Now that you’ve successfully logged into Dataverse with a superuser account after going through a basic Installation, you’ll need to secure and configure your installation.
Settings within Dataverse itself are managed via JVM options or by manipulating values in the setting table directly or through API calls. Configuring Solr requires manipulating XML files.
Once you have finished securing and configuring your Dataverse installation, you may proceed to the Admin Guide for more information on the ongoing administration of a Dataverse installation. Advanced configuration topics are covered in the TwoRavens, Shibboleth and OAuth Login: ORCID, GitHub, Google sections.
Contents:
The default password for the “dataverseAdmin” superuser account is “admin”, as mentioned in the Installation section, and you should change it, of course.
The Native API contains a useful but potentially dangerous API endpoint called “admin” that allows you to change system settings, make ordinary users into superusers, and more. The builtin-users endpoint lets people create a local/builtin user account if they know the BuiltinUsers.KEY value described below.
By default, all APIs can be operated on remotely and a number of endpoints do not require authentication. https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/1886 was opened to explore changing these defaults, but until then it is very important to block both the “admin” endpoint (and at least consider blocking builtin-users). For details please see also the section on :BlockedApiPolicy below.
To avoid having your users send credentials in the clear, it’s strongly recommended to force all web traffic to go through HTTPS (port 443) rather than HTTP (port 80). The ease with which one can install a valid SSL cert into Apache compared with the same operation in Glassfish might be a compelling enough reason to front Glassfish with Apache. In addition, Apache can be configured to rewrite HTTP to HTTPS with rules such as those found at https://wiki.apache.org/httpd/RewriteHTTPToHTTPS or in the section on Shibboleth.
Out of the box, Dataverse will list email addresses of the “contacts” for datasets when users visit a dataset page and click the “Export Metadata” button. If you prefer to exclude email addresses of dataset contacts from metadata export, set :ExcludeEmailFromExport to true.
See the Glassfish section of Prerequisites for details and init scripts for running Glassfish as non-root.
Related to this is that you should remove /root/.glassfish/pass to ensure that Glassfish isn’t ever accidentally started as root. Without the password, Glassfish won’t be able to start as root, which is a good thing.
Dataverse only stores passwords (as salted hash, and using a strong hashing algorithm) for “builtin” users. You can increase the password complexity rules to meet your security needs. If you have configured your Dataverse installation to allow login from remote authentication providers such as Shibboleth, ORCID, GitHub or Google, you do not have any control over those remote providers’ password complexity rules. See the “Auth Modes: Local vs. Remote vs. Both” section below for more on login options.
Even if you are satisfied with the out-of-the-box password complexity rules Dataverse ships with, for the “dataverseAdmin” account you should use a strong password so the hash cannot easily be cracked through dictionary attacks.
Password complexity rules for “builtin” accounts can be adjusted with a variety of settings documented below. Here’s a list:
The Prerequisites section explained that Dataverse requires a specific Solr schema file called schema.xml that can be found in the Dataverse distribution. You should have already replaced the default example/solr/collection1/conf/schema.xml file that ships with Solr.
Stop Solr and edit solr-4.6.0/example/etc/jetty.xml to add a line having to do with requestHeaderSize as follows:
<Call name="addConnector">
<Arg>
<New class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.bio.SocketConnector">
<Set name="host"><SystemProperty name="jetty.host" /></Set>
<Set name="port"><SystemProperty name="jetty.port" default="8983"/></Set>
<Set name="maxIdleTime">50000</Set>
<Set name="lowResourceMaxIdleTime">1500</Set>
<Set name="statsOn">false</Set>
<Set name="requestHeaderSize">102400</Set>
</New>
</Arg>
</Call>
Without this requestHeaderSize line in place, which increases the default size, it will appear that no data has been added to your Dataverse installation and WARN org.eclipse.jetty.http.HttpParser – HttpParser Full for /127.0.0.1:8983 will appear in the Solr log. See also https://support.lucidworks.com/hc/en-us/articles/201424796-Error-when-submitting-large-query-strings-
Remember how under “Decisions to Make” in the Preparation section we mentioned you’ll need to make a decision about whether or not to introduce a proxy in front of Dataverse such as Apache or nginx? The time has come to make that decision.
The need to redirect port HTTP (port 80) to HTTPS (port 443) for security has already been mentioned above and the fact that Glassfish puts these services on 8080 and 8181, respectively, was touched on in the Installation section. In production, you don’t want to tell your users to use Dataverse on ports 8080 and 8181. You should have them use the stardard HTTPS port, which is 443.
Your decision to proxy or not should primarily be driven by which features of Dataverse you’d like to use. If you’d like to use Shibboleth, the decision is easy because proxying or “fronting” Glassfish with Apache is required. The details are covered in the Shibboleth section.
If you’d like to use TwoRavens, you should also consider fronting with Apache because you will be required to install an Apache anyway to make use of the rApache module. For details, see the TwoRavens section.
Even if you have no interest in Shibboleth nor TwoRavens, you may want to front Dataverse with Apache or nginx to simply the process of installing SSL certificates. There are many tutorials on the Internet for adding certs to Apache, including a some notes used by the Dataverse team, but the process of adding a certificate to Glassfish is arduous and not for the faint of heart. The Dataverse team cannot provide much help with adding certificates to Glassfish beyond linking to tips on the web.
