Installing on Amazon Web Services

To make it easier for you to get an OppiaMobile server up and running, we have created an Amazon Web Services machine image that you can copy and comes pre-packaged with the latest version of the OppiaMobile Server so will run ‘out of the box’.

Launch an AWS Machine Image

Once you have created your account on AWS:

  • Go into your instances page

  • Select ‘launch instance’

  • Select ‘Community AMIs’

  • Search for ‘oppiamobile’ and you should see the most recent version of the OppiaMobile AMI listed

  • Launch your new instance - you can alter the instance configuration (security groups etc) during the rest of the launch instance process.

Note

When you search the OppiaMobile server AMI will only appear in the search results if you have selected the ‘EU (Ireland)’ zone

Once your instance is up and running you will be able to assign a static IP, access via your web browser and log into the server using the IP address.

It is beyond the scope of this guide to give the full information about how to connect and configure your AWS account instances, but in your AWS security group, you’ll need to open up access for both HTTP and HTTPS.

You can point your domain name to the IP address, and edit the Apache config file: /etc/apache2/sites-available/oppia.conf to specify your domain name on the line ServerName localhost.oppia.

Access via SSH

It is strongly recommended that you only allow access to your Oppia server using SSH (HTTPS). Certbot is already installed on the server, so you can use this to set up free SSH certificates. For more info see: https://certbot.eff.org/lets-encrypt/ubuntubionic-apache (start from step 7)

Passwords

When you install and launch your instance it is set up with a default set of usernames/passwords:

  • MySQL root password: ‘default’

  • MySQL oppia user password: ‘default’ - this is the user that Django uses to connect to your database. When you have changed this password you should also update the settings file (at: /home/oppiamobile/django-oppia/oppiamobile/settings_secret.py) to reflect the new database password.

  • Django super user: username ‘admin’ and password ‘default’

Warning

You are very strongly advised to change these passwords as soon as you have set up your instance

Directories and location of files

All the required files are stored in the /home/oppia/ directory, which has the following structure:

  • django-oppia (dir): the OppiaMobile server application files

  • env (dir): root of the virtualenv

  • media (dir): the media directory for Django (this directory served directly by Apache)

  • oppia-cron.sh (file): a shell script for running the OppiaMobile cron task - it’s unlikely you’ll ever need to do anything with this file.

  • static (dir): the static directory for Django (this directory is served directly by Apache)

  • upload (dir): stores the course uploads

Warning

In the main django settings, the server is set to run in debug mode. This will be fine when you are testing, but once you are ready to start providing the server live, you should change this setting to DEBUG=False

Updating django-oppia server code from core

The code is based on a ‘point-in-time’ version of the OppiaMobile server code, so once you have set up your instance, you should try to keep it up to date.

View the docs on how to upgrade

Creating your own version of django-oppia

If you have created your own fork of django-oppia (for example to customise the look and feel), then you can point git to the fork of your code by editing the /home/oppiamobile/django-oppia/.git/config file and pulling the code from your fork instead.

More information on customising OppiaMobile

Environment information

The current version of the instance is running:

  • OppiaServer 0.14.11

  • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server

  • Apache 2.4

  • Mysql 8.0

Email configuration

By default your AWS Oppia server is not configured to send email, any emails generated by the system (for example reset password messages) are just saved as plain text files in the /tmp directory.

To enable sending email you will need to:

  • configure your AWS account to enable email sending (using SES service)

  • create/download your AWS IAM Access Key

  • update the /home/oppiamobile/django-oppia/oppiamobile/settings_secret.py file to configure sending email

Your settings_secret.py file should have a block of code like this (just add in your email, access key and secret access key):

# Email setup
SERVER_EMAIL = '<admin@my-oppia-server.org>'
EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = '[OppiaMobile]: '
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'

EMAIL_HOST = 'email-smtp.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '<IAM Access User>'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = '<IAM Access password>'
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = '<email to send from>'