Installing WattDepot Server Locally
WattDepot: A system for collecting and storing data from
electricity meters for smart grid research and experimentation.
This document explains how to install the WattDepot server on a local computer server.
To run the WattDepot server, you just need a computer running Java 1.6 or later. If you do not
already have Java installed, you can download it. Java is not included on
Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), so you will be prompted to download it after trying to run a Java program for
the first time. You can initiate this by typing java -version in a Terminal window.
You can run the WattDepot server from your own account, but you may want to create a separate
wattdepot account and run it from that, to keep things separate.
Download the latest release of WattDepot from the downloads page. You can read the VersionHistory for each release if you wish. Unzip the archive you downloaded.
WattDepot stores all its files in a server home directory. By default, this will be a .wattdepot
directory in your home directory. If you want to create the .wattdepot directory elsewhere, set
the wattdepot.user.home Java property to the desired parent directory. The name .wattdepot
directory name itself is not configurable.
Within the server home directory are subdirectories that store all the data for a particular server
instance. The default subdirectory is server, but this can be changed on the command line with
the -d argument. This allows multiple WattDepot server instances to run in parallel, each writing
to a different subdirectory. Create this directory:
mkdir ~/.wattdepot
mkdir ~/.wattdepot/server
The server reads properties on launch from a file named wattdepot-server.properties in the server
subdirectory. A default properties file can be found in the wattdepot files you downloaded as
src/main/resources/etc/wattdepot-server.properties.default. Copy that file to your new server
subdirectory (~/.wattdepot/server if you are using the defaults), and rename it to
wattdepot-server.properties.
After the file is copied into place, open it in your favorite text editor and change or uncomment any lines you want. At a minimum, you will want to change the default administrator username and password.
WattDepot currently supports multiple Storage Implementations. You can choose which storage backend you wish to use in the server properties file. If you don't make a selection, it will default to Derby.
Change to the top level of the wattdepot distribution you downloaded. Run the server:
java -cp wattdepot-<version>-jar-with-dependencies.jar org.wattdepot.server.Server
You should see output something like this:
Loading Server properties from: /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/wattdepot-server.properties
logDirString: /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/logs/
2012/03/29 15:51:36 Starting WattDepot server.
2012/03/29 15:51:36 Host: http://localhost:8182/wattdepot/
2012/03/29 15:51:36 Server Properties:
wattdepot-server.admin.email = [email protected]
wattdepot-server.admin.password = SERIOUSLY-CHANGE-ME
wattdepot-server.context.root = wattdepot
wattdepot-server.db.dir = /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/db
wattdepot-server.db.impl = org.wattdepot.server.db.derby.DerbyStorageImplementation
wattdepot-server.db.snapshot = /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/db-snapshot
wattdepot-server.gviz.context.root = gviz
wattdepot-server.gviz.port = 8184
wattdepot-server.homedir = /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server
wattdepot-server.hostname = localhost
wattdepot-server.logging.level = INFO
wattdepot-server.port = 8182
wattdepot-server.restlet.logging = false
wattdepot-server.smtp.host = mail.hawaii.edu
wattdepot-server.test.admin.email = [email protected]
wattdepot-server.test.admin.password = [email protected]
wattdepot-server.test.db.dir = /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/testdb
wattdepot-server.test.db.snapshot = /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/testdb-snapshot
wattdepot-server.test.domain = example.com
wattdepot-server.test.gviz.port = 8185
wattdepot-server.test.hostname = localhost
wattdepot-server.test.install = false
wattdepot-server.test.port = 8183
2012/03/29 15:51:38 Derby: uninitialized.
2012/03/29 15:51:38 Derby: creating DB in: /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/db
2012/03/29 15:51:38 Default resource directory /Users/foo/.wattdepot/server/default-resources not found, no default resources loaded.
2012-03-29 15:51:38.606::INFO: Logging to STDERR via org.mortbay.log.StdErrLog
2012/03/29 15:51:38 Google visualization URL: http://localhost:8184/gviz/
2012/03/29 15:51:38 Maximum Java heap size (MB): 129.957888
2012-03-29 15:51:38.739::INFO: jetty-1.6.130
2012-03-29 15:51:38.766::INFO: Started [email protected]:8184
2012/03/29 15:51:38 WattDepot server (Version <version>) now running.
You have successfully started the server! You can stop the server by typing Control-C
Now you will probably want to create some user accounts and Sources to store data in. See Creating Resources for information on how to do that.
Once you are done configuring the server, you will probably want to make sure it runs every time
your server boots. Provided with the distribution are example property files for
launchd, the native utility for running daemons on Mac OS X.
They can be found in the distribution directory under src/main/resources/etc/startup-scripts.
Users of other operating systems will need to write their own startup scripts, but can base them on
the launchd property files. If you write a startup script for another operating system, please let
us know so we can incorporate it!