Sakai 25 Install Guide (Source)

Install Prerequisites

To begin with the following items must be installed (you may skip any you all ready have installed).

1. Java 17

2. Git

3. Maven 3.9 or later

4. Tomcat 9

Sakai 25.0 was QA tested with Java 17.0.15 (Temurin), Maven 3.9.9, Tomcat 9.0.105

1.0 Install SDKMAN

While it is not required Software Development Kit Manager simplifies installing and upgrading dependencies

Install sdkman with: curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash

SDKMAN simplifies upgrading and using different versions of software.

1.1 Verify/Install Java 17

Java JDK 17, is the required version to use with Sakai 25. While using a lower or higher version may be possible it is not recommended.

The JDK that is installed on nightly servers is Adoptium's Temurin 17. 

sdk install java 17.0.15-tem

To confirm that Java is both installed on your system and is the correct version for Sakai, run java -version from the command line:

java -version

If Java is installed, basic version and build information will be displayed. Example output:

openjdk version "17.0.15" 2025-04-15
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-17.0.15+6 (build 17.0.15+6)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Temurin-17.0.15+6 (build 17.0.15+6, mixed mode, sharing)

1.1.1 Set Java environment variables 

Several environment variables and related properties must be set for Java. For UNIX operating systems one typically modifies a startup file like ~/.bash_login to set and export shell variables while Mac users typically set and export environment variables in .bash_profile. For Windows, go to Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and set JAVA_HOME via the GUI.

Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the base directory of your Java installation and add Java's /bin directory to the PATH environment variable.

 If the variable JRE_HOME is already set or if you want to use a particular JRE if you have more than one JRE installed on your machine then you'll want to set the JRE_HOME variable as well. JRE_HOME is what Apache Tomcat uses when it starts up, but it defaults to use JAVA_HOME if JRE_HOME is not set. In most cases, setting JAVA_HOME should cover both cases sufficiently.

SDKMAN will update JAVA_HOME and PATH for you automatically

 Windows: append the string to the end of the Path system variable

Set JAVA_OPTS

The default Java virtual machine (JVM) settings are not sufficient to run Sakai's for lots of users. As a result several JVM parameters should be tuned to run Sakai efficiently depending on the server environment others may need to be adjusted for optimal performance.

 We recommend that you define these settings in Tomcat's $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh (Unix/Mac) or setenv.bat (Windows). See the "Install Tomcat 9" section below for more details. 

Specify a Language and Locale (optional)

You can define the default language/locale when starting Sakai by setting the system properties -Duser.language and -Duser.region. For information on supported languages see the release notes or visit the i18N Work Group space.

-Duser.language=es -Duser.region=ES

Specify an HTTP Proxy (optional)

In environments where local network policy or firewalls require use of an upstream HTTP proxy/cache, Sakai needs to be configured accordingly.

-Dhttp.proxyHost=cache.some.domain -Dhttp.proxyPort=8080

1.2 Install Git and/or local Github client 

The Sakai Community uses Github as its source control management (SCM) system. Use a reasonably current version of Git to get the source. Alternatively, you can obtain binary packages for Mac/Linux and Windows (Linux is more popular and gets the preponderance of QA testing, by far). Extract the distribution archive into your installation directory. 

https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai

1.3 Install Maven 3 

The Apache Maven project management framework provides Sakai with "a set of build standards, artifact repository model and a software engine that manages and describes projects" (Better Builds, p. 22). As part of the installation process you will use Maven as a build tool in order to compile, test and deploy Sakai to a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat.

install using SDKMAN is the easiest and automatically manages MAVEN_HOME and PATH

sdk install maven

It is recommended to use Maven 3.9+.

You can download Maven at

http://maven.apache.org/download.html

Extract the distribution archive into your installation directory of choice, e.g. /usr/local/apache-maven-3.8.7. Confirm that you have installed the correct version of Maven and can start it by issuing mvn --version from the terminal. At this point your environment is prepared to build and deploy the Sakai source code.

mvn --version

Apache Maven 3.9.9 (8e8579a9e76f7d015ee5ec7bfcdc97d260186937)
Maven home: /Users/xxx/.sdkman/candidates/maven/current
Java version: 17.0.15, vendor: Eclipse Adoptium, runtime: /Users/xxx/.sdkman/candidates/java/17.0.15-tem
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "mac os x", version: "15.5", arch: "aarch64", family: "mac"

1.3.1 Set Maven environment variables 

A number of environment variables must be set for optimal Maven performance. For UNIX operating systems one typically modifies a startup file like ~/.bash_login to set and export shell variables while Mac users typically set and export environment variables in .bash_profile. For Windows, go to Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and set your Maven environment variables via the GUI.

