The view from here

We chose Linux as the platform for Sakai. The main reason was cost — no licenses for the server OS and the availability of low cost server hardware. We opted for CentOS 5 as the flavour of Linux. It is basically Red Hat Enterprise and has proven to be robust in the past.

CentOS is easy to install. I began with a virtual machine running in VMWare Fusion on my iMac. This allowed me to walk through the install process as a dry run, test out tools and steps, and to roll back if anything broke.

I opted for a 64-bit build of CentOS, so that we could take advantage of large amounts of memory later on if needed.

After installing CentOS using the GUI, the next step was to prepare the system for installing Sakai from source.

To install Sakai 2.5.x from source, we need several things (with caveats):

• Java JDK/JRE 5.0 Update 18 (Java 6 will NOT work)
• Apache Tomcat 5.5.26 or greater (Tomcat 6 is NOT compatible with Sakai)
• Maven 2.0.6 or better (for building Sakai source code)
• MySQL 4.1 or 5.0.x

Out of the box, CentOS has both Java 1.4 and Java 6 installed. Java JDK/JRE 5.0 needs to be downloaded from Sun and installed (Note that Sun Microsystems is withdrawing Java 5.0 as of September 2009, so if you want it, download and archive a copy now).

Installing a new version of Java involved unpacking the distribution in a local directory (e.g. /opt or /usr/local) and the using the “alternatives –install” command to make the system aware of the version and to select it as the default Java version. Use “java -version” to confirm that the correct java version  is selected.

Next: Installing Tomcat 5.5

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The next few posts will chronicle the process of creating a fresh install of the Sakai portal/course management system and then importing content from an existing installation.

The organization that I went through this process for had a Sakai instance that had been installed by a vendor/consultant as a binary distribution. We relied on the vendor for troubleshooting, upgrades and tool/portlet installations. We decided a few months back to develop the expertise “in-house” to install, configure and upgrade Sakai so that we would no longer be reliant on a vendor.

We wanted to go through the entire process of installing Sakai from source in order to learn how to do it, and to allow us to add tools using source code later on.

Sakai is not that difficult to install on its own, but there are a number of issues that arose during the process that I felt it was important to document.

Stay tuned!

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A colleague showed me this video a few days ago and it cracked me up. Craig Ferguson is a funny guy.

Monte Carlo

Originally uploaded by robtain

This photo was taken by my grandfather sometime in the 1950s. I have a crate full of old slides and am trying to get it together to digitize them all.

Just finished getting the site back online after my hosting provider
suffered a service outage and catastrophic data loss. While the
experience was nerve-wracking and a pain in the behind, it is probably
the kickstart that I needed to tend to this little garden again.

Spring is in the air, so some photo walks are on the horizon, as well
as bike excursions.

Watch this space for some resources related to geocaching in the
coming week… This as part of my prep for a workshop I am doing in
mid-May.

Wine Glass
Originally uploaded by robtain

I might have composed this better, but the was a combination of timing and circumstance. I saw the glasses on the table. It was late afternoon and the sunlight was pouring through the patio door onto the table. I wanted to see if I could capture the particular quality of light that was visible at this time of day.

Flower Girl
Originally uploaded by robtain

So far I am loving my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. The shallow depth of field that I can attain really makes photos like this portrait of my daughter really stand out.
I now have three lenses in my kit, but since I bought the 50mm, I have only taken it off the camera once. The other advantage is that it means that I can better shots in lower light and not have to resort to a flash.

I finally got around to working out a few bugs in the Wordpress theme that I’ve been using (K2). I’ve been watching the K2 release candidates regularly for updates so that I could fix this once and for all. My sidebars were disappearing randomly, rendering my sidebar content relatively useless. Hopefully this will work better.

It may break again the next time I upgrade Wordpress.

I’ve added a couple of new photgraphy sites to the blogroll, so please check out those links. The time has come to _blank_ or get off the pot as far as blogging is concerned, so I will try to find some genuinely interesting info to post here in the coming days, weeks and months. Thanks for reading!

Jungle Gym
Photograph by Jennifer McCann. Originally uploaded by robtain

Red-tailed Hawk
Originally uploaded by robtain

Another photo taken with the 70-300 mm zoom. After hearing people talk about it, I am really starting to appreciate “bokeh“. This photo was taken at the Ecomuseum in Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Quebec. The subject is a red-tailed hawk.