Still not convinced you should put Glassfish behind another web server? Even if you manage to get your SSL certificate into Glassfish, how are you going to run Glassfish on low ports such as 80 and 443? Are you going to run Glassfish as root? Bad idea. This is a security risk. Under “Additional Recommendations” under “Securing Your Installation” above you are advised to configure Glassfish to run as a user other than root. (The Dataverse team will close https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/1934 after updating the Glassfish init script provided in the Prerequisites section to not require root.)
There’s also the issue of serving a production-ready version of robots.txt. By using a proxy such as Apache, this is a one-time “set it and forget it” step as explained below in the “Going Live” section.
If you are convinced you’d like to try fronting Glassfish with Apache, the Shibboleth section should be good resource for you.
If you really don’t want to front Glassfish with any proxy (not recommended), you can configure Glassfish to run HTTPS on port 443 like this:
asadmin set server-config.network-config.network-listeners.network-listener.http-listener-2.port=443
What about port 80? Even if you don’t front Dataverse with Apache, you may want to let Apache run on port 80 just to rewrite HTTP to HTTPS as described above. You can use a similar command as above to change the HTTP port that Glassfish uses from 8080 to 80 (substitute http-listener-1.port=80). Glassfish can be used to enforce HTTPS on its own without Apache, but configuring this is an exercise for the reader. Answers here may be helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25122025/glassfish-v4-java-7-port-unification-error-not-able-to-redirect-http-to
The user who creates a dataverse is given the “Admin” role on that dataverse. The root dataverse is created automatically for you by the installer and the “Admin” is the superuser account (“dataverseAdmin”) we used in the Installation section to confirm that we can log in. These next steps of configuring the root dataverse require the “Admin” role on the root dataverse, but not the much more powerful superuser attribute. In short, users with the “Admin” role are subject to the permission system. A superuser, on the other hand, completely bypasses the permission system. You can give non-superusers the “Admin” role on the root dataverse if you’d like them to configure the root dataverse.
In order for non-superusers to start creating dataverses or datasets, you need click “Edit” then “Permissions” and make choices about which users can add dataverses or datasets within the root dataverse. (There is an API endpoint for this operation as well.) Again, the user who creates a dataverse will be granted the “Admin” role on that dataverse.
Non-superusers who are not “Admin” on the root dataverse will not be able to to do anything useful until the root dataverse has been published.
As the person installing Dataverse you may or may not be a local metadata expert. You may want to have others sign up for accounts and grant them the “Admin” role at the root dataverse to configure metadata fields, templates, browse/search facets, guestbooks, etc. For more on these topics, consult the Dataverse Management section of the User Guide.
You are also welcome to adjust the theme of the root dataverse by adding a logo or changing header colors, etc.
Once this configuration is complete, your Dataverse installation should be ready for users to start playing with. That said, there are many more configuration options available, which will be explained below.
Persistent identifiers are a required and integral part of the Dataverse platform. They provide a URL that is guaranteed to resolve to the datasets they represent. Dataverse currently supports creating identifiers using DOI and Handle.
By default and for testing convenience, the installer configures a temporary DOI test namespace through EZID. This is sufficient to create and publish datasets but they are not citable nor guaranteed to be preserved. Note that any datasets creating using the test configuration cannot be directly migrated and would need to be created again once a valid DOI namespace is configured.
To properly configure persistent identifiers for a production installation, an account and associated namespace must be acquired for a fee from a DOI or HDL provider: EZID (http://ezid.cdlib.org), DataCite (https://www.datacite.org), Handle.Net (https://www.handle.net).
Once you have your DOI or Handle account credentials and a namespace, configure Dataverse to use them using the JVM options and database settings below.
Out of the box, Dataverse is configured for DOIs. Here are the configuration options for DOIs:
JVM Options:
Database Settings:
Here are the configuration options for handles:
JVM Options:
Database Settings:
Note: If you are minting your own handles and plan to set up your own handle service, please refer to Handle.Net documentation.
There are three valid configurations or modes for authenticating users to Dataverse:
Out of the box, Dataverse is configured in “local only” mode. The “dataverseAdmin” superuser account mentioned in the Installation section is an example of a local account. Internally, these accounts are called “builtin” because they are built in to the Dataverse application itself.
To configure Shibboleth see the Shibboleth section and to configure OAuth see the OAuth Login: ORCID, GitHub, Google section.
The authenticationproviderrow database table controls which “authentication providers” are available within Dataverse. Out of the box, a single row with an id of “builtin” will be present. For each user in Dataverse, the authenticateduserlookup table will have a value under authenticationproviderid that matches this id. For example, the default “dataverseAdmin” user will have the value “builtin” under authenticationproviderid. Why is this important? Users are tied to a specific authentication provider but conversion mechanisms are available to switch a user from one authentication provider to the other. As explained in the Account Creation + Management section of the User Guide, a graphical workflow is provided for end users to convert from the “builtin” authentication provider to a remote provider. Conversion from a remote authentication provider to the builtin provider can be performed by a sysadmin with access to the “admin” API. See the Native API section of the API Guide for how to list users and authentication providers as JSON.
Enabling a second authentication provider will result in the Log In page showing additional providers for your users to choose from. By default, the Log In page will show the “builtin” provider, but you can adjust this via the :DefaultAuthProvider configuration option.