Set the MAVEN_HOME environment variable to point to the base directory of your Maven installation and add the Maven /bin directory to your PATH variable:

 Windows: append string to the end of the Path system variable

1.4 Install Tomcat 9

• Apache Tomcat - https://tomcat.apache.org/download-90.cgi

• Note: Always do a fresh install of Tomcat 9 and do not attempt to use OS-installed versions of Tomcat

• Note: Ubuntu if using the Tomcat distributed with ubuntu it is sandboxed by systemd and doesn't allow write access to sakai directories

  • see SAK-45495: Ubuntu 20.04: Failed to start IgniteSpringBeanOpenPreview

• Note: Windows users should ensure that there are no spaces in the complete tomcat path as this causes errors with JSF tools in Sakai

  • GOOD: C:\opt\tomcat\, C:\sakaistuff\installs\tomcat\
    BAD: C:\program files\tomcat\, C:\opt\apache tomcat 9.0.71\

1. Download Tomcat 9 - https://tomcat.apache.org/download-90.cgi
   
   

   • Windows users could install the tomcat9 service, it makes viewing the tomcat logs easier and it is easier to configure.

      

2. Extract to /opt (symlink the apache-tomcat-9.0.x directory to tomcat after extracting)

   • Example (assuming you have saved the file as /opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.x.tar.gz)

   • Windows users should either rename the directory or, if comfortable, create a directory junction using an elevated cmd prompt:

3. Modify conf/server.xml for international character support

   1. Add URIEncoding="UTF-8" to the Connector element

      • <Connector port="8080" URIEncoding="UTF-8" ...

4. Set environment variable: CATALINA_HOME=/opt/tomcat

5. Add $CATALINA_HOME/bin to PATH

6. Setup the SETENV file in the tomcat/bin directory with JAVA_OPTS.

7. You can populate the database with Demo data or use the quartz job Create Test Sites (Not recommended for production environments)

   1. Using the quartz job will create some sample sites with some sample data in tools ideal for testing

   2. Another alternative instead of starting with an empty database you can add the flag -Dsakai.demo=true in addition to the others shown here. During your first Tomcat launch it will populate your database with test data (students, courses, etc). Once the data has been created remove this flag for subsequent Tomcat launches. Be advised that this flag will not trigger on a database with data already in it so you must make this choice during the initial setup. It should also be noted that without this flag one will not be able to create any course sites in Sakai unless Academic Term, Subject, Course, and Section data is manually added to the "cm_" tables in the database.

       

      1. Mac/Linux: Create a file called setenv.sh with the following see the setenv.sh used by nightly QA servers:
         Tomcat 9 Mac/Linux

      2. Windows(PC): Create a file called setenv.bat with the following:
         Tomcat 9 Windows

8. [OPTIONAL] Delete the default webapps from the webapps dir

   rm -rf webapps/*

Improve startup speed

You can improve startup speed under Tomcat significantly editing the file conf/context.xml and add this JarScanFilter block to the <Context>

 

2.0 Get the Sakai source code

There are two ways to acquire Sakai source code. You can choose to download a packaged *.zip or *tar.gz file from Sakai's release page or check out the code directly from our code repository using Git's source code control system and Github as the repository hosting service.

 Sakai source code can be checked forked from our Github repository. The latest development work is located in the master branch; stable releases can be found in tags while maintenance and other work is performed in a 25.x branch.

25 release tag

To checkout a stable release tag, clone the git repo and then checkout the tag (in this case 25.0):

git clone https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai.git cd sakai && git checkout 25.0

Release Infomation

The latest stable release may be newer than the version listed above. Please see https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai/releases.

25.x maintenance branch

The latest bug fixes for a particular release can be found in our maintenance branches. Please note that certain maintenance branch fixes require database schema changes. You can check out the maintenance branch by issuing the following command from the terminal:

git clone https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai.git cd sakai && git checkout 25.x

If you all ready have cloned the repository, skip step the clone step above.

 

3.0 Configure Sakai 

 

1.0 Create a sakai.properties file

 

The sakai.properties file is a central configuration file that is typically stored in a /sakai subdirectory relative to the Tomcat home directory ($CATALINA_HOME). It is a non-XML text file containing a series of key/value pairs that is read using the load method of java.util.properties. Settings in sakai.properties govern everything from setting your institution's name to configuring your database. All settings in sakai.properties are read on startup; any changes you make subsequently will only take effect when you restart web application server. You may want to create a local.properties file in the same directory as sakai.properties. Properties listed in local.properties override sakai.properties. 

For a source installation the default default.sakai.properties file is located in the config module:

sakai-src/config/configuration/bundles/src/bundle/org/sakaiproject/config/bundle/default.sakai.properties

 The bin package does not include a sakai.properties file. This is a deliberate exclusion; it eliminates the possibility of overwriting a local sakai.properties file if a bin package is opened over an existing Sakai installation.

