Ensembl Website Installation Instructions - Version [[SPECIESDEFS::ENSEMBL_VERSION]]

These pages provide step-by-step instructions for installing your own version of the Ensembl web site. They are intended to be complete; that is, if you install the site simply by following these instructions, it should work.

This document is updated with each new release. If you find any omissions, errors, or just confusing bits in the instructions, please send an email to ensembl-webteam@sanger.ac.uk, and we'll try to fix things.

Hardware and software requirements

The Ensembl website system is built on open source software: Apache, mod_perl and MySQL. To install a local mirror of Ensembl you will need:

Summary of Instructions

There are four main sections to these instructions:

Site Structure
Describes the directory structure of the site, and what the various sections do.
Build/Install
How to install all the components that make up the site.
Configuration
Instructions for configuring the site for your local set-up.
Running the site
How to start up, shut down, and generally maintain the site.

Troubleshooting an Ensembl install

There are a number of common issues with an Ensembl installation, below are listed so frequently asked questions. For more details click on the question.

Why does text shows up on MapView but not ContigView?
Truetype fonts have not been correctly installed on configured.
Which configuration files do I edit?
Ensembl uses a plugin system which makes life easier to configure mirrors, by merging configuration files.
Configurations are not stored if I don't have a local MySQL server?
Ensembl can now store (limited) configuration settings against in SQLite database
Mart isn't currently installed in the Ensembl mirror. How can I enable it?
Mart requires some post CVS checkout changes and so we don't configure it by default, but it requires a plugin to enable it
The main Ensembl website has user accounts can we enable them on our mirror.
Yes, there are minor configuration changes required.

Before you start

Running the Ensembl web site can be rather taxing on hardware. At a minimum you will need:

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