Installation and deployment guide

Automated installation Installation

(Semi) Manual installation Installation and deployment guide

Server data file structure

Panoptes uses two file directories, and the location of both has to be specified in config.py (example: config.py.sample).

BASEDIR: This is the root directory for storing file-based server data. It should contain subdirectories “SummaryTracks”, “Uploads” and “temp”. All should have write privileges for the user that runs the server.

SOURCEDATADIR: This directory contains the file-bases data sources that are used to import into the Panoptes datasets.

Note

Both paths have to be specified as absolute, starting from /. Do not use relative paths here.

See section Loading data for more information on how to populate the Panoptes instance with data.

Authorization

Panoptes contains a simple authorization mechanism that can be used to grant or deny certain privileges on datasets. There are three levels of privileges:

  • Read: View the data in a dataset.
  • Edit: Add custom data properties to a workspace.
  • Manage: All actions, including loading the dataset from the file source.

The authorization mechanism interacts with authentication systems implemented at the web server level, by reading the REMOTE_USER environment variable.

Specifically, Panoptes can integrate with a CAS Single Sign-On service. To enable this, specify the CAS service url in the CAS_SERVICE variable in config.py. In this case, authentication can also be based on user groups.

The file PanoptesAuthDb (https://raw2.github.com/cggh/panoptes/master/servermodule/panoptesserver/PanoptesAuthDb) is used to link user authentication information to privileges on specific datasets. The default installation grants all rights to everybody.