How to build OpenCog with all dependencies

Building OpenCog is a moving target. As of 8th of May 2018, these instructions work on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Setup Vagrant (VirtualBox) with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

1. Install VirtualBox and Vagrant(the method depends on your OS; In Mac OS High Sierra I use Homebrew by calling brew install vagrant)
2. Init with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS: vagrant init bento/ubuntu-18.04
3. vagrant up
4. vagrant ssh

Add swap to Vagrant (8GB in this example; adjust to your liking)

1. cd /
2. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1M count=8000
3. sudo chmod 600 swapfile
4. sudo mkswap swapfile
5. sudo swapon swapfile
6. sudo vim etc/fstab

Add the following line to fstab:

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

7. check that the swapfile was actually added: swapon --show

You may also want to add more storage to your Virtual Machine (depends on your VirtualBox environment):

1. vagrant halt
2. Go to the directory where you have your Virtual Box VMs (e.g. in Mac cd ~/VirtualBox VMs/some_id)
3. VBoxManage clonehd ubuntu_something.vmdk ubuntu_something.vdi --format VDI
4. VBoxManage ubuntu_something.vdi --resize 51200 (50 GB)
5. Go to VirtualBox, unmount and delete the old .vmdk and mount the newly created .vdi.

Install dependencies (Contains extras for making chat related stuff work)

1. sudo apt-get install gcc g++ make cmake libboost-all-dev cython python-nose python3-nose python-pytest python3-pytest postgresql postgresql-contrib postgresql-client guile-2.2-dev libtbb-dev libgearman-dev libpq-dev python-pip libblas-dev liblapack-dev uuid-dev doxygen libiberty-dev binutils-dev valgrind postgresql postgresql-client postgresql-contrib libpq-dev liblogging-stdlog0 liblogger-syslog-perl libzmq3-dev libprotobuf-dev libgtk-3-dev default-jdk python-cffi libffi-dev irssi irssi-scripts ca-certificates libcrypt-blowfish-perl libcrypt-dh-perl libcrypt-openssl-bignum-perl libmath-bigint-gmp-perl rlwrap

2. Read what apt-get says, if it tells to update then run sudo apt-get update and re-run step 1.

3. sudo pip install -U setuptools

4. sudo easy_install cython nose

5. sudo ln -s /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED /var/lib/locales/supported.d/all

6. sudo locale-gen

7. Get Octool by following the guide here: https://github.com/opencog/ocpkg

8. ./octool -rdospicamgvbe -l default -l java

Update PYTHONPATH

1. Check where your link-grammar exists (most likely in /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/link-grammar)
2. Add the following to your ~/.bash_profile

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/local/share/moses/python/:/usr//local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/:/usr/local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/:/usr//local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/:/usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/link-grammar/

2. source ~/.bash_profile

NOTE: You need to check where atomspace actually is. You can do it by running find /usr |grep opencog |grep python

Initialize PostgreSQL database

Add DB tweaks

I use the following config at the end of /etc/postgresql/10/main/postgresql.conf:

shared_buffers = 256MB
work_mem = 32MB
effective_cache_size = 512MB
fsync = off
synchronous_commit = off
ssl = off
autovacuum = on
track_counts = on

# If you have an SSD drive add the following:
seq_page_cost = 0.1
random_page_cost = 0.15
effective_io_concurrency = 5

Initialize the first users (note: replace vagrant with your username if you are not using Vagrant).

1. sudo -u postgres psql template1
2. ALTER USER postgres with encrypted password 'password';
3. CREATE ROLE vagrant WITH SUPERUSER;
4. ALTER ROLE vagrant WITH LOGIN;
5. \q

Edit confs

1. sudo vim /etc/postgresql/10/main/postgresql.conf

Enable listening to all addresses

listen_address = '*'

sysctl.conf

1. sudo vim /etc/sysctl.conf
2. Add the following:

kernel.shmmax = 6440100100

User permissions

1. sudo vim /etc/postgresql/10/main/pg_hba.conf

Main user

replace peer with md5: local      all     postgres     md5

Other users

local all all md5 host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5

Continue initialization

1. sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
2. createuser -U postgres -d -e -E -l -P -r -s opencog_tester (set password cheese)
3. createuser -U postgres -d -e -E -l -P -r -s opencog_user (set password cheese)

Create databases

1. sudo -u postgres createdb mycogdata
2. sudo -u postgres createdb opencog_test

Login to PostgreSQL (psql -U postgres) and give permissions

1. GRANT ALL privileges ON DATABASE mycogdata to opencog_user;
2. GRANT ALL privileges ON DATABASE opencog_test to opencog_tester;

Add tables to databases

1. git clone https://github.com/opencog/atomspace.git
2. cd atomspace
3. cat opencog/persist/sql/multi-driver/atom.sql | psql mycogdata -U opencog_user -W -h localhost
4. cat opencog/persist/sql/multi-driver/atom.sql | psql opencog_test -U opencog_tester -W -h localhost

Test that DB works

1. psql mycogdata -U opencog_user
2. INSERT INTO TypeCodes (type, typename) VALUES (97, 'SemanticRelationNode');
3. \q
4. psql opencog_test -U opencog_tester
5. INSERT INTO TypeCodes (type, typename) VALUES (97, 'SemanticRelationNode');

Both should display:

INSERT 0 1

NOTE: Also check that all tables in both databases are owned by their intended users by using \l

Build and install OpenCog

1. cd opencog
2. mkdir build
3. cd build
4. cmake ..
5. make
6. make test

Some tests will fail:

7. sudo make install

Install RelEx

1. git clone https://github.com/opencog/relex
2. cd relex
3. install-scripts/install-ubuntu-dependencies.sh

Update Guile paths

1. Add the following to ~/.guile

(add-to-load-path "/usr/local/share/opencog/scm")
(add-to-load-path ".")
(use-modules (ice-9 readline))
(activate-readline)
(use-modules (opencog))

How to run e.g. chatbot

1. Open another terminal window and log in: vagrant ssh
2. cd relex
3. bash opencog_server.sh
4. Go back to your original window and go to opencog build directory: cd ~/opencog/build
5. guile -l ../opencog/nlp/chatbot/run-chatbot.scm
6. You can post a question using guile, e.g.: (process-query "luser" "Are you a bot?")
7. For more examples see: https://github.com/opencog/opencog/tree/master/opencog/nlp/chatbot