“Remote only” mode should be considered experimental until https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2974 is resolved. For now, “remote only” means:
By default, a Dataverse installation stores data files (files uploaded by end users) on the filesystem at /usr/local/glassfish4/glassfish/domains/domain1/files but this path can vary based on answers you gave to the installer (see the Running the Dataverse Installer section of the Installation Guide) or afterward by reconfiguring the dataverse.files.directory JVM option described below.
Rather than storing data files on the filesystem, you can opt for an experimental setup with a Swift Object Storage backend. Each dataset that users create gets a corresponding “container” on the Swift side, and each data file is saved as a file within that container.
In order to configure a Swift installation, there are two steps you need to complete:
First, create a file named swift.properties as follows in the config directory for your installation of Glassfish (by default, this would be /usr/local/glassfish4/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/swift.properties):
swift.default.endpoint=endpoint1
swift.auth_type.endpoint1=your-authentication-type
swift.auth_url.endpoint1=your-auth-url
swift.tenant.endpoint1=your-tenant-name
swift.username.endpoint1=your-username
swift.password.endpoint1=your-password
swift.swift_endpoint.endpoint1=your-swift-endpoint
auth_type can either be keystone or it will assumed to be basic. auth_url should be your keystone authentication URL which includes the tokens (e.g. https://openstack.example.edu:35357/v2.0/tokens). swift_endpoint is a URL that look something like http://rdgw.swift.example.org/swift/v1.
Second, update the JVM option dataverse.files.storage-driver-id by running the delete command:
./asadmin $ASADMIN_OPTS delete-jvm-options "\-Ddataverse.files.storage-driver-id=file"
Then run the create command:
./asadmin $ASADMIN_OPTS create-jvm-options "\-Ddataverse.files.storage-driver-id=swift"
You also have the option to set a custom container name separator. It is initialized to _, but you can change it by running the create command:
./asadmin $ASADMIN_OPTS create-jvm-options "\-Ddataverse.files.swift-folder-path-separator=-"
By default, your Swift installation will be public-only, meaning users will be unable to put access restrictions on their data. If you are comfortable with this level of privacy, the final step in your setup is to set the :PublicInstall setting to true.
In order to enable file access restrictions, you must enable Swift to use temporary URLs for file access. To enable usage of temporary URLs, set a hash key both on your swift endpoint and in your swift.properties file. You can do so by adding
swift.hash_key.endpoint1=your-hash-key
to your swift.properties file.
You also have the option to set a custom expiration length for a generated temporary URL. It is initalized to 60 seconds, but you can change it by running the create command:
./asadmin $ASADMIN_OPTS create-jvm-options "\-Ddataverse.files.temp_url_expire=3600"
In this example, you would be setting the expiration length for one hour.
Once you have configured a Swift Object Storage backend, you also have the option of enabling a connection to a computing environment. To do so, you need to configure the database settings for :ComputeBaseUrl and :CloudEnvironmentName.
Once you have set up :ComputeBaseUrl properly in both Dataverse and your cloud environment, the compute button on dataset and file pages will link validated users to your computing environment. Depending on the configuration of your installation, the compute button will either redirect to:
:ComputeBaseUrl?containerName=yourContainer&objectName=yourObject
if your installation’s :PublicInstall setting is true, or:
:ComputeBaseUrl?containerName=yourContainer&objectName=yourObject&temp_url_sig=yourTempUrlSig&temp_url_expires=yourTempUrlExpiry
You can configure this redirect properly in your cloud environment to generate a temporary URL for access to the Swift objects for computing.
For institutions and organizations looking to use Amazon’s S3 cloud storage for their installation, this can be set up manually through creation of a credentials file or automatically via the aws console commands.
You’ll need an AWS account with an associated S3 bucket for your installation to use. From the S3 management console (e.g. https://console.aws.amazon.com/), you can poke around and get familiar with your bucket. We recommend using IAM (Identity and Access Management) to create a user with full S3 access and nothing more, for security reasons. See http://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_users.html for more info on this process.
Make note of the bucket’s name and the region its data is hosted in. Dataverse and the aws SDK rely on the placement of a key file located in ~/.aws/credentials, which can be generated via either of these two methods.
To create credentials manually, you will need to generate a key/secret key. The first step is to log onto your aws web console (e.g. https://console.aws.amazon.com/). If you have created a user in AWS IAM, you can click on that user and generate the keys needed for dataverse.
Once you have acquired the keys, they need to be added to``credentials``. The format for credentials is as follows:
Place this file in a folder named .aws under the home directory for the user running your dataverse installation.
Begin by installing the CLI tool pip to install the AWS command line interface if you don’t have it.
First, we’ll get our access keys set up. If you already have your access keys configured, skip this step. From the command line, run:
pip install awscli
aws configure
You’ll be prompted to enter your Access Key ID and secret key, which should be issued to your AWS account. The subsequent config steps after the access keys are up to you. For reference, these keys are stored in ~/.aws/credentials.
With your access to your bucket in place, we’ll want to navigate to /usr/local/glassfish4/glassfish/bin/ and execute the following asadmin commands to set up the proper JVM options. Recall that out of the box, Dataverse is configured to use local file storage. You’ll need to delete the existing storage driver before setting the new one.
