CodeOcean is built as a micro service architecture and requires multiple components to work. Besides the main CodeOcean web application with PostgreSQL databases, a custom-developed Go service called Poseidon is required to allow code execution. Poseidon manages so-called Runners, which are responsible for running learners code. It is executed in (Docker) containers managed through Nomad. The following document will guide you through the setup of CodeOcean with all aforementioned components.
We recommend using the native setup as described below or the devcontainer setup as described in this guide. We also prepared a setup with Vagrant using a virtual machine as described in this guide. However, the Vagrant setup might be outdated and is not actively maintained (PRs are welcome though!)
Follow these steps to set up CodeOcean on macOS or Linux for development purposes:
macOS:
brew install geckodriver icu4c
brew install --cask firefox
Linux:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install git ca-certificates curl libpq-dev libicu-dev
macOS:
brew install postgresql@16
brew services start postgresql@16
Linux:
curl https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.postgresql.org.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install postgresql-16 postgresql-client-16
sudo -u postgres createuser $(whoami) -ed
Check with:
pg_isready
We recommend using the Ruby Version Manager (RVM) to install Ruby.
gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3 7D2BAF1CF37B13E2069D6956105BD0E739499BDB
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm
Linux:
Ensure that your Terminal is set up to launch a login shell. You may check your current shell with the following commands:
shopt -q login_shell && echo 'Login shell' || echo 'Not login shell'
If you are not in a login shell, RVM will not work as expected. Follow the RVM guide on gnome-terminal to change your terminal settings.
Check with:
rvm -v
We recommend using the Node Version Manager (NVM) to install Node.
macOS:
brew install nvm
mkdir ~/.nvm
Add the following lines to your profile. (e.g., ~/.zshrc
):
# NVM
export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm
[ -s "$(brew --prefix nvm)/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm" ] && \. "$(brew --prefix nvm)/etc/bash_completion.d/nvm" # This loads nvm bash_completion
Linux:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/HEAD/install.sh | bash
Check with:
nvm -v
Reload your shell (e.g., by closing and reopening the terminal) and continue with installing Node:
nvm install lts/iron
corepack enable
Check with:
node -v
yarn -v
If you have several node versions installed, check that you are using the correct version. To view your installed versions, run nvm list
. lts/iron
should be the current and default version. You can adjust this by running nvm alias default lts/iron
.
You may either clone the repository via SSH (recommended) or HTTPS (hassle-free for read operations). If you haven't set up GitHub with your SSH key, you might follow their official guide.
SSH (recommended, requires initial setup):
git clone [email protected]:openHPI/codeocean.git
HTTPS (easier for read operations):
git clone https://github.com/openHPI/codeocean.git
This guide focuses on CodeOcean, as checked out in the previous step. Therefore, we are switching the working directory in the following. For Poseidon, please follow the dedicated setup guide for Poseidon.
cd codeocean
rvm install $(cat .ruby-version)
Check with:
ruby -v
If you have several Ruby versions installed, check that you are using the latest version. To view your installed versions, run rvm list
. The most recent should be the current and default version. You can adjust this by running rvm use <version_nr> --default
.
First, copy our templates:
for f in action_mailer.yml code_ocean.yml content_security_policy.yml database.yml docker.yml.erb mnemosyne.yml
do
if [ ! -f config/$f ]
then
cp config/$f.example config/$f
fi
done
Then, you should check all config files manually and adjust settings where necessary for your environment.
For the basic setup you only need to add your username for the database in database.yml
. For macOS, it is the same as your Mac username.
For a production configuration, you also need to supply a secret key base. To do so, first generate a secret with rails secret
and then set it as environment variable SECRET_KEY_BASE=<your secret>
for the process.
bundle install
yarn install
The following command will create the necessary databases for the development and test environments, setup tables, and load seed data.
rake db:prepare
For the development environment, three server processes are required: the Rails server for the main application, a Webpack server providing JavaScript and CSS assets, and the Solid Queue supervisor to process background jobs.
