Using Ubuntu as an Electronic Document Management System

February 25, 2008 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp
Posted in How to..., Installation, Linux Projects - Hands On

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Over the weekend a client phoned me as she was interested in the Knowledge Tree Document Management System. She runs a small business that provides document creation services for clients in the US and Canada, and needed an effective solution to manage her (electronic) documents. She also emailed this URL: http://www.knowledgetree.com/

About a year ago she switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu and her business has since grown, hence the phone call about this. To get to the point, she needed a new PC configured as a "Knowledge Tree Document Server", but wanted this also on an Ubuntu platform. This was completed in a couple of hours or so, it's not hard, but I thought some of you readers might find this an interesting solution for you. So... Here's how it was done (below).

We will need a few components:

Base server install that will host everything.

SSH server which allows for remote management.
Apache so that Knowledge Tree has a working web server (it's in the Knowledge Tree installer package).
MySQL so that Knowledge Tree has a database (it's in the Knowledge Tree installer package too).
Sendmail server so that Knowledge Tree email will work (not included in the package).

The Knowledge Tree installer package. (As of this weekend, the latest STABLE version is: 3.4.6).

The web download for KnowledgeTree Community Edition is here: http://www.knowledgetree.com/node/38
Information about the releases are here: http://www.knowledgetree.com/products/whats-new

If downloading via web, when you get the email (after registering) and click the link, the download package you want is "KnowledgeTree 3.4.6 Open Source Stack Installer" for "Linux".

First install Ubuntu Server (I had used the 7.10 image file previously, so that's the CD version I used to do this). There are tons of guides about installing Ubuntu server. To keep this post simpler (and shorter), please use Google to find an Ubuntu server install guide that suits your needs.

After the install, I edited the sources.list file and removed the entry for the CD installation packages. Why? The online repositories are more current than my older CD. (There's another article about an enriched sources.list here: http://ubuntulinuxhelp.com/the-best-ubuntu-linux-repository-list/)

Side note: Just "sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list" and place a "#" (comment) in front of the part that starts with "deb cdrom...". After this update still in a terminal via: sudo apt-get update. Also, when editing, you don't have to use nano, vi or gedit in particular. Most often any one will do the job. I only use gedit if there's a GUI available.

After installing the server, make sure you update all files to the most recent versions. You can do this in a terminal via:

sudo apt-get upgrade

Side note: If you don't want to keep typing "sudo" each time, you can enter the command "sudo su" and then enter all commands in the same terminal window (where you sudo'ed su. <Smiling>

Pretty much everything can be installed and configured remotely after the base server install. To do that we would use SSH. But... we need to install one last thing before going remote. Obviously that's the SSH server. Again, it's easy to do:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Once SSH is installed we've past a milestone and the remainder of the install is fairly straight forward. After loading the server up on the rack (or in her case away on a shelf), reboot and complete the rest of the installation from a more relaxed environment. (Remember, this is a server, it does not need peripheral devices, like a monitor, attached to it, so it should have a small footprint).

Before we download and installing the Knowledge Tree package, make sure to install the mail server first (I use sendmail, only because I find it easier to do and it's well supported in Canada). So, log into the server via its IP address and:

sudo apt-get install sendmail

When asked simply say "yes" to install all the dependencies (I didn't write them down but here were about eight or so of them. Just make sure they all get installed).

Create a directory where all your source files can be stored and managed:

cd / mkdir sources cd sources mkdir knowledge_tree_3.4.6 cd knowledge_tree_3.4.6

Now we need to get the file (as we "cd'ed" into the knowledge_tree_3.4.6 directory in that last step above):

sudo wget http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/kt-dms/ktdms-oss-3.4.6-linux-installer.bin

and as the note on their web site says:

" $ chmod +x ktdms-3.5-oss-linux-installer.bin
$ ./ktdms-3.5-oss-linux-installer.bin"

Edit and use the commands like below:

sudo chmod +x ktdms-3.4.6-oss-linux-installer.bin sudo ./ktdms-3.4.6-oss-linux-installer.bin

The first command give the installer execute permissions and the second one actually starts the installer running. As the install script runs, you will receive several questions. The answers are pretty straight forward. If you're unsure about something, then select the defaults.

The next step after the installation script has finished and the package is installed is to enable sendmail to work with Knowledge Tree. You can easily configure this via:

sudo vi /opt/ktdms/config.ini

Find this:

emailServer = none

and change it to look like this:

emailServer = /usr/sbin/sendmail

At this stage your done. The rest of the work is using the package yourself. To do so use a web browser and enter the IP address in the address bar, in this manner, for example:

172.18.2.5:8080

Then log in using the admin/admin combination.

This was an interesting, but not too difficult project. (And did not take very long to complete).
Hopefully this will help some of you!

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