./asadmin $ASADMIN_OPTS delete-jvm-options "\-Ddataverse.files.storage-driver-id=file"
./asadmin $ASADMIN_OPTS create-jvm-options "\-Ddataverse.files.storage-driver-id=s3"
Then, we’ll need to identify which S3 bucket we’re using. Replace your_bucket_name with, of course, your bucket:
./asadmin create-jvm-options "-Ddataverse.files.s3-bucket-name=your_bucket_name"
Lastly, go ahead and restart your glassfish server. With Dataverse deployed and the site online, you should be able to upload datasets and data files and see the corresponding files in your S3 bucket. Within a bucket, the folder structure emulates that found in local file storage.
The name of your root dataverse is the brand of your installation of Dataverse and appears in various places such as notifications. Notifications and support links also contain the name of your support team, which will either be “[YourBrand] Support” or a name of your choosing when you configure a name for the :SystemEmail database setting described below.
Dataverse provides configurable options for easy-to-add (and maintain) custom branding for your Dataverse installation. Downloadable sample HTML and CSS files are provided below which you can edit as you see fit. It’s up to you to create a directory in which to store these files, such as /var/www/dataverse in the examples below.
You can add a custom welcome/homepage as well as other custom content, to further brand your installation and make it your own. Here are the custom branding and content options you can add:
Dataverse allows you to use a custom homepage or welcome page in place of the default root dataverse page. This allows for complete control over the look and feel of your installation’s homepage.
Download this sample: custom-homepage.html and place it at /var/www/dataverse/branding/custom-homepage.html.
Once you have the location of your custom homepage HTML file, run this curl command to add it to your settings:
curl -X PUT -d '/var/www/dataverse/branding/custom-homepage.html' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:HomePageCustomizationFile
Note that the custom-homepage.html file provided has a “Browse Data” button that assumes that your root dataverse still has an alias of “root”. While you were branding your root dataverse, you may have changed the alias to “harvard” or “librascholar” or whatever and you should adjust the custom-homepage.html file as needed.
For more background on what this curl command above is doing, see the “Database Settings” section below. If you decide you’d like to remove this setting, use the following curl command:
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:HomePageCustomizationFile
Download this sample: custom-header.html and place it at /var/www/dataverse/branding/custom-header.html.
Once you have the location of your custom header HTML file, run this curl command to add it to your settings:
curl -X PUT -d '/var/www/dataverse/branding/custom-header.html' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:HeaderCustomizationFile
You can style your custom homepage, footer and header content with a custom CSS file. With advanced CSS know-how, you can achieve custom branding and page layouts by utilizing position, padding or margin properties.
Download this sample: custom-stylesheet.css and place it at /var/www/dataverse/branding/custom-stylesheet.css.
Once you have the location of your custom CSS file, run this curl command to add it to your settings:
curl -X PUT -d '/var/www/dataverse/branding/custom-stylesheet.css' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:StyleCustomizationFile
This guide has attempted to take you from kicking the tires on Dataverse to finalizing your installation before letting real users in. In theory, all this work could be done on a single server but better would be to have separate staging and production environments so that you can deploy upgrades to staging before deploying to production. This “Going Live” section is about launching your production environment.
Before going live with your installation of Dataverse, you must take the steps above under “Securing Your Installation” and you should at least review the various configuration options listed below. An attempt has been made to put the more commonly-configured options earlier in the list.
Out of the box, Dataverse attempts to block search engines from crawling your installation of Dataverse so that test datasets do not appear in search results until you’re ready.
For a public production Dataverse installation, it is probably desired that search agents be able to index published pages (aka - pages that are visible to an unauthenticated user). Polite crawlers usually respect the Robots Exclusion Standard; we have provided an example of a production robots.txt here).
You have a couple of options for putting an updated robots.txt file into production. If you are fronting Glassfish with Apache as recommended above, you can place robots.txt in the root of the directory specified in your VirtualHost and to your Apache config a ProxyPassMatch line like the one below to prevent Glassfish from serving the version of robots.txt that embedded in the Dataverse war file:
# don't let Glassfish serve its version of robots.txt
ProxyPassMatch ^/robots.txt$ !
For more of an explanation of ProxyPassMatch see the Shibboleth section.
If you are not fronting Glassfish with Apache you’ll need to prevent Glassfish from serving the robots.txt file embedded in the war file by overwriting robots.txt after the war file has been deployed. The downside of this technique is that you will have to remember to overwrite robots.txt in the “exploded” war file each time you deploy the war file, which probably means each time you upgrade to a new version of Dataverse. Furthermore, since the version of Dataverse is always incrementing and the version can be part of the file path, you will need to be conscious of where on disk you need to replace the file. For example, for Dataverse 4.6.1 the path to robots.txt may be /usr/local/glassfish4/glassfish/domains/domain1/applications/dataverse-4.6.1/robots.txt with the version number 4.6.1 as part of the path.
Congratulations! You’ve gone live! It’s time to announce your new data respository to the world! You are also welcome to contact support@dataverse.org to have the Dataverse team add your installation to the map at http://dataverse.org . Thank you for installing Dataverse!
Now that you’re live you’ll want to review the Admin Guide for more information about the ongoing administration of a Dataverse installation.