- Webpack dev server:
This project uses shakapacker to integrate Webpack with Rails to deliver Frontend assets. During development, the webpack-dev-server
automatically launches together with the Rails server if not specified otherwise. In case of missing JavaScript or stylesheets and for Hot Module Reloading in the browser, you might want to start the webpack-dev-server
manually before starting Rails:
yarn run webpack-dev-server
This will launch a dedicated server on port 3035 (default setting) and allow incoming WebSocket connections from your browser.
- Rails application:
bundle exec rails server
This will launch the CodeOcean web application server on port 7000 (default setting) and allow incoming connections from your browser.
- Solid Queue supervisor:
bundle exec rake solid_queue:start
This will launch the Solid Queue supervisor to process background jobs.
Check with:
Open your web browser at http://localhost:7000
The default credentials for the internal users are the following:
- Administrator:
email:[email protected]
password:admin
- Teacher:
email:[email protected]
password:teacher
- Learner:
email:[email protected]
password:learner
Additional internal users can be created using the web interface. In development, the activation mail is automatically opened in your default browser. Use the activation link found in that mail to set a password for a new user.
Every exercise is executed in an execution environment which is based on a docker image. In order to install a new image, have a look at the container images of the openHPI team on GitHub or DockerHub. You may change execution environments by signing in to your running CodeOcean server as an administrator and select Execution Environments
from the Administration
dropdown. The Docker Container Pool Size
should be greater than 0 for every execution environment you want to use. Please refer to the Poseidon documentation for more information on the requirements of Docker images.
For exporting metrics, enable the Prometheus exporter in config/code_ocean.yml
and start an additional server before starting Rails:
bundle exec prometheus_exporter
As detailed earlier, this guide focuses on CodeOcean. Nevertheless, the following provides a short overview of the most important steps to get started with Nomad (as required for Poseidon). Please refer to the full setup guide for more details.
macOS:
brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/nomad
brew services start nomad
Linux:
wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install nomad
sudo systemctl start nomad
Check with:
Open your web browser at http://localhost:4646
The following command must be executed every time nomad is started.
curl -X POST -d '{"SchedulerAlgorithm": "spread", "MemoryOversubscriptionEnabled": true}' http://localhost:4646/v1/operator/scheduler/configuration
macOS:
brew install --cask docker
open /Applications/Docker.app
Linux:
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh
Check with:
docker -v
As detailed earlier, this guide focuses on CodeOcean. Nevertheless, the following provides a short overview of the most important steps to get started with Poseidon. Please refer to the full setup guide for more details.
macOS:
brew install golang
Linux:
gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 52B59B1571A79DBC054901C0F6BC817356A3D45E
gpg --export 52B59B1571A79DBC054901C0F6BC817356A3D45E | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/golang-backports.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/golang-backports.gpg] https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/longsleep/golang-backports/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/golang.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install golang
Check with:
go version
You may either clone the repository via SSH (recommended) or HTTPS (hassle-free for read operations). If you haven't set up GitHub with your SSH key, you might follow their official guide.
SSH (recommended, requires initial setup):
git clone [email protected]:openHPI/poseidon.git
HTTPS (easier for read operations):
git clone https://github.com/openHPI/poseidon.git
cd poseidon
make bootstrap
make build
First, copy our templates:
cp configuration.example.yaml configuration.yaml
Then, you should check the config file manually and adjust settings where necessary for your environment.
./poseidon
As part of the CodeOcean setup, some execution environments have been stored in the database. However, these haven't been yet synchronized with Poseidon yet. Therefore, please take care to synchronize environments through the user interface. To do so, open http://localhost:7000/execution_environments and click the "Synchronize all" button. Hints in case it does not work:
- Press the button a second time after a few seconds.
- Docker must be started.
- Execution environments with network access are not running on macOS. Therefore, all execution environments in the list must be edited so that network access is disabled.
To check that everything works, you should also set the prewarming pool size to 1 for at least one execution environment. This can also be done via the edit function. Afterward it can be checked here http://localhost:7000/admin/dashboard that there are as many free runners as you have set before at pool size. In the nomad UI on http://localhost:4646/ui/jobs one can see the running jobs.