5. METexpress System Requirements, Installation and Support

Repository: METexpress is a community software package managed by the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) and is available through Github.

This repository includes a README file at the top-level that covers an overview and build instructions, with further links to installation instructions.

System requirements:

  • Hardware: METexpress runs on Docker. It can successfully run on a system with four cores, 8 GB of memory and 10GB of free disk space. METexpress has been tested on Linux and MAC systems. It may run on Windows but this has not been tested and the configuration and management scripts are written in bash.

  • Software: These packages must be installed: docker, docker-compose, httpaswd, and jq. For a robust testing environment, install the certificate located in /etc/ssl/certs (see SSL certificates below). A simple testing system can be deployed on the localhost without certificates for testing by answering yes to the question “Are you setting up a simple test environment?” in the configure program.

  • Python 3: There is a dependency on Python 3 which should be accessible in /usr/bin/python3, and requires a number of Python modules to be installed, including pymysql, abc.abstractmethod, urllib.request, traceback, ssl, getopt, and json. These may need to be added to the Python environment with a package manager.

Meteor Framework: METexpress is built on the Meteor free and open-source JavaScript web framework. Meteor must be installed in order to build METexpress. Meteor is not required to deploy METexpress containers.

Database requirements: METexpress must have access to a METdatadb database and must have read/write privileges. For further information about installation of this database please see https://metviewer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Users_Guide/installation.html and https://metviewer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Users_Guide/database_loading.html.

Configuration: In order to install METexpress, a configuration script needs to be run which will give a prompt to provide information specific to the installation. Below is a list of information that usually needs to be provided:

  • Networking information:

    • The domainName of the deployment server.

      • METexpress uses this to configure its own proxy service that fronts the apps.

    • Fully qualified proxy hostname, defaulting to the domainName

      • The deployment might be behind a redirection proxy with redirection to a different path than what is actually on the host. For example, the METexpress server might be deployed on a server with an internal URL “https://something.subnet.esrl.noaa.gov” and have a landing page location of “/”, while the public URL is a proxy redirect like “https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gsd/mats”.

      • In this case the fully qualified proxy hostname is www.esrl.noaa.gov and the proxy_prefix_path needs to be set to “/gsd/mats”.

    • Proxy redirection path

      • This allows a different path other than “/”

  • Database credentials: Building on the architecture of MATS, METexpress has a construct for a database role. Within METexpress the only role that is used is one named “sums_data”. METexpress requires that a user exist in the MET database that has database read and write permissions. Write permissions are needed to create metadata entries. During the installation, it will be necessary to provide the username and password for this user. The username and password for the sums_data role is required for each app.

  • SSL certificates: An SSL certificate is required to run METexpress. This is usually an externally acquired certificate for the users domain, which users will need to place in a directory as instructed by the setup script. Alternatively, a no-cost certificate can be used provided by traefik using Let’s Encrypt software from within METexpress containers. Instructions for this option are available in the overview for traefik. Be aware, however, that this option requires modifications to the server’s firewall by someone with network administrative privileges.

Building METexpress: It is only necessary to build METexpress if a custom build is required. Otherwise, it is recommended that METexpress be installed directly from the provided docker images. See the overview and build README.

Installation: METexpress can only be installed from Docker images. The most recent images are maintained by METexpress developers and are available in the dockerhub repository.

For guidance on the installation see the METexpress Deployment for Containers README.

Support: For support for METexpress, please email mats.gsl@noaa.gov.