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PREREQ.md

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Prerequisites

Since OpenMed is a WebRTC server and generates email, to run it in production you need:

  • a server on internet with a public IP (a virtul machine is fine)
  • a DNS name that points to it
  • a SSL certificates for this DNS name
  • a password or an app password for a Gmail account

You can run locally for development but conferencing will not work.

Essential prerequisites for development:

  • node v14
  • mongodb

Essential prerequisites for production:

  • node v14
  • mongodb
  • a public server with a DNS name
  • an SSL certificate for that domain name
  • a gmail account with an app password

See below for installation instructions.

Installing Node v.14

You need node to run everything. This prerequesite is essential both for development and production.

You can install in many ways. Since the version is important and the version available on your distribution may not be up to date, I recoomend using a package manager. I recommend nvm.

Instructions follows:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.0/install.sh | bash

now, logoff and then logon again to add nvm to the path, then

nvm install v14
nvm use v14
node -v

Check you have a v14.x.y

Note that since to install libraries it will try to build some native libraries (most notably mediasoup, you have also to install the appropriate C compiler for your platform.

Hints for the more common cases:

  • on Debian and Ubuntu you need to run sudo apt-get install build-essential;
  • on RedHat and CentOS you need sudo yum groupinstall 'Development Tools';
  • on OSX you need to install XCode command line tools.

Installing or provisioninig a mongodb

The application uses MongoDB to store data. Hence, this prerequisite is essential both for development and production. You need either to install mongodb on your platform or provision a cloud-based instance.

Instructions to install a local community edition are here

Many cloud companies also offers Mongodb hosted in cloud. You need to get from them credentials to access it.

Once you got the credentials, either local or in cloud, take note of the server host, user, password and database to use, since those informations are required to connect to the database.

Provisioning an SSL certificate

In order to use WebRTC, on which OpenMed is based, you need to run SSL, hence you need to obtain an SSL certificate. This step is not required for development, but conferencing won't work.

Before you can provision an SSL certificate, you need to get a server exposed to the internet with a public IP and a DNS name pointing to it (just the IP is not enough). We won't discuss here how to get this as there are plenty of resources

You can provision an SSL certfificate in many ways. We show here how to provision using CertBot. Instructions to install certbot are here.

Once you have installed certbot, if you have root access to a server exposed to the internet without any web server running, just type:

sudo certbot certonly --standalone

And enter your email address and the DNS name of your servers.

The certificates will be then stored in:

  • /etc/letsencrypt/live/<your-domain-name>/fullchain.pem
  • /etc/letsencrypt/live/<your-domain-name>/privkey.pem

where <your-domain-name> is, of course, your domain name.

Get a Gmail api key

For sending emails OpenMed currently uses Gmail.

You need to put your account and your password. If you have 2FA enabled you need to generate an app password to be able to use their SMTP server.

To get an app password, go to:

  1. Go to Google Account
  2. Click on Security
  3. Click on Passwords under Signing to Google
  4. Enable 2 step verifications if you do not have it
  5. Generate an app password for "Mail" with a custom name "OpenMed"
  6. Write it down