If you need to override the default settings you must create your own sakai.properties file either from scratch or from a known working copy adding new key/value settings in order to customize your installation. We recommend that you review the default.sakai.properties file included in the source installation or in the appropriate maintenance branch.

The default location for your local sakai.properties file is $CATALINA_HOME/sakai. This folder is not created by Maven during the build and deployment process, so you will have to create it manually or via a script. You can also store Sakai's configuration files outside of your web application server's file hierarchy. For example, in a development environment you may find yourself frequently reinstalling Tomcat and unless you create a build script to automate the Tomcat installation and configuration process avoiding having to recreate $CATALINA_HOME/sakai and sakai.properties each time has its advantages.

To locate your properties file outside of your web application server environment modify the Java startup command or the JAVA_OPTS environment variable and set a system property named sakai.home. Make sure your external location is readable and writable by your web application server.

-Dsakai.home=/path/to/desired/sakai/home/

 For list of sakai.properties settings see the Sakai Properties Reference; for detailed documentation on the full variety of possible sakai.properties settings, see the sakai_properties.doc in /reference/docs/architecture/sakai_properties.doc.

 

2.0 Configure home page tool set per site

 

Tool collections for the home page can be configured for each site type. However, if the wsetup.home.toolids.* property is not set, the Worksite setup tool will default to the following set of tools for the home page: sakai.iframe.site, sakai.summary.calendar, sakai.synoptic.announcement, sakai.synoptic.chat, sakai.synoptic.messagecenter. Synoptic tools will be added or dropped from home page depending on whether their linked tool exists in the site or not. See 

SAK-15504 - Upgraded site: editing My workspace leads to duplicate Home CLOSED and 

SAK-16747 - tools are not auto-added into Home tool page CLOSED for more details.

wsetup.home.toolids.count=5 wsetup.home.toolids.1=sakai.privacy wsetup.home.toolids.2=sakai.iframe wsetup.home.toolids.3=sakai.synoptic.announcement wsetup.home.toolids.4=sakai.synoptic.chat wsetup.home.toolids.5=sakai.synoptic.messagecenter

 

5.0 Configure email

 

Enabling Sakai to both send and receive email requires setting a number of properties in sakai.properties. In order to send mail Sakai requires the address (name or IP) of an external SMTP server that will accept mail from Sakai:

smtp@org.sakaiproject.email.api.EmailService=some.smtp.org

Sakai's SMTP server is SubEthaSMTP. Most sys admins prefer running a standard mailer like Postfix on port 25 and configuring it to forward requests to Sakai. You may also currently have a mailer service running on port 25 (Linux usually has it running by default). So consider setting Sakai's SMTP service to run on a different port (e.g., 8025) in order to avoid conflicts.

To enable Sakai to receive mail you'll need to set the following properties:

# flag to enable or disable SMTP service for incoming email (true | false) #Default=false. smtp.enabled=true # dns addresses used by SMTP service for incoming email. (only supported on versions <= Sakai 10) smtp.dns.1=255.255.255.1 smtp.dns.2=255.255.255.2 # SMTP port on which incoming SMTP service listens. # Recommend running on 8025, and using a standard mailer on 25 to forward mail to Sakai. # Default=25. smtp.port=8025

Additional settings can be enabled to add support emails for a variety of tasks.

# Email support address used in incoming email rejection messages. mail.support=address@somedomain # A variation on this that's used in some places instead of the one above! Best to set both of them support.email   #To change the postmaster address in general smtpFrom@org.sakaiproject.email.api.EmailService # Email address to send errors caught by the portal, and user bug reports in response. portal.error.email=address@somedomain # Email address used as the "from" address for any email sent by Worksite Setup tool or Site Info tool. setup.request=address@somedomain # Send an email to the user when the user is added. notifyNewUserEmail=true   #For msgcntr notifications msgcntr.notification.from.address   #Whether or not to send the real address as msgcntr notifications msgcntr.notification.user.real.from=true (false)    

 

6.0 Configure logging

 

Once you have Sakai installed, configured and started, you can monitor Sakai by watching the logs. The log level for the standard Sakai source code and the demo is set to show info and warnings only. Watch for the WARN: messages. There are going to be some "normal" ones at startup, and some will likely slip by at runtime, but any warning is potentially something you might want to check out.

Logging levels can be specified in sakai.properties. This augments and overrides the levels set in the default config file. Example:

log.config.count=3 log.config.1 = ALL.org.sakaiproject.log.impl log.config.2 = OFF.org.sakaiproject log.config.3 = DEBUG.org.sakaiproject.db.impl

This uses the established (if awkward) method of having a name.count followed by name.1, name.2 etc. to form an array of strings for the value "name". In this case, the name is "log.config". The values are of the form LEVEL.logger, and the possible levels are: OFF TRACE DEBUG INFO WARN ERROR FATAL ALL.

