Location of 'app' bc_* files

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1

So, I’m trying to setup a new OOD instance (4.0.7) to upgrade our existing (2.0) instance.

One of the challenges is that on the old server, we’ve had User Services staff create new ‘apps’ for the portal.

Were I to follow the 4.0 instructions, these apps would be directories under /etc/ood/config/apps, all starting with “bc_”.

For our existing server, though, that’s not the case-the ‘app’ directories are all under /var/www/ood/apps/sys-including directories for ‘dashboard’ and ‘file editor’ and ‘shell’…nevertheless, it seems to work-I login to our existing prod server and I can see the apps, all of them, in the dropdown menu.

My question is: is this supposed to work? How, exactly, does the process for OOD to recognise a particular directory as a new application, and add it to a menu? Is there a way to see the process of the portal being setup upon a restart of the webserver, say?

Thanks,

-Jeff A.

2

Dear Jeff,

Yes, without any changes to the Open OnDemand’s default configuration, the location of interactive apps must be `/var/www/ood/apps/sys` (if you installed on a Debian-based Linux)
As long as you have a new app installed in this, Open OnDemand can recognize and display it under the tab `Apps` on the main menu bar.
How to name an app is up to the developer; it doesn’t have to be prefixed with bc_

Below you can see my apps:

root@staging-portal /v/w/o/a/sys# pwd
/var/www/ood/apps/sys
root@staging-portal /v/w/o/a/sys# ls
activejobs/   bc_tby_container_grass/  bc_tby_container_snap/  bc_tby_jupyter/        bc_tby_mixed_qgis/  bc_tby_rstudio/  bc_tby_tensorboard/  file-editor/  myjobs/    shell/
bc_tby_code/  bc_tby_container_saga/   bc_tby_globus/          bc_tby_mixed_desktop/  bc_tby_pluto/       bc_tby_stac/     dashboard/           files/        projects/  system-status/

Kind regards,

Dzung Nguyen

3

Thanks @Dzung.Nguyen for helping!

Any directory here, OnDemand will try to interpret as an application by reading the manifest.yml.

We ship a few applications to this directory. We (OnDemand developers) use the prefix bc_ but you could name them anything.

Providing configurations in /etc means that when you install new versions of OnDemand, we’ll overwrite anything in /var/www/ood (i.e., we update the applications) but we do not update your configurations. That is, configurations will persist through upgrades.

However, there’s a little known thing about interactive apps here - subapps and re-configuring existing interactive (batch connect) applications. This is how bc_desktop works - we ship the application with 90% of what you need - and you (the center) supply the remaining 10% in a “sub application”.

All that said - basically anything in under /var/www/ood/apps/sys that has a manifest.yml that has a role: batch_connect will show up in the “Interactive Apps” menu if it’s valid (we make a few checks like if it’s form.yml is OK and so on)