In this tutorial, we will learn how to install CollectiveAccess - Providence which is a popular open-source collections management tool used in museums, archives, and libraries. We will be installing it on the Debian latest operating system.
Before we can begin the installation of CollectiveAccess - Providence, we need to ensure that all the necessary software is installed on the system. In this tutorial, we will be using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) to run our server.
You’ll need:
Before we install CollectiveAccess - Providence, we must install some required software packages for the system to work correctly.
First, we need to update the Debian package list and then install the packages needed:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apache2 php7.4 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php7.4-mysql php7.4-mbstring php7.4-curl php7.4-gd php7.4-intl php7.4-xml php7.4-zip mariadb-server mariadb-client git
In the next step, we will configure the database for our CollectiveAccess - Providence installation.
To do this, start by logging in to the MariaDB server using the following command:
sudo mysql -u root -p
You will be prompted to enter the MariaDB root user password. After entering the password, you should see the MariaDB console.
Next, create the database and user for CollectiveAccess - Providence:
CREATE DATABASE providence;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON providence.* TO 'providenceuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
You can replace providence with any name of your choice, and likewise, providenceuser and password can be the username and password of your choice.
Next, we will download and install CollectiveAccess - Providence. We will use git to download the latest version of Providence:
sudo git clone https://github.com/collectiveaccess/providence.git /var/www/html/providence
After completing the installation, change the ownership of the directory to www-data:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/providence
In this step, we will configure Apache to serve CollectiveAccess - Providence on the web.
Start by creating an Apache virtual host configuration file for CollectiveAccess - Providence:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/providence.conf
Add the following lines to the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/providence/html/
ServerName providence.example.com
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/providence.example.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/providence.example.com-access_log common
<Directory /var/www/html/providence/html/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Note that you’ll need to replace providence.example.com with your actual domain name, or IP address.
Then, enable the virtual host and restart Apache:
sudo a2ensite providence.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Now we are ready to set up CollectiveAccess - Providence. To do this, navigate to the following address using your browser:
http://providence.example.com
Replace providence.example.com with your domain name or IP address.
You should see the Providence installation page. Follow the installation wizard and fill in the necessary details.
Select MariaDB as the database, and provide your database credentials that we created earlier in step 3.
When the installation is complete, log in to the administration panel by clicking on the login button and entering your credentials.
Congratulations, you have now successfully installed CollectiveAccess - Providence on Debian Latest!
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