For Mac and *nix systems, the most important log is found in Tomcat's logs/catalina.out. It can be instructive to watch this log as Tomcat is starting up, by using a startup command like the following:

bin/startup.sh; tail -f logs/catalina.out

Tomcat on Windows tends to be a little more puzzling about its logs, and it includes more of them, but its default behavior is to open catalina.out in a new window as soon as you start Tomcat. If you need more information about the logs in Windows, we'll refer you to the official Tomcat documentation.

 The SMTP server logs from Sakai will be written to the $CATALINA_HOME/sakai/logs directory.

 

7.0 Managing temporary files

Depending on usage, Sakai may create many large temporary files in the system temporary file storage location (e.g. /tmp). It is a good practice to routinely remove temporary files older than a day, especially if you have a lot of users or have heavy usage of mail sending with attachments. Note that you should not simply remove all temp files on a schedule as some of them may be in active use (also be careful about removing temp files which are used by other processes).

 

3.1 Configure database

 

Sakai 25 database support details

Make sure to include a MySql connector jar in your CATALINA_HOME/lib. 

Create a Sakai database with a default character set of UTF-8. Create a user account to which you will assign all permissions.

Use any database name and username you wish and then update your sakai.properties file (or even better, create a local.properties file, which has precedence).

In the example below the database is named "sakaidatabase" and the user account is "sakaiuser".

Excerpt from sakai.properties

username@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=sakaiuser
password@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=sakaipassword

# MariaDB settings
vendor@org.sakaiproject.db.api.SqlService=mysql
driverClassName@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MariaDB103Dialect
url@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=jdbc:mariadb://127.0.0.1:3306/sakai_database?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8
defaultTransactionIsolationString@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED

# MySQL settings
vendor@org.sakaiproject.db.api.SqlService=mysql
driverClassName@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL8Dialect
url@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/sakai_database?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8
defaultTransactionIsolationString@javax.sql.BaseDataSource=TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED

 

mysql -u root -p Enter password: **********
mysql> create database sakai default character set utf8mb4; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec) mysql> grant all on sakai.* to sakaiuser@'localhost' identified by 'sakaipassword'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec mysql> grant all on sakai.* to sakaiuser@'127.0.0.1' identified by 'sakaipassword'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> flush privileges; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> quit

 

4.0 Build, deploy and start up Sakai in Tomcat 

 

Install the Sakai master project

Sakai makes use of Maven's Project Object Model to provide an XML representation of basic project information covering dependency management, build targets, external repositories, issue tracking, mailing lists, reporting plugins, developer bios, etc. A top-level master pom.xml file located in the /master project acts as a parent for other Sakai pom.xml files. If you are building Sakai for the first time you should install the master project first by issuing the clean and install goals from the /master project folder.

cd master mvn clean install cd ..

Install and deploy Sakai

Once you have built the master pom, issue the following Maven goals from the top-level Sakai source directory:

 -Dmaven.tomcat.home specifies Tomcat's location. -Dsakai.home specifies the location of the sakai properties file(s) within Tomcat. 

mvn clean install sakai:deploy -Dmaven.tomcat.home=/pathto/tomcathome -Dsakai.home=/pathto/tomcathome/sakai

Your first Sakai build will take some time as Maven downloads and stocks your local .m2/repository with missing dependencies while performing the build and deploying .war and .jar files to Tomcat's $CATALINA_HOME/webapps, $CATALINA_HOME/components and $CATALINA_HOME/shared/lib folders. If during this process Maven reports that the build failed read the accompanying error message carefully to troubleshoot the issue (see the Troubleshooting section).

You can also issue mvn clean install sakai:deploy from any sakai project module top-level folder in order to build and deploy portions of Sakai such as individual tools.

Maven Goal Options

There are a number of other ways to build and deploy Sakai using Maven:

Print debug output

mvn -X clean install sakai:deploy

Build and Deploy in offline mode

If your local repository contains all Sakai project dependencies, you can run Maven "offline" by adding the -o option:

mvn -o clean install sakai:deploy

Skip unit tests

There may be occasions when you want to build and deploy Sakai without executing the set of unit tests that accompany many of the Sakai modules. If so add -Dmaven.test.skip=true to the goals you issue:

mvn clean install -Dmaven.test.skip=true sakai:deploy

Build and Deploy with exploded wars

The normal build will deploy the war files which when tomcat starts will expand them, you can forgo this intermediate step and deploy expanded war files which occupy much less space:

mvn clean install sakai:deploy-exploded

4.1 Start/Stop Tomcat 

 

Start/stop Tomcat from the terminal by running the appropriate startup/shutdown script located in $CATALINA_HOME/bin:

Unix/Mac

sh startup.sh sh shutdown.sh

Windows

startup.bat shutdown.bat