JVM stands Java Virtual Machine and as a Java application, Glassfish can read JVM options when it is started. A number of JVM options are configured by the installer below is a complete list of the Dataverse-specific JVM options. You can inspect the configured options by running:
asadmin list-jvm-options | egrep 'dataverse|doi'
When changing values these values with asadmin, you’ll need to delete the old value before adding a new one, like this:
asadmin delete-jvm-options "-Ddataverse.fqdn=old.example.com"
asadmin create-jvm-options "-Ddataverse.fqdn=dataverse.example.com"
It’s also possible to change these values by stopping Glassfish, editing glassfish4/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml, and restarting Glassfish.
If the Dataverse server has multiple DNS names, this option specifies the one to be used as the “official” host name. For example, you may want to have dataverse.foobar.edu, and not the less appealling server-123.socsci.foobar.edu to appear exclusively in all the registered global identifiers, Data Deposit API records, etc.
The password reset feature requires dataverse.fqdn to be configured.
This is how you configure the path to which files uploaded by users are stored.
Users have 60 minutes to change their passwords by default. You can adjust this value here.
Configuration for TwoRavens.
Configuration for TwoRavens.
Configuration for TwoRavens.
Configuration for TwoRavens.
Configuration for TwoRavens.
Dropbox integration is optional. Enter your key here.
For overriding the default path to the convert binary from ImageMagick (/usr/bin/convert).
For limiting the size (in bytes) of thumbnail images generated from files.
For limiting the size (in bytes) of thumbnail images generated from files.
As of this writing, “https://ezid.cdlib.org” (EZID) and “https://mds.datacite.org” (DataCite) are the main valid values.
While the above two options are recommended because they have been tested by the Dataverse team, it is also possible to use a DataCite Client API as a proxy to DataCite. In this case, requests made to the Client API are captured and passed on to DataCite for processing. The application will interact with the DataCite Client API exactly as if it were interacting directly with the DataCite API, with the only difference being the change to the base endpoint URL.
For example, the Australian Data Archive (ADA) successfully uses the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) API (a proxy for DataCite) to mint their DOIs through Dataverse using a doi.baseurlstring value of “https://researchdata.ands.org.au/api/doi/datacite” as documented at https://documentation.ands.org.au/display/DOC/ANDS+DataCite+Client+API . As ADA did for ANDS DOI minting, any DOI provider (and their corresponding DOI configuration parameters) other than DataCite and EZID must be tested with Dataverse to establish whether or not it will function properly.
Out of the box, Dataverse is configured to use base URL string from EZID. You can delete it like this:
asadmin delete-jvm-options '-Ddoi.baseurlstring=https\://ezid.cdlib.org'
Then, to switch to DataCite, you can issue the following command:
asadmin create-jvm-options '-Ddoi.baseurlstring=https\://mds.datacite.org'
See also these related database settings below:
Used in conjuction with doi.baseurlstring.
Out of the box, Dataverse is configured with a test username from EZID. You can delete it with the following command:
asadmin delete-jvm-options '-Ddoi.username=apitest'
Once you have a username from your provider, you can enter it like this:
asadmin create-jvm-options '-Ddoi.username=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE'
Out of the box, Dataverse is configured with a test password from EZID. You can delete it with the following command:
Used in conjuction with doi.baseurlstring.
asadmin delete-jvm-options '-Ddoi.password=apitest'
Once you have a password from your provider, you can enter it like this:
asadmin create-jvm-options '-Ddoi.password=YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE'
If you’re using handles, this JVM setting configures access credentials so your dataverse can talk to your Handle.Net server. This is the private key generated during Handle.Net server installation. Typically the full path is set to handle/svr_1/admpriv.bin. Please refer to Handle.Net’s documentation for more info.
This JVM setting is also part of handles configuration. The Handle.Net installer lets you choose whether to encrypt the admcredfile private key or not. If you do encrypt it, this is the pass phrase that it’s encrypted with.
These settings are stored in the setting database table but can be read and modified via the “admin” endpoint of the Native API for easy scripting.
The most commonly used configuration options are listed first.
The pattern you will observe in curl examples below is that an HTTP PUT is used to add or modify a setting. If you perform an HTTP GET (the default when using curl), the output will contain the value of the setting, if it has been set. You can also do a GET of all settings with curl http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings which you may want to pretty-print by piping the output through a tool such as jq by appending | jq .. If you want to remove a setting, use an HTTP DELETE such as curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GuidesBaseUrl .
Out of the box, all API endpoints are completely open, as mentioned in the section on security above. It is highly recommended that you choose one of the policies below and also configure :BlockedApiEndpoints.
curl -X PUT -d localhost-only http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:BlockedApiPolicy
A comma separated list of API endpoints to be blocked. For a production installation, “admin” should be blocked (and perhaps “builtin-users” as well), as mentioned in the section on security above:
curl -X PUT -d "admin,builtin-users" http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:BlockedApiEndpoints
See the API Guide for a list of API endpoints.
Used in conjunction with the :BlockedApiPolicy being set to unblock-key. When calling blocked APIs, add a query parameter of unblock-key=theKeyYouChose to use the key.
curl -X PUT -d s3kretKey http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:BlockedApiKey
The key required to create users via API as documented at Native API. Unlike other database settings, this one doesn’t start with a colon.
curl -X PUT -d builtInS3kretKey http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/BuiltinUsers.KEY
In Dataverse 4.7 and lower, the Search API required an API token, but as of Dataverse 4.7.1 this is no longer the case. If you prefer the old behavior of requiring API tokens to use the Search API, set :SearchApiRequiresToken to true.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:SearchApiRequiresToken
This is the email address that “system” emails are sent from such as password reset links. Your Dataverse installation will not send mail without this setting in place.
curl -X PUT -d 'LibraScholar SWAT Team <support@librascholar.edu>' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:SystemEmail
Note that only the email address is required, which you can supply without the < and > signs, but if you include the text, it’s the way to customize the name of your support team, which appears in the “from” address in emails as well as in help text in the UI.
