Windows

If you have an existing VC Publisher installation on your system, please backup your VC Publisher data first as indicated in the Backup data chapter. Only once the backup is complete should the installation begin.

System requirements

The VC Publisher requires, at minimum, Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016.

Make sure the following dependencies are installed on the system before any VC Publisher first-time installation or VC Publisher update:

Microsoft Visual C++ libraries

Update

Skip this step if you are installing the VC Publisher for the first time!

This section is intended for users who wish to upgrade an existing 5.3 installation of the VC Publisher to version 6.

  • Open the old VC Publisher administration panel and navigate to configuration. Check the currently used settings for PUBLIC_DATA_PATH (path to public data folder), PRIVATE_DATA_PATH (path to private data folder) and cross origin header. Make a note of these values to use them in the new installation.

  • Do a backup of your data!: Backup the database and other relevant files, see chapter Backup data below.

  • Update: If you want to upgrade from a version older than v5.3, please contact <support@vc.systems>. For all upgrade paths do a backup of your data first and then install the newer VC Publisher:

  1. Unzip the downloaded zip file from the download page.

  2. Stop VCPublisher services with the powershell script .\stopServices.ps1 (Powershell needs administrator permissions)

  3. Delete the folders app, tools, jobs and docs in the VCPublisher installation folder. When updating a VC Publisher 6.0.x also delete the folders internalPlugins and ui.

  4. Archive, if you want to keep the old log files, and clear the logs folder.

    VC Publisher version 6 uses a different log structure than previous versions, so the old log files will not be continued in the new installation.

  5. Copy the content of the folder vcPUBLISHER into the installation folder.

  6. Update vcPUBLISHER.env to include all required environment variables. Especially check the variables PUBLIC_DATA_PATH and PRIVATE_DATA_PATH, which have been added with version 6.

  7. Open a powershell with administrator permissions in the installation folder to setup and start the Windows services

    1. Call .\removeServices.ps1 to remove the existing services vcPUBLISHER and vcPUBLISHERMONGODB. This is required since the VC Publisher 6 uses different environment variable handling than previous versions.

      .\removeServices.ps1

    2. Call .\setupServices.ps1 to create the Services vcPUBLISHER and vcPUBLISHERMONGODB

      You may need to remove or bypass the execution policy restriction for the powershell scripts. This can be done by running Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process in the powershell before executing the setup script. See Microsoft help for more details.

      		 
      .\setupServices.ps1

    3. The services can be started with the script .\startServices.ps1.

      .\startServices.ps1

Now the VC Publisher can be accessed on the configured HOST and PORT (default is http://localhost:3003).

If the VC Publisher seems to be unavailable after installation and setting up the Windows services, please refer to chapter Troubleshooting at the end of this readme.

Installation

  1. Unzip the downloaded zip file from the download page.

  2. Copy the included vcPUBLISHER folder to the desired installation folder (e.g., C:\Program Files\vcs\vcPUBLISHER)

  3. Create vcPUBLISHER.env file (you may use the provided vcPUBLISHERdummy.env as a template) in the installation folder with the required environment variables

  4. Create a logs directory in the installation folder, where MongoDB, stdout and stderr log files will be stored. If you added LOG_DIR to the environment variables, make sure to create this folder as well. Make sure the user has read and write permissions to these folders.

  5. Create data folders for the public and private data (see environment variables PUBLIC_DATA_PATH and PRIVATE_DATA_PATH) and one for database data (e.g., C:\publisher-mongodb) and make sure the user has read and write permissions to these folders.

    If your data folders are located on a network drive, please make sure to set up the access permissions as described in chapter Connecting network drives below.

  6. Create vcPUBLISHERMONGODB.env file (you may use the provided vcPUBLISHERMONGODBdummy.env as a template) in the installation folder with the database data path from above set

  7. Open a powershell with administrator permissions in the installation folder to setup and start the Windows services

    1. Call .\setupServices.ps1 to create the Services vcPUBLISHER and vcPUBLISHERMONGODB

      You may need to remove or bypass the execution policy restriction for the powershell scripts. This can be done by running Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process in the powershell before executing the setup script. See Microsoft help for more details.

      		 
      .\setupServices.ps1

    2. The services can be started with the script .\startServices.ps1.

      .\startServices.ps1

Now the VC Publisher can be accessed on the configured HOST and PORT (default is http://localhost:3003).

If the VC Publisher seems to be unavailable after installation and setting up the Windows services, please refer to chapter Troubleshooting at the end of this readme.

Connecting network drives

By default, VC Publisher runs with the local user. For network drives, however, these rights of the local user role are insufficient, so that the Publisher has no read and write permissions for external paths.

To remove this restriction for network drives, the VC Publisher can be started with a user which has permission to access the network drive. Same user also requires read permission on the installation folder and write permission on the logs folder, as well as the configured public and private folder. If necessary, please ask your system administrator to set up a user with access rights to the desired folders.

With the tool nssm the user for the program start can then be changed:

  1. Open Windows' own command interpreter (cmd) as administrator

  2. In cmd change into the installation folder and then to path .\tools\nssm

  3. Execute nssm edit vcPUBLISHER

  4. The nssm service editor will open. Go to the "Log on" button and add a new user under this account.

Now the VC Publisher will be executed with the configured user and will also have it’s extended access permissions to the network drive.

Backup

  1. Backup the database with the MongoDB tools using the mongodump.exe tool.

    1. You can download the tool here.

    2. Do the DB backup using your configured MONGO_URL, e.g.:

      mongodump --uri=mongodb://localhost:27017/publisher /o c:\temp\publisherbackup

  2. If you wish to have a complete backup of the VC Publisher data, it is advisable to make a security copy of both the public and private folders (see environment variable PRIVATE_DATA_PATH and PUBLIC_DATA_PATH).

Depending on the streaming data, datasets in the projects can be very large (up to several hundred gigabytes).

Uninstall

To uninstall the VC Publisher from a Windows system, please follow the steps below:

  1. Open a powershell with administrator permissions in the installation directory of the VC Publisher

  2. Call the Powershell script .\stopServices.ps1 to stop the services

    .\stopServices.ps1

  3. Call the Powershell script .\removeServices.ps1 to remove the installed services.

    .\removeServices.ps1

  4. Then the VC Publisher installation directory can be deleted (e.g., C:\Program Files\vcs\vcPUBLISHER).

Only the VC Publisher software itself gets removed, the public and private data folders as well as the MongoDB data folder will not be deleted during this process. These folders can be used again with a new VC Publisher installation.