by default HttpOnly flag will be set by the server. But in older versions of Tomcat, it needs to set this flag through a configuration. The HttpOnly flag is an additional flag that is used to prevent an XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) exploit from taking access to the session cookie. Because one of the most known ways of subjecting to an XSS attack is access to the session cookie, and to subsequently hijack the victim’s session, the HttpOnly flag is a useful prevention mechanism where a client side script won't be able to access the session cookie from. To add the HttpOnly flag to session cookies in older versions of Tomcat, you need to edit the <TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/context.xml to add useHttpOnly="true" attribute as below:

    <Context useHttpOnly="true">
        <Manager pathname="" />
        <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.CometConnectionManagerValve" />
    </Context>

    https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/TRUNK-3941


Step 4 - Install MySQL

It is recommended that your version of MySQL is compatible with the version of the OpenMRS Platform you are installing.

  • OpenMRS Platform version 2.2 and below requires MySQL 5.6
  • OpenMRS Platform version 2.3 and above support MySQL 5.7
  • OpenMRS Platform version 2.4 and above support MySQL 8

This requires installing an older version than the latest MySQL release.

Windows

  • The MySQL installer for Windows is found here
    • Click "Looking for previous GA versions?" to install version 5.6 or 5.7
    • For other versions, click "Archives"
  • Download and run the installer program (.msi)
  • Accept the license agreement
  • When given the option to update installer please do so
  • Under Feature Selection select Full Installation Setup and select the right Architecture for your computer (32-bit / 64-bit)
  • Click next and you will be shown a list of applications that you need in order to meet the requirements for installing all services. Make sure you satisfy all the requirements, if not, please install the missing applications on your machine.
  • On the next configuration options select “Developer Machine”
  • Leave all other settings to default
  • Enter a username and password. Note: These are the credentials for the user with root privileges. Do not forget this password.
  • Click next and finish the installation.

Note: MySQL might fail to run as a service, for this you can manually start it by navigating to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services
Then find the service called “MySQL”, right click > Properties then you can either click the “start” button or set “Startup Type” to automatic.

Debian/Debian derived distributions

To install an older version such as MySQL 5.6 or 5.7 (recommended), follow the instructions laid out here.

To install the latest package, perform the following.

  1. Install the MySQL server package as root:

    sudo apt-get install mysql-server
  2. Enter a root password

Note that with many Linux distributions, the default install of MySQL might not be accessible to OpenMRS. To ensure your instance of MySQL will work with OpenMRS, you can use the following command:

mysql -h localhost -P 3306 --protocol tcp -u root -p

This will prompt you for the root password you selected above. if you cannot connect like this, you'll need to ensure that the root MySQL user is able to login via TCP. To do this run:

sudo mysql -u root
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'new-password';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit


Docker

Docker allows easy installation of MySQL in a self-contained container on linux but is a bit more complicated option on Windows or OSX. See https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/ on how to start using Docker.

After you have installed Docker, it's easy to launch a MySQL container. This will download a MySQL 5.7 Docker image and run it:

$ docker run --name openmrs-mysql -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=openmrs -d mysql:5.7

Now you can connect to the database on port 3306 with username "root" and password "openmrs". Note that the port mapping argument -p 3306:3306 is needed to expose MySQL service's port inside the container to the host.

You may also ask Docker to list all Docker containers:

$ docker ps --all
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                    NAMES
233f1d85e7c9        mysql:5.7           "/entrypoint.sh mysql"   20 seconds ago      Up 19 seconds       0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp   openmrs-mysql

Need to test on another MySQL version? You may run multiple MySQL container's simultaneously just as long as you give them unique names and port mappings. For example to run a MySQL 5.7 container, you might say:

$ sudo docker run --name openmrs-mysql -p 3316:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=openmrs -d mysql:5.7

Stopping and starting your database container is easy:

# stopping...
$ docker stop openmrs-mysql

# ...and starting again
$ docker start openmrs-mysql

If you decide you don't need the database any more you can remove it:

$ docker rm openmrs-mysql

Step 5 - Deploy OpenMRS

 

  1. Windows: Ensure that Tomcat is started by checking to see if icon in the tray is green or by using this command on cmd:  wmic.exe process list brief | find /i "tomcat"

  2. Download the latest stable release of OpenMRS.
  3. Navigate to http://localhost:8080/manager/html and enter your Tomcat administrator credentials (username and password chosen when installing Tomcat).
  4. In the Tomcat Web Application Manager, enter the location of the downloaded openmrs.war file. Once done, click on the "upload" button and OpenMRS should start deploying.
    1. The deployment may take some time while the file is being copied to the folder C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat <version>\webapps and decompressed.
    2. Note that the OpenMRS.war file is most easily downloaded with Mozilla Firefox. Internet Explorer tries to open the file as a Zip file.
  5. At the end of this process, the web page will refresh and /openmrs should be displayed under Applications. Apache Tomcat should also start the application (Running = True; and in Commands, Stop is underlined)

    Another way to do this is unzipping the .war file directly under webapps folder in Tomcat and then restarting it. You will be able to access http://localhost:8080/openmrs and the installation wizard will show.

 

 

Step 6 - Configuration

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Step 7 - Start Using OpenMRS

  1. After you have finished configuring OpenMRS, RELOAD the application in Tomcat Manager.
  2. Open http://localhost:8080/openmrs. You will see a login page. If you're using the OpenMRS standalone package, the page is at http://localhost:8080/openmrs-standalone .
    1. You will need to log in initially using the username and password you specified in Step 6 - Configuring OpenMRS, substep 4. If you did not specify a username and password, try the default username admin and password test (both are in lowercase).
    2. Alternatively, while Tomcat is running you can start OpenMRS by entering http://localhost:8080/openmrs/login.htm  (assuming 8080 is your port number for Tomcat; insert the appropriate port number if it is not 8080). For OpenMRS standalone package, you can start OpenMRS by entering http://localhost:8080/openmrs-standalone/login.htm .