Please note that if you’re having any trouble sending email, you can refer to “Troubleshooting” under Installation.
As of this writing “EZID” and “DataCite” are the only valid options. DoiProvider is only needed if you are using DOI.
curl -X PUT -d EZID http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DoiProvider
This setting relates to the :Protocol, :Authority, :DoiSeparator, and :IdentifierGenerationStyle database settings below as well as the following JVM options:
As of this writing “doi” and “hdl” are the only valid option for the protocol for a persistent ID.
curl -X PUT -d doi http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:Protocol
Use the authority assigned to you by your DoiProvider or HandleProvider.
curl -X PUT -d 10.xxxx http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:Authority
It is recommended that you keep this as a slash (“/”).
curl -X PUT -d "/" http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DoiSeparator
Note: The name DoiSeparator is a misnomer. This setting is used by some handles-specific code too. It must be set to ‘/’ when using handles.
By default, Dataverse generates a random 6 character string to use as the identifier for a Dataset. Set this to “sequentialNumber” to use sequential numeric values instead. (the assumed default setting is “randomString”). In addition to this setting, a database sequence must be created in the database. We provide the script below (downloadable here). You may need to make some changes to suit your system setup, see the comments for more information:
-- A script for creating a numeric identifier sequence, and an external
-- stored procedure, for accessing the sequence from inside the application,
-- in a non-hacky, JPA way.
-- NOTE:
-- 1. The database user name "dvnapp" is hard-coded here - it may
-- need to be changed to match your database user name;
-- 2. In the code below, the sequence starts with 1, but it can be adjusted by
-- changing the MINVALUE as needed.
CREATE SEQUENCE datasetidentifier_seq
INCREMENT 1
MINVALUE 1
MAXVALUE 9223372036854775807
START 1
CACHE 1;
ALTER TABLE datasetidentifier_seq OWNER TO "dvnapp";
-- And now create a PostgresQL FUNCTION, for JPA to
-- access as a NamedStoredProcedure:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION generateIdentifierAsSequentialNumber(
OUT identifier int)
RETURNS int AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
select nextval('datasetidentifier_seq') into identifier;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;
Note that the SQL above is Postgres-specific. If necessary, it can be reimplemented in any other SQL flavor - the standard JPA code in the application simply expects the database to have a saved function (“stored procedure”) named generateIdentifierAsSequentialNumber with the single return argument identifier.
For systems using Postgresql 8.4 or older, the procedural language plpgsql should be enabled first. We have provided an example here.
Upload an HTML file containing the Terms of Use to be displayed at sign up. Supported HTML tags are listed under the Dataset + File Management section of the User Guide.
curl -X PUT -d@/tmp/apptou.html http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ApplicationTermsOfUse
Unfortunately, in most cases, the text file will probably be too big to upload (>1024 characters) due to a bug. A workaround has been posted to https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2669
Specify a URL where users can read your Privacy Policy, linked from the bottom of the page.
curl -X PUT -d http://best-practices.dataverse.org/harvard-policies/harvard-privacy-policy.html http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ApplicationPrivacyPolicyUrl
Specify a URL where users can read your API Terms of Use.
curl -X PUT -d http://best-practices.dataverse.org/harvard-policies/harvard-api-tou.html http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ApiTermsOfUse
Set :ExcludeEmailFromExport to prevent email addresses for dataset contacts from being exposed in XML or JSON representations of dataset metadata. For a list exported formats such as DDI, see the Metadata Export section of the Admin Guide.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ExcludeEmailFromExport
Set GuidesBaseUrl to override the default value “http://guides.dataverse.org”. If you are interested in writing your own version of the guides, you may find the Documentation section of the Developer Guide helpful.
curl -X PUT -d http://dataverse.example.edu http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GuidesBaseUrl
Set :GuidesVersion to override the version number in the URL of guides. For example, rather than http://guides.dataverse.org/en/4.6/user/account.html the version is overriden to http://guides.dataverse.org/en/1234-new-feature/user/account.html in the example below:
curl -X PUT -d 1234-new-feature http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GuidesVersion
Make the metrics component on the root dataverse a clickable link to a website where you present metrics on your Dataverse installation. This could perhaps be an installation of https://github.com/IQSS/miniverse or any site.
curl -X PUT -d http://metrics.dataverse.example.edu http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:MetricsUrl
For dynamically adding information to the top of every page. For example, “For testing only...” at the top of https://demo.dataverse.org is set with this:
curl -X PUT -d "For testing only..." http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:StatusMessageHeader
You can make the text clickable and include an additional message in a pop up by setting :StatusMessageText.
