Notes for installing and running Solid server

Install NVM

ES6 is supported only by a more recent version of node.js than comes by default with MacOS El Capitan. Use 'nvm' to work with alternative versions of node.js.

The following command installs nvm (to $HOME/.nvm?):

$ curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash

To activate nvm in directory $NVM_HOME, use:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"

Install latest node.js

To use nvm to install a recent version of node, use some combination of the following:

$ nvm ls-remote | grep LTS
$ nvm install v10.15.1    # Use appropriate recent version
$ node -v

Status:

$ npm list
/Users/graham
└── (empty)

$ npm list -g
/Users/graham/.nvm/versions/node/v10.15.1/lib
└─┬ npm@6.4.1
  :

$ which node
/Users/graham/.nvm/versions/node/v10.15.1/bin/node

I'm taking this to be a clean new node environment.

Activate latest node.js

This needs to be done for each new command shell or login.

. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
. ~/.nvm/bash_completion

Install local Solid server

Create and change to working directory for server data (e.g. $HOME/solid).

$ npm install solid-server
npm WARN deprecated nodemailer@3.1.8: All versions below 4.0.1 of Nodemailer are deprecated. See https://nodemailer.com/status/
npm WARN deprecated text-encoding@0.6.4: no longer maintained
npm WARN deprecated node-uuid@1.4.8: Use uuid module instead
npm WARN deprecated coffee-script@1.12.7: CoffeeScript on NPM has moved to "coffeescript" (no hyphen)

> spawn-sync@1.0.15 postinstall /Users/graham/solid/node_modules/spawn-sync
> node postinstall

npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/graham/solid/package.json'
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/graham/solid/package.json'
npm WARN babel-preset-metalab@1.0.0 requires a peer of babel-core@^6.24.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN babel-literal-to-ast@1.0.0 requires a peer of babel-core@>=6.0.20 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.
npm WARN solid No description
npm WARN solid No repository field.
npm WARN solid No README data
npm WARN solid No license field.

+ solid-server@5.0.0-beta.7
added 658 packages from 407 contributors and audited 64504 packages in 36.611s
found 0 vulnerabilities

Create and change to working directory for solid certificates data (e.g. $HOME/solid-certs). Then:

$ export SOLID_HOME=$(pwd)

Set up certificate (or see https://letsencrypt.org/docs/certificates-for-localhost/). For now, using a self-signed certificate:

$ openssl req -x509 -out localhost.crt -keyout localhost.key \
  -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -sha256 \
  -subj '/CN=localhost' -extensions EXT -config <( \
   printf "[dn]\nCN=localhost\n[req]\ndistinguished_name = dn\n[EXT]\nsubjectAltName=DNS:localhost\nkeyUsage=digitalSignature\nextendedKeyUsage=serverAuth")

Change back to solid directory:

$ cd $SOLID_HOME

Initialize Solid (see https://github.com/solid/node-solid-server#run-a-single-user-server-beginner):

$ nerthus:solid graham$ npx solid init
? Path to the folder you want to serve. Default is /Users/graham/solid/data
? SSL port to run on. Default is 8443
? Solid server uri (with protocol, hostname and port) https://localhost:8443
? Enable WebID authentication Yes
? Serve Solid on URL path /
? Path to the config directory (for example: /etc/solid-server) ./config
? Path to the config file (for example: ./config.json) ./config.json
? Path to the server metadata db directory (for users/apps etc) ./.db
? Path to the SSL private key in PEM format ../solid-certs/localhost.key
? Path to the SSL certificate key in PEM format ../solid-certs/localhost.crt
? Enable multi-user mode No
? Do you want to set up an email service? No
? A name for your server (not required, but will be presented on your server's frontpage) localhost
? A description of your server (not required)
? A logo that represents you, your brand, or your server (not required)
config created on /Users/graham/solid/config.json

Proper `localhost` certs?

See: https://blog.filippo.io/mkcert-valid-https-certificates-for-localhost/

@@TODO: try this. if it works, it might save a some messing about when creating and using a test deployment.

Run solid server

If using proper server certificate (i.e. not self-signed), start Solid like this:

$ npx solid start

For debug output, use:

$ DEBUG=solid:* npx solid start

If using a self-signed certificate (i.e., one not trusted by any configured host system root certificate), use one of the following commands instead:

$ ./node_modules/solid-server/bin/solid-test start

or

$ DEBUG=solid:* ./node_modules/solid-server/bin/solid-test start

(These commands suspend certificate checking by the solid server, and should not be used in production. They are needed because the Solid server uses HTTP transactions internally for some operations.)

