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Install DTaaS on localhost (GUI)

The installation instructions provided in this README are ideal for running the DTaaS on localhost via a Graphical User Interface (GUI). This installation is ideal for single users intending to use DTaaS on their own computers.

Design

An illustration of the docker containers used and the authorization setup is shown here.

Traefik OAuth

Requirements

The installation requirements to run this docker version of the DTaaS are:

  • docker desktop / docker CLI with compose plugin
  • User account on gitlab.com

Tip

The frontend website requires authorization. The default authorization configuration works for gitlab.com. If you desire to use locally hosted gitlab instance, please see the client docs.

Clone Codebase

If you have not cloned the DTaaS git repository, cloning would be the first step. In case you already have the codebase, you can skip the cloning step. To clone, do:

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git clone https://github.com/into-cps-association/DTaaS.git
cd DTaaS/deploy/services/gitlab

In this guide we will assume the contents of the zip file have been extracted to the directory: /home/DTaaS.

Tip

The path given here is for Linux OS. It can be Windows compatible as well, for example: C:\\DTaaS. Make sure to use this path and format in place of /home/DTaaS in this guide.

Starting Portainer

The GUI used to run the application and docker containers will be provided by Portainer Community Edition. It is itself a Docker container that will create a website at https://localhost:9443, which will present a graphical interface for starting and stopping the application.

You may follow the official documentation for setting up a Portainer CE Server . Alternatively, open a terminal on your system (Terminal on Linux / MacOS, Powershell on Windows, etc) and copy the following commands into it:

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docker volume create portainer_data
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 --name portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:2.21.4

This will start the Portainer server on your system, which will host its dashboard at https://localhost:9443. Follow the Initial Setup Guide to set up an administrator account for Portainer on your system.

Portainer should now be set up on your system, and you can access the dashboard:

Portainer Admin Dashboard

Tip

The next time you wish to start the Portainer server, run docker start portainer.

Configuration

Create User Workspace

The existing filesystem for installation is setup for user1. A new filesystem directory needs to be created for the selected user.

You may use your file explorer or an equivalent application to duplicate the files/user1 directory and rename it as files/username where username is the selected username registered on https://gitlab.com.

ALternatively, you may execute the following commands from the top-level directory of the DTaaS project.

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cp -R files/user1 files/username

Creating the Portainer Stack

Portainer Stacks

Portainer Stacks are equivalent to using docker compose commands to manage containers.

  1. Navigate to the Stacks tab on the side panel, and click on the Add Stack button.
  2. Name the Stack anything descriptive, for example: dtaas-localhost.
  3. Select the Upload build method.
  4. Upload the compose file located at deploy/docker/compose.local.yml.
  5. Select the option to load variables from a .env file, and upload the file deploy/docker/.env.local.

Tip

Sometimes the .env.local file does not show up in the file explorer. You may fix this by selecting the option to show All Files rather than those with the extension .env.

Portainer ENV Editor

The .env.local file contains environment variables that are used by the compose file. Portainer allows you to modify them as shown in the screenshot above, here is a summary:

URL Path Example Value Explanation
DTAAS_DIR '/home/Desktop/DTaaS' Full path to the DTaaS directory. This is an absolute path with no trailing slash.
username1 'user1' Your gitlab username

Tip

Important points to note:

  1. The path examples given here are for Linux OS. These paths can be Windows OS compatible paths as well.
  2. The client configuration file is located at deploy/config/client/env.local.js. If you are following the guide to use HTTPS on localhost, edit the URLs in this file by replacing http with https.

Once you have configured the environment variables, click on the button Deploy the stack.

Use

The application will be accessible at: http://localhost from web browser. Sign in using your https://gitlab.com account.

All the functionality of DTaaS should be available to you through the single page client now.

Limitations

The library microservice is not included in the localhost installation scenario.

References

Image sources: Traefik logo, ml-workspace, reactjs, gitlab