After you’ve set :StatusMessageHeader you can also make it clickable to have it include text if a popup with this:
curl -X PUT -d "This appears in a popup." http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:StatusMessageText
Set MaxFileUploadSizeInBytes to “2147483648”, for example, to limit the size of files uploaded to 2 GB. Notes: - For SWORD, this size is limited by the Java Integer.MAX_VALUE of 2,147,483,647. (see: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2169) - If the MaxFileUploadSizeInBytes is NOT set, uploads, including SWORD may be of unlimited size.
curl -X PUT -d 2147483648 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:MaxFileUploadSizeInBytes
For performance reasons, Dataverse will only create zip files on the fly up to 100 MB but the limit can be increased. Here’s an example of raising the limit to 1 GB:
curl -X PUT -d 1000000000 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ZipDownloadLimit
Threshold in bytes for limiting whether or not “ingest” it attempted for tabular files (which can be resource intensive). For example, with the below in place, files greater than 2 GB in size will not go through the ingest process:
curl -X PUT -d 2000000000 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:TabularIngestSizeLimit
(You can set this value to 0 to prevent files from being ingested at all.)
You can overide this global setting on a per-format basis for the following formats:
For example, if you want your installation of Dataverse to not attempt to ingest Rdata files larger that 1 MB, use this setting:
curl -X PUT -d 1000000 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:TabularIngestSizeLimit:Rdata
Limit the number of files in a zip that Dataverse will accept.
Set your Google Analytics Tracking ID thusly:
curl -X PUT -d 'trackingID' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GoogleAnalyticsCode
By default Dataverse will attempt to connect to Solr on port 8983 on localhost. Use this setting to change the hostname or port. You must restart Glassfish after making this change.
curl -X PUT -d localhost:8983 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:SolrHostColonPort
The relative path URL to which users will be sent after signup. The default setting is below.
curl -X PUT -d '/dataverseuser.xhtml?editMode=CREATE' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:SignUpUrl
The location of your TwoRavens installation. Activation of TwoRavens also requires the setting below, TwoRavensTabularView
Set TwoRavensTabularView to true to allow a user to view tabular files via the TwoRavens application. This boolean affects whether a user will see the “Explore” button.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:TwoRavensTabularView
Set GeoconnectCreateEditMaps to true to allow the user to create GeoConnect Maps. This boolean effects whether the user sees the map button on the dataset page and if the ingest will create a shape file.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GeoconnectCreateEditMaps
Set GeoconnectViewMaps to true to allow a user to view existing maps. This boolean effects whether a user will see the “Explore” button.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GeoconnectViewMaps
For Development only. Set GeoconnectDebug to true to allow a user to see SQL that can be used to insert mock map data into the database.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GeoconnectDebug
Set custom text a user will view when publishing a dataset. Note that this text is exposed via the “Info” endpoint of the Native API.
curl -X PUT -d "Deposit License Requirements" http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DatasetPublishPopupCustomText
Set whether a user will see the custom text when publishing all versions of a dataset
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DatasetPublishPopupCustomTextOnAllVersions
Set SearchHighlightFragmentSize to override the default value of 100 from https://wiki.apache.org/solr/HighlightingParameters#hl.fragsize . In practice, a value of “320” seemed to fix the issue at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2191
curl -X PUT -d 320 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:SearchHighlightFragmentSize
Allow for migration of non-conformant data (especially dates) from DVN 3.x to Dataverse 4.
The duration in minutes before “Confirm Email” URLs expire. The default is 1440 minutes (24 hours). See also the User Administration section of our Admin Guide.
If you have enabled Shibboleth and/or one or more OAuth providers, you may wish to make one of these authentication providers the default when users visit the Log In page. If unset, this will default to builtin but thes valid options (depending if you’ve done the setup described in the Shibboleth or OAuth Login: ORCID, GitHub, Google sections) are:
Here is an example of setting the default auth provider back to builtin:
curl -X PUT -d builtin http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DefaultAuthProvider
Set to false to disallow local accounts to be created. See also the sections on Shibboleth and OAuth Login: ORCID, GitHub, Google.
Site identifier created in your Piwik instance. Example:
curl -X PUT -d 42 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PiwikAnalyticsId
Host FQDN or URL of your Piwik instance before the /piwik.php. Examples:
curl -X PUT -d stats.domain.tld http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PiwikAnalyticsHost
or
curl -X PUT -d hostname.domain.tld/stats http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PiwikAnalyticsHost
Dataverse calculates checksums for uploaded files so that users can determine if their file was corrupted via upload or download. This is sometimes called “file fixity”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Fixity
The default checksum algorithm used is MD5 and should be sufficient for establishing file fixity. “SHA-1” is an experimental alternate value for this setting.
Password policy setting for builtin user accounts: a password’s minimum valid character length. The default is 6.
curl -X PUT -d 6 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVMinLength
Password policy setting for builtin user accounts: a password’s maximum valid character length.
curl -X PUT -d 0 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVMaxLength
By default, passwords can contain an unlimited number of digits in a row. However, if your password policy specifies otherwise (e.g. only four digits in a row are allowed), then you can issue the following curl command to set the number of consecutive digits allowed (this example uses 4):
curl -X PUT -d 4 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVNumberOfConsecutiveDigitsAllowed
Password policy setting for builtinuser accounts: dictates which types of characters can be required in a password. This setting goes hand-in-hand with :PVNumberOfCharacteristics. The default setting contains two rules:
The default setting above is equivalent to specifying “Alphabetical:1,Digit:1”.