NOTE: althrough the server may be running at this point, you will still need to set up the needed LDP container structures. See below for details.

Run as a basic LDP server (without authentication)

Locate the server configuration file config.json, with contents something like this:

{
  "root": "/Users/graham/solid/data",
  "port": "8443",
  "serverUri": "https://localhost:8443",
  "webid": true,
  "mount": "/",
  "configPath": "./config",
  "configFile": "./config.json",
  "dbPath": "./.db",
  "sslKey": "../solid-certs/localhost.key",
  "sslCert": "../solid-certs/localhost.crt",
  "multiuser": false,
  "server": {
    "name": "localhost",
    "description": "",
    "logo": ""
  }
}

Change the line

  "webid": true,

to:

  "webid": false,

then start the server as described above.

Deploy "production" solid server with LetsEncrypt certificate

(Use Apache or Nginx to proxy incoming HTTP requests)

@@TODO

Create basic structure for user data (LDP container)

How to get set up with an LDP container?

Browse to https://localhost:8443/. Ignore/override security warnings. I'm using Brave browser without plugins.

Click on "Register". Fill in details, click "register".

(NOTE: if you don't see a "register" button, it is possible that this is because you have "webid": false, in the config.json file. Try setting it to "webid": true, to perform the initial userregistration. Later, you may need to change it back in order to have read/write access to the LDP containers.)

"Public homepage" is displayed.

Click on "WebID" link. Page with name is displayed, but none of the data entered at registration. Tried "back" button, but nothing happens.

Browse to https://localhost:8443/, "Public homepage" is displayed again.

Click "Login". Enter username and password from registration. Click "Log in". Popup displays "Logged in", and home page button changes to "Log out".

Click on WebID link again, error is displayed:

Outline.expand: Unable to fetch <https://localhost:8443/profile/card>: Failed to load  <https://localhost:8443/profile/card> Fetcher: <https://localhost:8443/profile/card> Internal Server Error status: 500

At this point, console log looks like this:

nerthus:solid graham$ npx solid start
Solid server () running on https://localhost:8443/
Press <ctrl>+c to stop
  solid:get / on localhost +0ms
  solid:get / on localhost +2m
  solid:get /profile/card on localhost +35s
  solid:get    sending data browser file: /Users/graham/solid/node_modules/solid-server/static/databrowser.html +0ms
  solid:get /profile/card on localhost +335ms
  solid:get / on localhost +1m
  solid:get / on localhost +1m
  solid:get /profile/card on localhost +58s
  solid:get    sending data browser file: /Users/graham/solid/node_modules/solid-server/static/databrowser.html +1ms

About this point, I ran into some strange errors, that seemed to be caused by incorrect data stored in the browser. Clearing history and cache was not sufficient to clear these problems, but I also needed to use developer tool;s to clear out browser imernal storage created by the Solid server (e.g. see [1] [2])

[1] nodeSolidServer/node-solid-server#1093

[2] nodeSolidServer/node-solid-server#1094

Other errors...

Trying to access non-RDF data as RDF can cause 500 server errors:

$ curl -vk -H "accept: text/turtle" https://localhost:8443/
*   Trying ::1...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8443 (#0)
* TLS 1.2 connection using TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
* Server certificate: localhost
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8443
> User-Agent: curl/7.43.0
> accept: text/turtle
>
< HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
< X-Powered-By: solid-server
< Vary: Accept, Authorization, Origin
< Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
< Access-Control-Expose-Headers: Authorization, User, Location, Link, Vary, Last-Modified, ETag, Accept-Patch, Accept-Post, Updates-Via, Allow, WAC-Allow, Content-Length, WWW-Authenticate
< Allow: OPTIONS, HEAD, GET, PATCH, POST, PUT, DELETE
< Link: <.acl>; rel="acl", <.meta>; rel="describedBy", <http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#Resource>; rel="type"
< WAC-Allow: user="read",public="read"
< MS-Author-Via: SPARQL
< Updates-Via: wss://localhost:8443
< Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
< Content-Length: 38
< ETag: W/"26-QBI7EYtDt6zJzGYxyvtGCQrnW5Q"
< Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 12:08:42 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
<
Error translating between RDF formats
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact



$ curl -vk -H "accept: text/turtle" https://localhost:8443/profile/card
*   Trying ::1...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8443 (#0)
* TLS 1.2 connection using TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
* Server certificate: localhost
> GET /profile/card HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8443
> User-Agent: curl/7.43.0
> accept: text/turtle
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< X-Powered-By: solid-server
< Vary: Accept, Authorization, Origin
< Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
< Access-Control-Expose-Headers: Authorization, User, Location, Link, Vary, Last-Modified, ETag, Accept-Patch, Accept-Post, Updates-Via, Allow, WAC-Allow, Content-Length, WWW-Authenticate
< Allow: OPTIONS, HEAD, GET, PATCH, POST, PUT, DELETE
< Link: <card.acl>; rel="acl", <card.meta>; rel="describedBy", <http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#Resource>; rel="type"
< WAC-Allow: user="read",public="read"
< MS-Author-Via: SPARQL
< Updates-Via: wss://localhost:8443
< Content-Type: text/turtle
< Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2019 12:10:48 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<
@prefix solid: <http://www.w3.org/ns/solid/terms#>.
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>.
@prefix pim: <http://www.w3.org/ns/pim/space#>.
@prefix schema: <http://schema.org/>.
@prefix ldp: <http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#>.

<>
    a foaf:PersonalProfileDocument ;
    foaf:maker <https://localhost:8443/profile/card#me> ;
    foaf:primaryTopic <https://localhost:8443/profile/card#me> .

<https://localhost:8443/profile/card#me>
    a foaf:Person ;
    a schema:Person ;

    foaf:name "Graham Klyne" ;

    solid:account </> ;  # link to the account uri
    pim:storage </> ;    # root storage

    ldp:inbox </inbox/> ;

    pim:preferencesFile </settings/prefs.ttl> ;  # private settings/preferences
    solid:publicTypeIndex </settings/publicTypeIndex.ttl> ;
    solid:privateTypeIndex </settings/privateTypeIndex.ttl> .
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

Check out meld_tool

With solid server in non-multi-user mode, the base container is at https://localhost:8443/public/

I found I also needed:

export NODE_PATH=/Users/graham/.nvm/versions/node/v10.15.0/lib/node_modules/

This command tests authentication with the Solid server:

node meld_tool.js test-login \
    --provider=https://localhost:8443 \
    --username=gklyne --password=****

For a list of available commands:

node meld_tool.js --help

See [test-add-annotation.sh][../src/meld-tool/test-add-annotation.sh] for more examples of meld_tool command usage.

meld_tool environment variables

export MELD_USERNAME=(login username)
export MELD_PASSWORD=(login password)
export MELD_IDPROVIDER=https://localhost:8443

WebID authentication

See:

solid/solid#146 (discussion)

https://github.com/njh/gen-webid-cert

https://github.com/linkeddata/node-webid/

https://github.com/jeff-zucker/solid-file-client (non-browser authentication)

https://github.com/jeff-zucker/solid-file-client/blob/master/lib/solid-shell-client.js

https://github.com/solid/solid-cli

https://github.com/solid/solid-cli/blob/master/src/SolidClient.js

https://github.com/solid/solid-cli/blob/master/bin/solid-bearer-token

https://nodejs.org/api/modules.html#modules_all_together

https://blog.filippo.io/mkcert-valid-https-certificates-for-localhost/

Other stuff

nodeSolidServer/node-solid-server#1093 - discussion about problems of accessing WebID profile after login.

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20190208-solid-server-install-run.md

20190208-solid-server-install-run.md

Notes for installing and running Solid server

Install NVM

Install latest node.js

Activate latest node.js

Install local Solid server

Proper `localhost` certs?

Run solid server

Run as a basic LDP server (without authentication)

Deploy "production" solid server with LetsEncrypt certificate

Create basic structure for user data (LDP container)

Other errors...

Check out meld_tool

meld_tool environment variables

WebID authentication

Other stuff

Files

20190208-solid-server-install-run.md

Latest commit

History

20190208-solid-server-install-run.md

File metadata and controls

Notes for installing and running Solid server

Install NVM

Install latest node.js

Activate latest node.js

Install local Solid server

Proper localhost certs?

Run solid server

Run as a basic LDP server (without authentication)

Deploy "production" solid server with LetsEncrypt certificate

Create basic structure for user data (LDP container)

Other errors...

Check out meld_tool

meld_tool environment variables

WebID authentication

Other stuff

Proper `localhost` certs?