Install CKAN and its dependencies Postgres and Solr on WSL2 Ubuntu

This is simpler version of CKAN official guide derived by me when trying to install the CKAN.

Installing CKAN from package - CKAN 2.10.1 documentation

Note: This works on Ubuntu 22 on WSL 2 as of 2023

Step 1: Local installation

You need local installation for CKAN and its dependencies

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y libpq5 redis-server nginx supervisor
wget https://packaging.ckan.org/python-ckan_2.10-jammy_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i python-ckan_2.10-jammy_amd64.deb

Check CKAN is installed

sudo ckan

You must see the command line help message like below

How to reinstall when anything go wrong

Sometime you mistakenly edit the config file or delete something. You can purge by the following command.

sudo dpkg -P python-ckan

rm -rf /etc/ckan

Then revisit the above step to install it again.

Step 2: Docker compose for Database and Solr (Search)

Make the new directory then create the docker-compose.yml with the content below.

version: "3.8"
services:
  db:
    image: postgres
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: ckan_default
      POSTGRES_USER: ckan_default
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: pass
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
  solr:
    image: "ckan/ckan-solr:2.10"
    ports:
      - "8983:8983"

Check if PostgreSQL is online

You can inspect by your favorite database client like DBeaver or the command line psql

# psql -h <host_name> -U <user_name> <database_name>

psql -h localhost -U ckan_default ckan_deafult

# See Password for user ckan_default:
# type in pass

Check if Solr is online

Step 3: Configuration and Initialization

First, we create the folder for CKAN storage.

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/ckan/default

sudo chown www-data /var/lib/ckan/default
sudo chmod u+rwx /var/lib/ckan/default

You might have to edit something at the configuration file.

sudo vim /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini

For example, if you set database password to something else than pass you will need to edit it here.

Then run the initialization

sudo ckan db init

Step 4: Start the web server

CKAN is using Python protocol uWSGI. This is not the simple http forwarding so to open the web you need to start nginx too.

sudo supervisorctl reload

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Check if everything is run

sudo supervisorctl status

sudo systemctl status nginx

Now you can see the welcome screen

Visit the home screen in your Google Chrome or favorite browser.

Here we go and hope this help !