Install and configure IPLM Server

Overview

Follow the instructions below to install IPLM Server for the latest IPLM Server release.

Considerations

• If IPLM Server is being installed on a different machine to Neo4j, then remember to repeat the preliminary steps to setup the package repository and install Java.

Installation environment variables

The following variables exist in a file that is created after the initial installation at /etc/mdx/envvars. To make these changes take effect before installation, you can specify them in advance before installing IPLM Server.

For example, set a variable before running apt/yum install:

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IPLM_SERVICE_USER="svc-mdx" yum install iplm-server

Step 1: Install IPLM Server

If you are installing Neo4j on a different host, or you want control over the installation of Neo4j, then you should ensure that Neo4j is not automatically installed on this machine by the iplm-server package. This can be done using the MDX_PISERVER_NEO4J_INSTALL environment variable. Run the following command:

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IPLM_SERVER_INSTALL_NEO4J=0 yum install -y iplm-server

Step 2: Configure IPLM Server

After IPLM Server has been installed, you will need to configure it with the correct connection details for Neo4J. If Neo4j is running on the same machine, then it can continue to talk to localhost, otherwise it will need to be updated to connect to the remote database server.

Update the details in the following section of /etc/mdx/piserver.yml:

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neo4jDriver:
    # URI of the Neo4j server.
    uri: "bolt://localhost:7687"
    # Neo4j credentials
    # Note that both username and password can be read from an external file.
    # The external file can have more restricted access. But it needs to be
    # readable by piserver, which by default is owned by mdxadmin.
    username: neo4j
    # If the password is not defined, then a default password will be used.
    password: mysecurepassword

Step 3: Start and enable IPLM Server

To start IPLM Server, use:

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sudo systemctl start piserver

To enable IPLM Server to automatically start on boot, run:

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sudo systemctl enable piserver

Step 4: Test IPLM Server

In order to verify that IPLM Server is running, you can run the following command:

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curl http://localhost:8080/public/v1/system/info

This is assuming that IPLM Server is running on localhost on port 8080. This should return JSON data that lists the version of IPLM Server, and also the version of Neo4j that it is connected to.

When IPLM Server is installed in this way, then neo4j-local=yes option will be set in the /etc/mdx/piserver.conf file. To prevent neo4j from being automatically started, then comment out this option or set it to no.

In this situation, Neo4j is installed into /usr/share/mdx/neo4j/current. Tools such as the neo4j executable to start and stop the database, neo4j-admin for administration tasks and cypher-shell for running cypher commands are all in the bin directory under this location.

The database content files themselves are located in /var/lib/mdx-neo4j.

Step 5: Install Global Search Analyzer (Optional)

An optional global search analyzer is provided that changes the way that Neo4j searches for content. This is included in the installation of the iplm-server package (or the server .run installation file), and can be found in the products /piserver/plugins directory.

If Neo4j is installed as part of the IPLM Server installation, then a symbolic link will be automatically created in the neo4j plugins directory to the file in the piserver install. If you are installing Neo4j yourself, then any jar files in /piserver/plugins should be copied manually into the plugins directory for each Neo4j node.

Currently, the available options are:

• iplm-analyzer.jar - Provide a new search analyzer that treats hyphen (“-”) characters as a normal alphabetic character. The standard analyzer treats it as white space so words with hyphens in will be treated as multiple words.

Once the jar file has been placed in the Neo4j plugins directory, it should be picked up the next time that Neo4j is started. If you have access to the database, then the following Cypher command can be used to list all current analyzers:

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call db.index.fulltext.listAvailableAnalyzers()

The iplm-analyzer should be listed as “iplm”.

Once installed, the analyzer can be enabled using the pi-admin settings command. See the documentation for pi-admin for details.

Updating an analyzer

If an Analyzer is in use, the database should be shutdown before updating. It is also possible to get errors when listing the analyzer if the jar file has been changed since the database was started

Next steps

Once you have completed the IPLM Server installation, follow the instructions to install IPLM CLI.