By specifying “UpperCase:1,LowerCase:1,Digit:1,Special:1”, for example, you can put the following four rules in place instead:
If you have implemented 4 different character rules in this way, you can also optionally increase :PVNumberOfCharacteristics to as high as 4. However, please note that :PVNumberOfCharacteristics cannot be set to a number higher than the number of character rules or you will see the error, “Number of characteristics must be <= to the number of rules”.
Also note that the Alphabetical setting should not be used in tandem with the UpperCase or LowerCase settings. The Alphabetical setting encompasses both of those more specific settings, so using it with them will cause your password policy to be unnecessarily confusing, and potentially easier to bypass.
curl -X PUT -d 'UpperCase:1,LowerCase:1,Digit:1,Special:1' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVCharacterRules
curl -X PUT -d 3 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVNumberOfCharacteristics
Password policy setting for builtin user accounts: the number indicates how many of the character rules defined by :PVCharacterRules are required as part of a password. The default is 2. :PVNumberOfCharacteristics cannot be set to a number higher than the number of rules or you will see the error, “Number of characteristics must be <= to the number of rules”.
curl -X PUT -d 2 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVNumberOfCharacteristics
Password policy setting for builtin user accounts: set a comma separated list of dictionaries containing words that cannot be used in a user password. /usr/share/dict/words is suggested and shown modified below to not contain words 3 letters or less. You are free to choose a different dictionary. By default, no dictionary is checked.
DIR=THE_PATH_YOU_WANT_YOUR_DICTIONARY_TO_RESIDE sed '/^.\{,3\}$/d' /usr/share/dict/words > $DIR/pwdictionary curl -X PUT -d "$DIR/pwdictionary" http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVDictionaries
Password policy setting for builtin user accounts: passwords of equal or greater character length than the :PVGoodStrength setting are always valid, regardless of other password constraints.
curl -X PUT -d 20 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVGoodStrength
Recommended setting: 20.
Changes the default info message displayed when a user is required to change their password on login. The default is:
{0} Reset Password{1} – Our password requirements have changed. Please pick a strong password that matches the criteria below.
Where the {0} and {1} denote surrounding HTML bold tags. It’s recommended to put a single space before your custom message for better appearance (as in the default message above). Including the {0} and {1} to bolden part of your message is optional.
Customize the message using the following curl command’s syntax:
curl -X PUT -d '{0} Action Required:{1} Your current password does not meet all requirements. Please enter a new password meeting the criteria below.' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PVCustomPasswordResetAlertMessage
Set :ShibPassiveLoginEnabled to true to enable passive login for Shibboleth. When this feature is enabled, an additional Javascript file (isPassive.js) will be loaded for every page. It will generate a passive login request to your Shibboleth SP when an anonymous user navigates to the site. A cookie named “_check_is_passive_dv” will be created to keep track of whether or not a passive login request has already been made for the user.
This implementation follows the example on the Shibboleth wiki documentation page for the isPassive feature: https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/display/SHIB2/isPassive
It is recommended that you configure additional error handling for your Service Provider if you enable passive login. A good way of doing this is described in the Shibboleth wiki documentation:
You can set the value of “#THIS PAGE#” to the url of your Dataverse homepage, or any other page on your site that is accessible to anonymous users and will have the isPassive.js file loaded.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ShibPassiveLoginEnabled
Set the base URL for the “Compute” button for a dataset.
curl -X PUT -d 'https://giji.massopencloud.org/application/dataverse' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:ComputeBaseUrl
Set the name of the cloud environment you’ve integrated with your Dataverse installation.
curl -X PUT -d 'Massachusetts Open Cloud (MOC)' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:CloudEnvironmentName
Setting an installation to public will remove the ability to restrict data files or datasets. This functionality of Dataverse will be disabled from your installation.
This is useful for specific cases where an installation’s files are stored in public access. Because files stored this way do not obey Dataverse’s file restrictions, users would still be able to access the files even when they’re restricted. In these cases it’s best to use :PublicInstall to disable the feature altogether.
curl -X PUT -d true http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:PublicInstall
The URL for your Data Capture Module (DCM) installation. This component is experimental and can be downloaded from https://github.com/sbgrid/data-capture-module .
curl -X PUT -d 'https://dcm.example.edu' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DataCaptureModuleUrl
The URL for your Repository Storage Abstraction Layer (RSAL) installation. This component is experimental and can be downloaded from https://github.com/sbgrid/rsal .
curl -X PUT -d 'https://rsal.example.edu' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:RepositoryStorageAbstractionLayerUrl
This setting is experimental and to be used with the Data Capture Module (DCM). For now, if you set the upload methods to dcm/rsync+ssh it will allow your users to download rsync scripts from the DCM.
curl -X PUT -d 'dcm/rsync+ssh' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:UploadMethods
This setting is experimental and related to Repository Storage Abstraction Layer (RSAL).
curl -X PUT -d 'rsal/rsync' http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DownloadMethods
Limit on how many guestbook entries to display on the guestbook-responses page. By default, only the 5000 most recent entries will be shown. Use the standard settings API in order to change the limit. For example, to set it to 10,000, make the following API call:
curl -X PUT -d 10000 http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:GuestbookResponsesPageDisplayLimit
You can replace the default dataset metadata fields that are displayed above files table on the dataset page with a custom list separated by commas using the curl command below.
curl http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:CustomDatasetSummaryFields -X PUT -d 'producer,subtitle,alternativeTitle'
You have to put the datasetFieldType name attribute in the :CustomDatasetSummaryFields setting for this to work.