Installation guide

The Mentat project is still work in progress. Although it is operated in production environment, there is still long way to go and quite a few rough edges. Also be aware, that we are currently rewriting and redesigning the whole system and migrating from Perl to Python. So currently you have to install and make yourself familiar with both environments with many corresponding tools and libraries. This is only temporary and it should get much better over time. Update often, we try to introduce new features as fast as we can.

This document aims to provide full description of installation process of Mentat system. We currently provide only deb packages for all Debian-based systems.

Prerequisites

The deb packages are available through our own Debian package repository. This repository is however accessible only through HTTPS protocol, so it is necessary to have apropriate APT driver installed on target system. If you encounter following error:

E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found.

It is necessary to install additional package:

aptitude install apt-transport-https

All required package files will be installed according to the Debian policy to following locations:

Location	What?
/etc/mentat	Configuration files and cron scripts
/usr/local/bin	Executables
/usr/share/doc/mentat	Examples and documentation
/usr/local/lib/site_perl	Perl libraries
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/	Python libraries
/usr/share/man	Manuálové stránky
/var/mentat	Work directory for everything else (pid files queues, generated data files, web interface, …)

Mentat system uses MongoDB as persistent data storage. Please refer to MongoDB documentation and install at least 3.x version of your choice with WiredTiger support.

Perl-based part of the system requires manual installation of following modules, that are either not available as native Debian packages, or are present in outdated version:

cpan -i Net::Address::IP::Local
cpan -i Bytes::Random::Secure
cpan -i Data::Random
cpan -i MongoDB
cpan -i MongoDB::BSON::Binary
cpan -i Net::Whois::IP
cpan -i Catalyst::Authentication::Store::FromSub::Hash
cpan -i Catalyst::Plugin::Email

Python-based part of the project requires manual installation of following modules:

pip3 install pydgets
pip3 install pyzenkit
pip3 install https://homeproj.cesnet.cz/tar/mentat/idea-0.1.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Mentat system installation

First of all add our custom repositories:

# Add GPG key and repository for Perl-based legacy part of Mentat system
wget -O - https://homeproj.cesnet.cz/apt/mentat/APT-GPG-KEY-mentat | apt-key add -
wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mentat.list https://homeproj.cesnet.cz/apt/mentat/mentat.list
 
# Add GPG key and repository for Python-based next generation part of Mentat system
wget -O - https://homeproj.cesnet.cz/apt/certs/APT-GPG-KEY-certs | apt-key add -
wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cesnet-certs.list https://homeproj.cesnet.cz/apt/certs/certs.list
 
apt-get update

Finally install all required packages:

aptitude install libcesnet-toolkit-perl mentat-ng mentat-common mentat-server mentat-hawat mentat-dev

And that`s it. Congratulations, you have successfully installed the Mentat system.